Even though times are tough, there’s something positive coming out of the music industry: faster, happier-sounding songs. Music is good for the soul, we always say. Get the scoop from BBC News.
Hits by Lady Gaga, Dua Lipa, Harry Styles and Doja Cat are bucking the trend for slower, melancholy songs.
“This is my dancefloor, I fought for,” Lady Gaga sings euphorically on Free Woman, a track from her new album, Chromatica. She’s not alone. The outbreak of euphoria is as sudden as it is unexpected.
In 2017, a Californian mathematician called Natalia Komarova was so shocked by the negativity of the songs her daughter listened to, she decided to investigate.
Using the research database AcousticBrainz – which allows you to examine musical properties like tempo, key and mood – she and her colleagues at the University of California Irvine examined half a million songs released in the UK between 1985 and 2015.
They found a significant downturn in the positivity of pop songs.
