Popular Music Lyrics Move Away From Sadness and Heartache; Now It’s Anger and Anxiety, Study Finds

Growing older is supposed to bring a rosier outlook. Psychology research has long shown that people tend to grow more emotionally stable with age, gravitating toward positive experiences. But a new study of 38,467 songs suggests musicians only follow half of that pattern.Researchers at Michigan State University analyzed lyrics from 230 acts spanning Elvis Presley to Taylor Swift, pulling from six all-time greatest lists, including rankings by “Rolling Stone,” “Billboard,” and “Business Insider.” Every studio album was included, totaling 3,531 records released between 1947 and 2024. The results were published in “Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts.”Using a word-counting program, the team tracked emotional language across each artist’s career. Sadness declined over time, consistent with existing research showing older adults pay less attention to negative experiences. But joy didn’t rise to fill the gap; instead, words reflecting positive and negative emotions dropped at similar rates, while anxiety-related language crept upward.Social references told a similar story. Mentions of family and friends declined with age, despite research suggesting adults typically invest more in close relationships over time. The authors speculated that shrinking social circles — or the demands of fame and touring — might explain the shift.Era mattered more than career stage. Artists who debuted more recently wrote with less sadness but more anger than those who broke through decades earlier. Early stars like Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, and Janis Joplin ranked among the saddest lyricists in the dataset.“Music is not just entertainment. People use songs to regulate their emotions, understand themselves, develop their identities, and feel connected to other people,” said co-author William Chopik in a statement. “So, when we see large-scale declines in emotional and social language, it raises interesting questions about whether the way we express feelings and relationships has changed more broadly.”The lead author, Logan Gibson, noted the findings ran counter to expectations. “People often become more emotionally regulated and invest more in meaningful relationships as they age, so we might expect that lyrics become more positive or relational across an artist’s career,” Mr. Gibson said. “Instead, positive emotions and social references declined.”The study has notable limits. Its word-counting method can’t detect sarcasm or irony, meaning songs like “Born in the USA” could be misread as patriotic rather than critical. Lyrics also aren’t necessarily autobiographical, and many artists don’t write their own material. The sample skews toward American, English-language, and male performers, limiting how broadly the findings apply.The research echoes an earlier study in “Scientific Reports,” which used AI to analyze moral themes across nearly 400,000 songs from 1960 to 2023. That analysis found rising references to harm, cheating, and degradation alongside declining expressions of care and loyalty — with cheating-related language up 71 percent in Billboard hits since 1973. Genre and gender both shaped the patterns, though researchers cautioned the results remain correlational rather than conclusive.

Popular Music Lyrics Move Away From Sadness and Heartache; Now It’s Anger and Anxiety, Study Finds

Popular Music Lyrics Move Away From Sadness and Heartache; Now It’s Anger and Anxiety, Study Finds

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