Ongoing History Daily: Music and lyrics are getting dumber
Are song lyrics getting simpler and dumber or is that just your imagination? It’s not. New research out of Germany and Austria that examined the lyrics of 335,320 song lyrics written in English between 1950 and 2020 seems to prove that.
The conclusion? “Song lyrics have become simpler and more repetitive over the last five decades.” This is based on “vocabulary richness, readability, complexity, and the number of related lines.” And there’s more.
When asked about their favourite lyrics, rock fans point to older songs. But why is this happening? Researchers can’t answer that yet. One suggestion is that rock fans spend more time with physical media like CDs and vinyl, formats that come with album artwork and lyrics.
More study needs to be done.
