A Discussion regarding the change in song lyrics

[Pigfarmer Jr]

Here's an article that touches on some trends in recent songwriting.
https://www.statsignificant.com/p/how-h ... newsletter

[jb]

I think that article kind of skips over the socioeconomic driver of "negativity" in lyrics, even though it trots out the old faithful "Cop Killer" and "Today Was a Good Day" examples.

It's a lot more important to think about who was making the music and who the audience was, vs whether or not it's negative. As far as repetitive lyrics, the chart doesn't have enough granularity for my taste-- it looks like a trough, a hill, a trough, a hill. I don't think the trend can be observed as going upwards in any other length than like, a year at a time, maybe two.

I think it would probably be more effective to overlay genres on the chart. Like, was Grunge more repetitive than New Wave? As Pop music stratified into Pop and Rock and Hard Rock and Dance etc etc is the audience for those genres a monoculture?

Who listens to just one genre though? Some people, I'm sure, but most people I know like 3 or 4 different styles, and many like even more. I'm not so much into minigenres of EDM (I don't mind a dubstep song now and then but hours of it, no thanks, and dubstep is out I guess anyway).

Interesting to think about, and I love a good data-based analysis of lyrics over time, but to me, I think this one was too shallow and looked at the wrong things.

[fluffy]

Yeah sentiment analysis in lyrics is super difficult, especially in any sort of automated way that would actually capture what’s going on.

Like if you look at a lot of older pop songs, things seem super bubbly and positive but there’s definitely a more cynical undercurrent in a lot of them. Is “Pleasant Valley Sunday” a happy song? What about “Norwegian Wood?”

And then there’s so many songs today which are about how awful things can be but people are fighting through them despite the problems. That feels like an empowering, optimistic message, wrapped up in things that sound dismal.

[Pigfarmer Jr]

My immediate reaction was that it was too general in both assumptions and conclusions as well as the data that it revealed. Basically everything you (jb) said but more as a gut reaction rather than a thought out response.