For half a century, stress and negativity have risen in society and have been reflected in the lyrics topping America’s charts.
A study published in Scientific Reports captured that shift directly. Analyzing more than 20,000 songs from the Billboard Hot 100 data between 1973 and 2023, researchers used natural language processing to track how lyrics evolved. They found a steady rise in stress-related language and negative sentiment and a decline in lyrical complexity.
“Music mirrors society’s emotional climate,” the study’s corresponding author, Dr. Maurício Martins, told The Epoch Times. “The steady rise in stress-related language we found across five decades parallels real-world increases in stress and mental health difficulties.”
How Music Changed
The researchers measured stress and negativity in lyrics by counting how often certain types of words appear. To do this, they created a list of 270 “stress-related” words, chosen by trained reviewers as signals of situations that feel overwhelming or hard to cope with.
These words include ones tied to pressure or threat (attack, crisis, panic), emotional strain (anxious, frustrated, burnout), physical symptoms of stress (insomnia, fatigue, pain), and more extreme or negative language (disaster, failure, ruined).
By tracking how frequently these words appeared in a song, the researchers could estimate how “stressful” its lyrics are.
“Over the last 50 years, stress-related and negative language in lyrics clearly increased,” Martins said.
However, music doesn’t just reflect how people feel—it also shapes how they cope.
“People consciously use music to regulate their emotions—to calm down, to get excited, or even to feel comforted during heartbreak,” Martins said.
James Anthony, a recording artist and music producer, told The Epoch Times that he used to write songs primarily as therapy, an escape, and a channel for releasing his emotions. For instance, in his song “Pressure,” he wrote, “This lonely road I’m choosing, these battles that I’m losing”—expressing the pressure and weight he carried early in his life.
From a listener’s perspective, Anthony shared that when listening to songs that mirror his own feelings, he feels “seen” and “heard.”
Research supports his sentiments. According to a 2011 study published in Empirical Musicology Review and a 2015 study published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, listening to sad songs can sometimes help people reflect on past events, thereby conferring psychological benefits such as mood regulation and emotional comfort. Other times, people can simply enjoy the aesthetics of sad songs and disengage from their current distress.
However, listening to sad music can sometimes backfire—especially for people prone to rumination, a tendency to get stuck in repetitive cycles of negative thinking, which is strongly linked to depression.
Although it is unclear whether rising mental health concerns have shaped music trends or the growing popularity of negative music contributes to those patterns, experts suggest they may be somewhat related.
People who are experiencing depression and anxiety are more likely to get attracted to music that expresses what they’re feeling, Sandra Garrido, an award-winning senior research fellow in the School of Psychology at the University of Sydney, told The Epoch Times.
At the same time, music is deeply personal.
Alan Harvey, a neuroscientist, musician, and emeritus professor at the University of Western Australia, told The Epoch Times that a broad body of research highlights the disconnect between the emotions expressed by musicians and what listeners interpret. One may listen to a piece intended to be joyful but instead find it sad, energizing, or boring.
At the same time, “emotional memories connected to music are deeply embedded in the brain,” Garrido said.
“Sometimes traumatic memories can be activated quite directly by music that a person has a negative association with,” she said. “You just can’t predict what messages or memories are connected with particular songs for each person.”
Alongside the rise in negative lyrics on the Billboard Hot 100 over the past five decades, lyrics have become simpler.
Garrido suggested that this trend may reflect how listeners cope with an increasingly overwhelming environment.
“In a very noisy, chaotic world, even someone who normally enjoys complexity may prefer something simpler,” she said. “We have so much information overload now that our nervous systems are already overwhelmed.”
Drawing from her own experience, she said her tolerance for complex lyrics has declined, and she doesn’t prefer lyrics anymore.
A Twist During Crisis
People turn to darker music for many reasons, and it might seem intuitive that societal crises could push us further down that path.
However, although researchers in the Scientific Reports study expected listeners to gravitate toward songs that reflect heightened stress and anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic, the charts told a different story.
After the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, songs with more positive content and complex lyrics rose on the Billboard Hot 100.
“People use music as a tool of emotional self-regulation or escapism, not merely as a mirror of how they already feel,” Martins said. “At the collective level, popular music appears to support emotional coping during major societal stress.”
During COVID-19, with no clear end in sight and a constant stream of negative news, many people sought a more positive outlook. Anthony suggested that music may have helped fill that need, offering a contrast to the usual gloom.
Moreover, the trend wasn’t just observed during COVID-19. Martins noted that a similar study was published last year using Japanese song lyrics.
“Despite using different methods, their findings converged with ours: Major disasters led to more positive lyrical trends, suggesting that music may function as a collective coping mechanism, reflecting a sense of social unity in the face of adversity,” he said.
Harvey said: “It makes people realize they’re not alone. It allows you to share experiences in a unique way.”
For those who didn’t lose their loved ones to the illness, one of the greatest losses during COVID-19 was social connection. Many people were especially conscious about finding things that would not only help them feel better, but also help them connect with others, Garrido said.
Both Harvey and Garrido recalled instances in which people sang together from balconies during lockdown, in places such as Spain and Italy. Garrido also shared her experience participating in a virtual choir.
“It was so touching to see my colleagues sharing their honest emotions through the song,” she said. “Seeing us all together in that video was a special way to feel connected when we couldn’t meet in person.”
A Responsibility
Music is more than a channel for expression—it also comes with responsibility.
Listeners may benefit from being mindful of the music they listen to. How one chooses and even engages with music can make a world of difference.
Artists may consider the messages they deliver.
“I feel like there’s a real responsibility for songwriters and artists to make sure that their message is one that is going to improve people’s mental health, even when their topic is difficult,” Garrido said.
“I try to write more positive stuff now,” Anthony said. “With so much going on in the world, and so much negativity being spread, I’d like my music to be an emotional relief.”