Evidence that pop music is getting sadder and angrier

[peterlk]

Short explanation: the music industry has discovered that capturing the teenage market pays dividends and teenagers are emotional.

Unrelated anecdote with a different explanation:

I had a fascinating conversation with my parents recently. They are both children of the 60s and grew up in San Francisco. We often share music just to talk about it. I was playing some heavier (dubsteppy-metal) music to them, and wanted to dig into why they didn't like it.

The reason that I like heavy music (especially at shows) is because it is very rare that I get to cut my rage loose, and let it flow. Mosh pits are the only place I can think of where this is an acceptable form of self expression. This feeling is sometimes a good gateway to making me feel like I can win (aka, be alright) when I'm feeling down.

I asked them if what I just described, and the feelings that the music engendered made intuitive emotional sense to them. Regardless of whether they agree that it's positive or negative, does that emotional drive resonate with them. And the answer was, shockingly to me, "No".

Through our conversation, we settled on a convenient narrative (with absolutely no research or sources to back it).

In the 60s and 70s, the rebellion was not against the machine, it was for betterment. They saw the moon landings, and went to concerts in Golden Gate Park that sang about love and freedom for all, and they said that there was a feeling that anything was possible. You just had to do it. And there were lots of problems, but we made progress, it just took doing.

While there is likely some rose-tinted-ness about this recollection, I found it interesting that this was not the way I grew up seeing the world. I grew up with the narrative that everything was wrong, everyone was wrong, and so fuck everything - tear it down.

A short list:

Rage Against the Machine

Eminem

System of a Down

Our convenient narrative was that when our leaders act in bad faith, the result is generations of damage (i.e. the Vietnam war), and that this is reflected in culture. Interestingly, this polarizes both ways politically. So you get a feedback loop of culture becoming more extreme to differentiate itself while serving a polarizing society.

Aside: I'm so happy to see charts with error bars!

[onemoresoop]

>In the 60s and 70s, the rebellion was not against the machine, it was for betterment.

The rebellion was very much against the machine, the establishment, the norms,etc.

It's very interesting that nowadays rebellious trends tend to feed the machine. You were spot on on your first line. Whatever captures any market and pays dividends is echoed right back, amplified by the machine (which takes the dividend). There is still great music being made, but it's harder to find (if not impossible) on mainstream channels.

[rnd0]

I don't agree about the 70's, in that assesment; even the 60's are dubious (eg "trouble coming every day" by Frank Zappa, misc protest songs, the Doors).

According to "Please Kill Me" part of what led to the creation of punk was a sense that everything was going to hell and there might not be a tomorrow. On the metal side of things you get the same sense if you listen to early Black Sabbath (eg "Wicked World", "Hand of Doom",). There's probably other examples to be had, but I can't think of them offhand.

I grew up in the 80's and I can relate to half of what you're saying about aggressive music and moshing. What I find interesting, though, is when you say "Mosh pits are the only place I can think of where this is an acceptable form of self expression". That definately wasn't the case for me, just the opposite. The messages and sentiments I picked up on were that repression was unhealthy -better to get it all out, EST style if need be.

I find it interesting that it's somehow become more taboo to express negative emotions, anger, confrontation, etc than when I was a teenager. I might be off the mark, but from what I've noticed it seems like we're collectively becoming more repressed (emotionally and otherwise) than we were 20 or 30 years ago.

[empath75]

The 1960s were almost apocalyptically bad— the arms race, vietnam, lynchings, inner city riots, bombings, assassinations, etc. There was plenty of angry protest music— there just wasn’t much of an angry audio aesthetic.

[c0vfefe]

> it is very rare that I get to cut my rage loose, and let it flow. Mosh pits are the only place I can think of where this is an acceptable form of self expression.

At the metal shows I've been to, it's precisely the guys trying to "cut [thier] rage loose" that you want to avoid. Moshing, like football, should be about a physical form of communal fun, not expressing anger and aggression; otherwise you get safety problems.

[e9]

Random observation that might be related. If you take some bands that were formed in late 60s, early 70s like Rush, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd, King Crimson and follow their careers, as they became older their music became angrier and angrier lol(especially starting late 90s and into 2000s). I always attributed it to band members getting older and bitter at life but maybe as you say it’s due to times changing...

[onemoresoop]

Also, its fascinating how the test of time clarifies things up. I now enjoy the music my parents listened to but rarely do enjoy the music that I grew up on

[llamataboot]

I mean, counter-cultures are complex in terms of what they question and what they absorb as immutable, etc. But arguably the 60s in the US and across the Western world were way more confrontational and itching-for-revolution than most counter-cultures are today.

I mean, let's not get distracted by the acoustic guitar, a lot of protest folk music was explicitly calling for the abolition of capitalism, the end of US military dominance, etc.

[rdiddly]

I'm a fan of generally more aggressive music, and I'm also an old fart, but whenever I'm (usually accidentally) exposed to anything from nowadays, it sounds "too happy" to me - saccharine, treacly, shallow, heavy on notes 1, 2, 3 and 5 of the major scale, full of "millenial whoops" (https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=millenial+whoop) and so on. So hearing that "pop music is getting sadder and angrier" surprises me.

[henearkr]

Precisely, the millenial whoop carries a little bit of bitterness because it is a minor third. It would be totally different with a major interval (then it would sound closer to some excerpt from the electro-pop era). Edit: I just got aware there are also a lot of minor third in most of the "happiest" electro-tunes, so I am off the point. Maybe it is something else then, like how it is accompanied, the drums, etc. For example, I don't feel very happy when I hear a lot of synthesizer "hand claps" and too much pitch vibrato.

[fithisux]

This is true. They swapped happy HiNRG / Eurodance with the ....t we see today. It is music for psychos, it does not make you happy. Even newer Italo Disco (my favorite) is getting sadder, it has lost that happy melodies of the 1986-1989 era or the happier early Eurobeat 1988-1993 sounds. Even moder Eurobeat is getting dark (MeganrgMan has not, thank you). We are heading to a depressive and dystopian pop/rock/disco style.

Bye bye Venga boys, bye bye Dr Alban, bye bye Alexis and GoGo Girls , bye bye Mel&Kim or Jackie Rawe, we will not see you again.

[empath75]

It seems implausible that music is angrier than it was at the height of grunge and industrial and gangster rap in the mid 90s.

[derefr]

The article is about "pop music", not music generally. The article is asserting that pop music—you know, the music that is considered a strictly middle-of-the-road, top-40, polished studio-establishment production; the music that is safe to play over the PA in a restaurant, and is used as an image-song for a character in the latest summer blockbuster; that kind of stuff—is what's getting sadder/angrier.

Which is surprising. It reflects a change in what people consider an acceptable emotional range for pablum. It's as if airplane food started tasting like something. It's something that deserves an explanation.

[athroway]

I wonder how much is it due to general attitudes towards profanity and generally colloquial speech being increasingly relaxed. They only analyzed the word content, not the meaning of the songs per se.

[maxxxxx]

Seems it goes up during bad times and then down during good times. Makes kind of sense. Pop music often tries to be counterculture.

[randomdata]

That is the basis of the 13-year cycle theory[1], but this is showing that each cycle never recovers, so to speak, resulting in a continual trend towards sadder and angrier.

[1] https://globalnews.ca/news/4082568/the-theory-of-the-13-year...

[fwip]

I think the 2010-2013 peak is interesting - pop music was more upbeat than it had been since 9/11.

[codetrotter]

Interesting article. Too bad they resort to a clickbait title as opposed to the title used for it here on HN.

My willingness to post an article on social media to share it with others is inversely proportionate to the clickbaityness of its title.

If it has a clickbait title I ain’t posting it. And this one does, so I won’t. Too bad, because the article is good.

[theoh]

Just post links to the studies the article is based on:

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsos.171...

http://jpms.ucpress.edu/content/30/4/161.abstract

I don't get the HN fussiness about clickbait titles. If there's a way to vouch for the content (and if it appears on HN, there is) then the problem goes away. Similarly, you could post "This sounds like clickbait, but it's a good article!" which neutralizes the threat and wastes nobody's time.

[briandear]

So the clickbait was actually providing the payoff it promised? The article was good, so you aren't going to post it because its title was too catchy? "Clickbait" is when you get suckered into clicking bad content via a catchy headline. It isn't clickbait when it's actually a good article that "delivers" on the headline's promise.

[the_pwner224]

I don't use social media aside from HN and Reddit so maybe this isn't possible, but why can't you just post a link to this over at your social media sites along with the same HN non-clickbait title?