We don’t know whether today’s pop music is better or worse than the pop of 1960, but we do know one thing: it’s much more depressing

A Queen Mary University of London study of hundreds of thousands of English-language pop songs from 1960 to 2023 finds the genre has grown noticeably darker.

Modern pop lyrics reference deception, harm, degradation, anger, and disgust more often, while virtues like care and purity appear less frequently.

The findings suggest a broad cultural shift in mainstream music and offer a way to track changing social concerns through song lyrics.