Why are pop songs getting sadder than they used to be?

Aeon ^ | February 4, 2020 | Alberto Acerbi, and Charlotte Brand

[C19fan]

Are popular songs today happier or sadder than they were 50 years ago? In recent years, the availability of large digital datasets online and the relative ease of processing them means that we can now give precise and informed answers to questions such as this. A straightforward way to measure the emotional content of a text is just to count how many emotion words are present. How many times are negative-emotion words – ‘pain’, ‘hate’ or ‘sorrow’ – used? How many times are words associated with positive emotions – ‘love’, ‘joy’ or ‘happy’ – used? As simple as it sounds, this method works pretty well, given certain conditions (eg, the longer the available text is, the better the estimate of mood). This is a possible technique for what is called ‘sentiment analysis’. Sentiment analysis is often applied to social media posts, or contemporary political messages, but it can also be applied to longer timescales, such as decades of newspaper articles or centuries of literary works.

[2111USMC]

“Honey”

[higgmeister]

Yet we have all heard what a family influence will do to a person. I cannot fault the boy in his case and the last line says it all.

Patches oh what can I do?
I swear I will always love you.
It my not be right, but I'll join you tonight,
Patches I'm coming to you.

[Fiji Hill]

Dickie Lee didn't have the courage to defy his parents or sneak off and see her. And he his decision to commit suicide was based on hearsay. Patches would have been better off if she had had Jerry ("Midnight Mary") or James as a boyfriend.

[Fiji Hill]

That's a happy song!

Honey--Ben Selvin's Knickerbockers

[Fiji Hill]

Al Jolson. Sonny Boy.

Great tune. I also like Ruth's version.

Sonny Boy--Ruth Etting (1928)

[Fiji Hill]

"Today's music is not much more than white noise to me. I can't think of a single pop song from the last 20 years that I know the lyrics to or who sings it."

Said somebody in 1960.

Kids! They are just impossible to control!
Kids! With their awful clothes and their rock and roll!
Why can't they dance like we did?
What's wrong with Sammy Kaye?
What's the matter with kids today?

--Lee Adams, 1960