Is Music Making Us Miserable? The Silent Shift That’s Changing Society

Music just isn’t what it used to be.

You’ve probably heard this a million times…or felt it deep down. It’s a gut feeling, a sense of loss like something vital slipped away while we were too busy scrolling through our feeds. You can’t pinpoint it, but you know it’s different — and not in a good way.

Partly, this shift is driven by algorithm-generated beats and auto-tuned vocals that are polished to perfection but stripped of their humanity. Songs feel emotionally hollow.

But there’s another, more tangible shift: lyrics have changed painting our world in darker shades. The music that once lifted us is now dragging us down, and it lies in the words we’re soaking in every day. Remember, language creates reality.

The decline of cheerful tunes

Two researchers from the Lawrence Technological University set out to unravel how the lyrics in popular music have evolved from the 1950s to 2016. Have our favorite songs become more cheerful or depressing over the decades?

Spoiler: It’s not looking good.

The scientists grabbed the lyrics of over 6,000 Billboard Hot 100 songs, ran them through a sentiment analysis tool, and measured the emotional tone of each song — joy, anger, sadness, and more.

They analyzed words like:

• Anger: “hate,” “rage,” “fight,” “anger,” “mad,” “scream,” “violence,” “revenge.”

• Disgust: “disgust,” “filthy,” “gross,” “nasty,” “repulsive,” “horrible,” “vomit.”

• Fear: “fear,” “scared,” “afraid,” “terror,” “panic,” “dread,” “threat,” “nightmare.”

• Joy: “happy,” “joy,” “love,” “cheer,” “smile,” “bliss,” “delight,” “wonderful.”

• Confidence: “strong,” “power,” “win,” “conquer,” “leader,” “brave,” “triumph,” “bold.”

Scientists would scan the lyrics of songs to identify and count words associated with different emotions. This sentiment analysis helped them understand the overall emotional tone of the music from different decades and track the changes over time.

What did they find?

The analysis showed a clear trend: popular music lyrics have gotten more negative over time.

• Anger, disgust, and fear have spiked in songs over the years, with anger alone increasing significantly from the late 1980s onwards.

• Joy and confidence have decreased quite a bit. Joy has steadily declined, meaning songs are less happy now than before.

So if your playlist has been feeling a little more angry, it’s not just you. Music really has gotten moodier.

It’s not just about music

Music is a reflection of where we are as a society.

We can take the state of music today as a cultural red flag. If the songs we hum are a mirror to our collective psyche, then what we’re seeing isn’t pretty.

Just like I’ve talked about how consumer sentiment can predict economic recessions in this article, tracking changes in our cultural landscape could be the early alarm system we need to steer clear of disaster.

If we consider that music is a window into our future, then it’s telling us we need to change course, and fast.

What does this mean for society?

Let’s talk about kids first.

They soak up information from the environment like little sponges, and this also includes music. Music is more than just catchy hooks and beats. Lyrics are also a huge component. Sadly, there’s been a rise in words linked to negative emotions (anger, fear, disgust), which affects kids as well.

This noticeable shift in the emotional tone of popular music over the decades changes the emotional makeup of children. If they’re constantly bombarded with lyrics that radiate negativity, this will shape their worldview tremendously.

They’re growing up in an environment where anger and fear feel like the norm rather than the exception.

The message to them is that the world is a hostile place, where the default emotion is something closer to rage than joy. You don’t think this affects their mental health? We see more anxiety, depression, and outbursts of anger than ever before.

What we feed our minds plays a huge role!

Music pieces also spill into society at large. They reflect our collective psyche. If the predominant message is one of frustration and fear, that’s going to fuel a cycle where people are more anxious, less trusting, and frankly, more miserable.

It impacts how we interact with each other to how we process the world around us.

Are your favorite songs sabotaging your happiness?

Music, as a powerful emotional driver, can either lift us up or pull us down, depending on what the media chooses to amplify.

We are the architects of our emotional environment and the ones who live within it. It’s what we choose to listen to that will feed our minds and mold the way we see and react to the world.

So be aware of your choices!

Repeating these songs creates a powerful feedback loop, influencing us without even realizing it. It’s feeding us on and on without us consciously discerning what’s true and what’s not.

It just goes in, no questions asked.

It’s time to think about the lyrics we’re letting into our heads because that’s shaping how we see the world and how we feel about living in it.