Ongoing History Daily: Music in bad economic times

Terry F. Pettijohn II, a professor of psychology at Coastal Carolina University watches how popular tastes shift with economic conditions. This includes studying how economic and social factors shape preferences in popular music.

Looking at #1 songs on Billboard between 1955 and 2003 (this for a paper published in the journal Psychology of Music), he discovered that in uncertain economic times, people tend to prefer songs that are long, slower, and with meaningful lyrics. It’s not a perfect correlation, but it’s close.

Meanwhile, Playboy Playmates have tended to be more mature-looking in bad times. Draw your own conclusions from that one.

Yesterday’s Ongoing History Daily was The history of Taylor Hawkins’ heart