New research published in Psychology of Popular Media suggests that popular song lyrics can provide insight into a country’s socioeconomic state. An analysis of popular song lyrics in the US and Germany found that national unemployment rate predicted anger in music lyrics in both countries.
Psychology research has shown that people prefer to listen to song lyrics that match their current mood and preoccupations. It is within reason, then, that popular songs might reflect the overall feelings and attitudes of a country. A recent study by Lin Qiu and associates considers how music lyrics might reflect the socioeconomic climate — and more specifically, the unemployment rate.
“This study aimed to examine how sentiments in top songs coincide with changes in national unemployment rate. In particular, we focused on three common negative emotions (i.e., anxiety, sadness, and anger) expressed in lyrics,” the researchers say.
Researchers used a text analysis software program called the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) to analyze the lyrics of the top 10 most popular songs in the US and Germany between 1980 and 2017. After eliminating instrumental songs without lyrics, researchers were left with a US sample of 370 song lyrics and 149,660 words, and a German sample of 366 lyrics and 120,076 words.
Using the LIWC software, researchers measured the frequency of emotion words that fell into one of the three categories of anger, sadness, or anxiety. Researchers then analyzed how these word frequencies coincided with changes in the unemployment rate in each country. To control for the effects of other socioeconomic factors, they also considered GDP per capita, housing prices, inflation, and population density.
Results from the American sample showed that the unemployment rate did not predict the magnitude of sadness, anxiety, or anger in song lyrics. However, after controlling for the other socioeconomic factors of inflation, GDP per capita, housing prices, and population density, unemployment rate emerged as a significant predictor of anger in lyrics.
In the German sample, the unemployment rate similarly did not predict sadness or anxiety in song lyrics. However, in the full model, and also after controlling for other socioeconomic indicators, the unemployment rate did predict anger in lyrics.
The researchers offer two possible explanations for why popular song lyrics might reflect unemployment. The first theory attributes the effect to consumer behavior. Socioeconomic conditions (e.g. high unemployment) may influence the mood of consumers. Consumers then favor songs that correspond to these feelings, driving this music to the top of the charts. Alternatively, socioeconomic conditions might impact the mood of music composers, who then carry these feelings in their musical expression, producing songs that reflect this environment.
The authors underline the finding that anger was the only emotion that predicted the unemployment rate, and not sadness nor anxiety. This appears to indicate that the public’s primary response to unemployment is anger. “This is consistent with preliminary research illustrating that unemployment can lead to various affective responses, but the central emotional response is anger when the adversity is attributed to external causes,” the authors reflect.
Among limitations, the study exclusively analyzed the lyrical content of songs and did not account for other musical features. The authors suggest that future research should “control for melodic attributes … to tease out the unique effects of lyrics.”
The study, “Unemployment Rate Predicts Anger in Popular Music Lyrics: Evidence From Top 10 Songs in the United States and Germany From 1980 to 2017”, was authored by Lin Qiu, Sarah Hian May Chan, Kenichi Ito, and Joyce Yan Ting Sam.
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