No, you’re not just getting old — song lyrics really are getting worse, according to new research
The Weeknd up for a Nobel Prize for literature.A new study showing a steep decline in songwriting skills over the last 40 years used folk crooner Bob Dylan’s award from the sainted Swedish institution of an example of how much music has changed. To draw their conclusions, a team of researchers from Europe pored over the words to roughly 12,000 songs in English across a variety of genres from rap to rock to R&B, written between 1980 and 2020, The Guardian reported.Their findings were exactly as anyone over the age of 40 might have suspected — lyrics have become simpler, more repetitive, angrier and more self-obsessed.“What we have also been witnessing in the last 40 years is a drastic change in the music landscape — from how music is sold to how music is produced,” said senior study author Eva Zangerle, recommendations systems expert at the University of Innsbruck.The study declined to name and shame any newer artists, but instead spoke of how lyrics can be a “mirror of society,” reflecting a culture’s shifting values and preoccupations.The study, published in Scientific Reports, concentrated on emotions expressed, repetitiveness and word choice, particularly to see how often difficult or unusual words were used.