Music is changing, and not in the way it used to. A new study suggests that lyrics are becoming simpler and more self-centered, which reflects societal changes.
Music is an essential part of our daily lives . It impacts our daily routines, social connections, andcultural identity emotions. Lyrics play a crucial role in our music experience, often reflecting and shaping societal norms and values. Our society is increasingly viewing lyrics as a form of literary work, as evidenced by Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize in literature. Therefore, if literature reflects our society, so do lyrics. Music lyrics have changed significantly over the past fifty years, as indicated by a recent study. There has been a noticeable decrease in lexical and structural complexity, leading to simpler and more repetitive lyrics. This trend is evident across all music genres, with pop songs showing the most significant impact. Eva Zangerle, senior study author from the University of Innsbruck in Austria, points out that it's not just one artist, but the entire music environment.The emotional content of lyrics has also transformed. The study confirms a shift towards more negative emotions and increasingly personal lyrics. This change reflects a broader societal trend towards emotional expression and vulnerability. In other words, lyrics have become more self-focused. Studying music The research team collected and analyzed over 353,000 English song lyrics from 1970 to 2020, focusing on five popular genres: rap, country, pop, R&B, and rock. They examined the lexical structure, rhyme, emotion, structure, and complexity of the lyrics, as well as the popularity of each song based on listens and lyric reads.
Furthermore, they assessed various indicators of lyrics complexity, such as the “repeated line ratio” (the frequency of line repetition) and the “chorus to sections” (the repetition of the chorus). These measures have steadily increased, indicating a higher prevalence of repeated lyrics and choruses in songs.
New songs are more inclined to repeat lyrics and feature a greater number of choruses. Image credits: Parada-Cabaleiro et al / Nature
The study also explored the connection between songs' popularity (measured through listening and lyric view counts) and their lyrical content. The analysis revealed significant disparities in lyric view counts across genres and over time, suggesting that rock and rap listeners prioritize lyrics more than pop music listeners.
The study also shows some trends in how song lyrics have changed and what people prefer. For example, fans of rock music tend to like older lyrics, while country music fans are more interested in newer lyrics. This shows that people who like different genres have different listening habits.
The situation is changing
The results support previous findings that show a simplification and a decrease in positive, joyful lyrics. But it's not entirely fair to dismiss all of this as simplification by musicians.
If you look at the entire history of music over the last 50 years, we went from vinyl to cassettes to CDs. Then we saw a surprising return of vinyl, and finally, the current trend of algorithm-driven streaming. We listen to a lot more music than before, and we listen to it in a very different way. This change in how music is distributed and consumed has important effects on songwriting, production, and listener engagement, impacting not only the music business but also its creative aspects.
Also, the data only includes English lyrics in Western popular music. The information is focused on the US, so it doesn't cover global music trends. This means it doesn't include non-English music and lyrics, which could give us more insights into global lyrical trends and cultural differences in songwriting. The way the study classifies genres and subgenres might also have problems, which could affect the analysis of genre-specific trends.
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