“Everything is beautiful in its own way,” sang Ray Stevens in 1970. Sammy Davis Jr promised he could “make the world taste good” in another No 1 single from a year later, while the Carpenters asked why “birds suddenly appear every time you are near”.
Fifty years later in 2020, Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande sang: “It’s coming down on me, water like misery”, while the Weeknd imagined “drowning in the night” and Post Malone noted that “this was doomed from the get-go”.
The lyrics of pop songs have become gloomier and angrier over the past 50 years, a study has found, noting that there has been an increase in “negative sentiments” and a decrease in “positive emotions” in the most popular tracks.
Researchers from
