Popular songs are losing feeling and getting more anxious, Michigan State University researchers find in one of the largest studies of its kind analyzing over 38,000 lyrics

Lots of emotional wreckage works in our favor when we slide a song into our playlist. Often, a song gets to us through the most beautiful or relatable bunch of melodies or lyrics we have ever heard, but new research suggests that the way artists express those emotions and relationships in their songs has gradually reduced or simply less focused.

Researchers from Michigan State University (MSU) find that popular music, as it grew over time, started to adapt more anxiety-related language, than traditional emotion and relationship themes, and it's true for both across generations of artists and within artists’ careers.

The 2026 study, titled “Changes in social and emotional content in song lyrics across popular artists’ discographies,” was published in Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts, and as per the researcher, it is the largest of its kind to analyze song lyrics.


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The team of psychology researchers, with the help of 30 assistants, analyzed 38,467 songs from 230 artists that included popular music from 1947 to 2024.

“A lot of previous work has asked whether music changes across decades, but much less has examined whether the same artists change across the course of their careers,” said Jan Brascamp, co-author of the study and an expert in Cognitive Neuroscience, in a statement.

“By looking at both at once, we can begin separating changes that happen within artists from broader shifts in culture and the music industry,” he added.

“Lyrics became less emotional and less socially focused over time,” MSU explains its findings. And it happens within artists’ careers, “both positive and negative words declined, as did references to family and friends,” the study notes.

Specific shifts indicate, as per the researchers, that “anxiety-related language increased while sadness declined in lyrics.”

When they compared artists from different eras, the pattern remained the same. Among the 230 singers studied, they used the largest number of songs from Willie Nelson in the sample, while Miles Davis had the fewest songs with lyrics.

Early rock artists, like Marvin Gaye and The Supremes, used more positive emotional language and made more references to social relationships. Artists from countercultural genres, such as Nine Inch Nails and the Sex Pistols, tended to score lower in these categories.

The researchers were taken aback to find that song lyrics did not follow the patterns of psychological aging.

“People often become more emotionally regulated and invest more in meaningful relationships as they age, so we might expect that lyrics become more positive or relational across an artists’ career,” said Logan Gibson, lead-author and MSU research associate. “Instead, positive emotions and social references declined. That suggests song lyrics may be strongly shaped by artistic, cultural or industry-level forces.”

The researchers are hopeful that from this study we can know how people express emotion and how relationships change over time, with large collections of everyday cultural products from songs, books, social media, and films.

“Music is not just entertainment. People use songs to regulate their emotions, understand themselves, develop their identities and feel connected to other people. That makes lyrics an interesting record of what artists - and potentially the audiences and cultures around them - are choosing to talk about,” said William Chopik, co-author and former associate professor in the Department of Psychology.