Don’t you love when music, math and science come together? Err, personally, anything involving numbers and equations has the tendency to stump and anger me. But, thankfully, there are many out there who are not numerically challenged and can perform studies and draw conclusions like this: over the last 50 years, pop music has become more depressing.
In this study, published recently in the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, And The Arts, the tempo and mode of the most popular 1,010 songs between 1965-2009 (based on Billboard‘s charts) were analyzed. The results imply that the number of minor-mode songs (thought to be “sad” or “melancholy”) doubled in the last five decades. There’s also evidence pointing to a rise in slower tracks ever since the ’90s.
What do you think, ninjas?
