Almost all people like to listen to music. Pop music has been particularly popular for many decades. These usually include the songs of those musicians who are played a lot on the radio. Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, Harry Styles… all these artists make pop music. But if you compare today’s pop music with that of 20, 30 or 40 years ago, you’ll notice that musical styles are changing.
This is nothing new. Music is subject to many influences. Like fashion, music also follows certain trends. Researchers now wanted to find out how today’s pop music differs from that of the past. To do this, they examined 12,000 different English-language pop songs that were published between 1980 and 2020.
Simple language, lots of feelings
The result: English pop songs released recently have simpler language. This means that less complicated words are used in the texts.
The researchers also say that the texts have become more “emotional”. So musicians sing more about feelings. They also talk about their own lives more often in their songs than artists have done in the past. So they report what they experienced. And what they felt about it.
That’s why music changes
But why has something changed here? The experts believe that music is played much more in the background these days. You probably know this: the radio is on in the supermarket and songs by famous artists are playing in the pub. The researchers believe that in such situations you “only listen with one ear.” After all, you still get other things done. That’s why the texts have to be simpler so that people can understand them even if they only listen a little.
But researchers have found another reason for the change in music. This reason relates to the way we listen to music. 40 or 30 years ago there were no websites like Spotify (pronounced spotifei) or YouTube (pronounced ju tjub) where you could listen to whatever you wanted to hear. People bought individual albums by a musician and played them at home. So you didn’t have that much choice and you heard what you bought.
Too much choice?
Today the choice is seemingly endless. This also means that we have to like a song in the first few seconds. Because otherwise we’ll just move on – after all, there’s a lot else to hear. The researchers believe that this is also why the songs are designed to be simpler and more soulful – so that they captivate us as quickly as possible and we don’t just switch on.
This is an article from the current issue of KinderNachrichten – the OÖNachrichten weekly newspaper for 6-12 year olds. Further information: www.kinder or try it for free: www.kinder/testen