Wham! to Sam Smith: Pop Music Study Finds Rise in Sadness Over Past 30 Years | Billboard
A study of hundreds of thousands of popular songs over the past three decades has found a downward sonic trend in happiness and an increase in sadness, as the chirpy band Wham! gave way to the moody Sam Smith.
For the report in the journal Royal Society Open Science, researchers at the University of California at Irvine looked at 500,000 songs released in the UK between 1985 and 2015, and categorized them according to their mood. “‘Happiness’ is going down, ‘brightness’ is going down, ‘sadness’ is going up, and at the same time, the songs are becoming more ‘danceable’ and more ‘party-like,’” co-author Natalia L. Komarova told The Associated Press.
Of course, the researchers emphasize that a gradual decrease in the average “happiness” index does not mean that all successful songs in 1985 were happy and all successful songs in 2015 were sad. They were looking for average trends in the acoustic properties of the music and the moods describing the sounds.
One of the best albums I’ve ever owned is Chris Isaak’s “Forever Blue.” It’s good from end to end, but very depressing. I used to limit how much I listened to it as I went to bed because by the third day I would start becoming vaguely depressed.
Some songs with a low happiness index in 2014 include “Stay With Me” by Sam Smith, “Whispers” by Passenger and “Unmissable” by Gorgon City. Some from 1985 with a high happiness index include “Glory Days” by Bruce Springsteen, “Would I Lie to You?” by the Eurythmics, and “Freedom” by Wham!
I have never heard of Sam Smith, Passenger, or Gorgon City.
Maybe the problem with kids today is that they’re listening to people nobody has ever heard of.
More to the point, Glory Days is the most depressing song in the world. What is is about? A couple of alkies sitting in a bar and one of them refuses to talk about how he is doing today because he is talking about the past and how the past used to be good compared to today.
Would I Lie To You? is similarly depressing. Here’s some lyrics for you to enjoy:
Tell you straight – no intervention.
To your face – no deception.
You’re the biggest fake.
That much is true.
Had all I can take.
Now I’m leaving you
And Wham’s Freedom is a song about a guy whose… I don’t even know if she’s his girlfriend… is running around on him. Some more lyrics for you:
Like a prisoner who has his own key
But I can’t escape until you love me
I just go from day to day
Knowing all about the other boys
You take my hand and tell me I’m a fool
To give you all that I do
I bet you someday baby
Someone says the same to you
But you know that I’ll forgive you
Just this once twice, forever
‘Cause baby, you could drag me to hell and back
Just as long as we’re together
And you do
You want a happy song? Here’s a goddamn happy song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWNaR-rxAic
Come up with *ANYTHING* from the 80’s that is *HALF* that upbeat.
Even the best, seriously, the absolute best song from the last 50 years (which happens to be from the 80s) is pretty dang melancholy.
This article is topsy-turvy. And now I’m sitting here yelling at the computer because, seriously, this is so wrong that I can’t think that the researchers have a bet that say “seriously, nobody’s going to read this and point out that these songs aren’t upbeat” “YOU’RE ON!”.Report
You want a *really* happy song?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5meWI3iX1sE
Go-on I dare ya’ to click that link, not this one.Report
I don’t know if Puddles negates those.Report
I love those guys. I love what they do. There are at least four or five songs where I VASTLY prefer their version to the original.Report
Yeah… I’ve contemplated a digital play list: Covers Better than the Original.
But it would pretty much be just a PMJ list. My kids were out in the wild and heard an original version and paused perplexed until they realized it was a cover of a PMJ cover by the original band. At least that’s how their musical taxonomy worked.Report
Covers are really their own animal now. YouTube is full of them, Spotify and Pandora are full of them, Sirius XM has a whole covers channel. My children actually know some songs far better from the covers. Its almost its own genre at this point.Report
Yeah, that’s what makes digital music interesting… but then there are covers and then there are *covers*
I’m interested in the *covers* that musically flip (and enhance) the original… not tributes to the original. I haven’t found the meta-tag to wade through covers without having to listen to covers. So wade I do.
My sub-specialty is Christmas Music; I’ll spend hours upon hours digging through the dross to find the very best versions in different thematic tones: Classical, Country, Crooner, etc., etc.Report
I agree I appreciate creativity such as turning pop songs into jazz-era swing tunes, or roots/bluegrass covers of metal songs. Something like Hugo Rock covering Jay-Z’s 99 problems as an almost alt-country thing, and Ice-T doing Motorhead. And a full symphony doing anything is just wonderful when done right.
As far as Christmas music goes I get more traditionalist the older I get. Bing, Dean, and Nat, etc-hold the new stuff.Report
“Bing, Dean, and Nat” that *is* the new stuff… 🙂
Even there… finding the recording that has been remastered the best can take a long time.Report
Not in a house full of Taylor Swift fans it isn’t 🙂 but I take your point.Report
You should check out Iron Horse. They do bluegrass covers of Metallica. It goes together shockingly well.Report
Hayseed Dixie redid a bunch of AC/DC songs as bluegrass and they work. Bluegrass being the traditional music of us mountain people I find an appreciation of it used this way.Report
It’s pretty easy to disguise a downbeat pop song with an upbeat melody. Maxwell’s Silver Hammer is about a serial killer, FFS. If you want real sadness, listen to everything in a minor key. You’ll instantly weep.
As far as happy songs go, this one is the happiest ever written: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQUlA8Hcv4sReport
They Might Be Giants made a career out of joyfully singing things like “Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful”Report
Two words and an exclamation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zNoxjUUyecReport
I like…the lyric is sort of Arlo Guthrie channeling Howard Dean (Minimum Waaaggggee, YAAAWWWW). I mean, its fine for what it is, but it lacks the intricate drumming of My Pal Foot Foot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR9d4ESlpHYReport
That was totally uncalled for, sir!Report
in fairness it was better during the reunion…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3uNm6hltpQReport
Lets talk about “I Wish It Would Rain” as made famous by The Temptations.
Sunshine, blue skies, please go away
A girl has found another and gone away
With her went my future, my life is filled with gloom
So day after day I stay locked up in my room
I know to you, it might sound strange
But I wish it would rain, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
‘Cause so badly I wanna go outside (such a lovely day)
But everyone knows that a man ain’t supposed to cry
Listen, I gotta cry ’cause crying eases the pain, oh yeah
People this hurt I feel inside
Words could never explain,
I just wish it would rain, oh let it rain, rain, rain, rain, ooo baby
Let it rain, oh yeah, let it rain
Day in day out my tear-stained face
Pressed against the window pane
My eyes search the skies desperately for rain
‘Cause rain drops will hide my tear drops
And no one will ever know that I’m crying
Crying when I go outside
To the world outside my tears
I refuse to explain, ooo I wish it would rain, ooh, baby
Let it rain, let it rain
I need rain to disguise the tears in my eyes
Oh, let it rain
Oh yeah, yeah, listen
I’m a man and I got my pride
‘Til it rains I’m gonna stay inside, let it rain
Rodger Penzabene wrote a large part of it, and committed suicide not long after it’s release. That’s a sad song.Report
It’s like Joy Division never happened.Report
They’d jump ahead to the upbeat grunge songs such as when Eddie Vedder was triumphantly announcing that he was still alive or Kurt Cobain talking about how he’s found a place under the lights where it’s “less dangerous”.Report
Its almost as if whoever wrote this never really listened to the music, never took classes on music appreciation. I mean seriously, what are they doing working for BillBoard? What is BB doing hiring them?Report
Billboard hired him (if he’s not an unpaid intern) to produce #content. And it worked, because we’re clicking on it and talking about it.
But yeah, this is a pretty solid example of how when the internet says “according to science,” it’s the exact opposite of science that’s happening.Report
Music that was happy and upbeat:
Disco. Good, solid 4-on-the-floor time. You can dance to it. You’re *EXPECTED* to dance to it. The Bee Gees. The Village People. Abba. Good God, Abba.
The music *HAD* to be happy. We were all going to die! And music videos as we knew them didn’t exist yet!
Then the 80’s happened, disco died, and Christopher Cross did that damn “moon and New York City” song and we slipped into a funk that we didn’t fall out of until Destiny’s Child started singing about Independent Women and/or their butts and Pink got the party started and Jay-Z told us something about an “Izzo”.
I suppose we had a small blip in the 80’s due to David Lee Roth being in a good mood all the dang time. Maybe.Report
That is the best/worst accounting of recent music history I’ve read in a long time. It’s glorious in its unabashed bastardization of popular music. Well done.Report
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHO_mFsR9EgReport
Point of fact; the Van Halen album DLR most influenced was Fair Warning, containing gems such as this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ergk9eF7398Report
Yes, but when left to his own devices?
He creates stuff like this. And, of course, this.
Now *THAT* is a guy in a good mood.Report
True that.
To kinda get off the subject, but I was thinking about bands getting back together, and they just aren’t as good? Like when VH reformed a couple of years ago with DLR. It sucked. Same people, same instruments, but a different time. They were no longer the hungry dudes coming up out of the back end of LA, playing every party and dance they could, nor were they the suddenly fat, languid cats riding the wave of a zeitgeist. Same with the Pixies or American Football. They simply are not the same people they were when they made that music that screamed across our frontal lobes.Report
Notorious BIG has an track on “Life After Death” in which he’s just talking and the focus of his little speech is how he made his money and he’s not angry anymore.Report
I’m not sure if you’ve fully accounted for the Ukelele uptick of the upper aughts.Report
Simon and Garfunkle, The Sun Is Burning, 1964
:
The Sun Is Burning
The sun is burning in the sky
Strands of clouds go slowly drifting by
In the park the lazy bees
Are joining in the flowers, among the trees
And the sun burns in the sky
Now the sun is in the West
Little kids go home to take their rest
And the couples in the park
Are holdin’ hands and waitin’ for the dark
And the sun is in the West
Now the sun is sinking low
Children playin’ know it’s time to go
High above a spot appears
A little blossom blooms and then draws near
And the sun is sinking low
Now the sun has come to Earth
Shrouded in a mushroom cloud of death
Death comes in a blinding flash
Of hellish heat and leaves a smear of ash
And the sun has come to Earth
Now the sun has disappeared
All is darkness, anger, pain and fear
Twisted, sightles wrecks of men
Go groping on their knees and cry in pain
And the sun has disappeared
The authors of the piece fell for one of the greatest blunders of all time, the first of which is never get involved in a land war in Asia, followed by this, never go in against folkies, when depression is on the line!Report
It took all of music to fill the gap left by Townes Van Zandt:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk-zKjfO2E8Report