Over the past few years, the same comment has been sneaking itself into harmless break room bantering. It has nothing to do with the MBTA, Tom Brady’s eventual retirement, or unfortunate weather events (the Holy Trinity of Boston small talk). Like most casual statements I hear waiting to use the coffee machine, the more I heard it, the more it sounded true:
These songs on the radio are so depressing.
While usually meant as a casual observation and an opportunity recount the records we partied to in college, the remark is very alarming for someone who works at a Pop CHR (Contemporary Hit Radio) station. Music-format radio generally aims to lift listeners up, make them feel good as hell, and keep them tuned in for more positive energy – a goal that isn’t particularly easy when songs are sad, soft, and slow. Sure, some people like myself prefer to start and end their workdays quietly with as few loud noises as possible, but when mass appeal is at stake, more energy means more listeners and bigger ratings.
Not every song on the radio is a bummer; there have been some monstrous bangers that have recently topped the Billboard Hot 100: “Bodak Yellow” by Cardi B, “Closer” from The Chainsmokers, and “Truth Hurts” by Lizzo. However, perception is reality, and the perception is that pop songs are sadder than usual, and the reality is that pop radio ratings have dropped as a result. Nielsen’s 2019 Audio Today report found Pop CHR to be secondary to Country for Women 18-49 and Men 18-49.
Music radio consumers are acting in one of two ways. They are either 1) replacing sad CHR stations with their own personalized playlists or 2) relying more heavily on the Country format, which has been reliably producing energetic and upbeat songs. With radio reaching 97% of these two populations monthly, the first theory doesn’t hold much water. But listeners fleeing a format over a perceived saturation of sadness? That checks out. When you tune in to a country station, you always hear exactly what you came for: pseudo-rock bro songs about beers and trucks and girls. But Pop CHR is subject to the ebb and flow of mainstream taste; and in order to attract as many listeners as possible, it demands a playlist with a lot of variety. This obviously becomes a problem when we are enjoying “Uptown Funk” on the radio, only to get blindsided by Selena Gomez’s “Lose You to Love Me” – it’s a buzzkill. We want to keep the party going.
But what if my coworkers in break room are right? Instead of a few sad songs spoiling the bunch, what if most pop songs are depressing and CHR has been riding a downward bummer slide since 2015? Thanks to Spotify and Excel, I found out.
Data and Definitions
Spotify’s Web API allows developers to pull metadata from every song on the platform, with basic data points like Tempo, Loudness, and Key. As I explored the API more deeply, I discovered Spotify has also been tagging songs with scores for Happiness, Energy, and Danceability.
Valence (Happiness): A measure describing the musical positiveness conveyed by a track. Tracks with high valence sound more positive (e.g. happy, cheerful, euphoric), while tracks with low valence sound more negative (e.g. sad, depressed, angry).
Energy: A measure that represents intensity and activity. Typically, energetic tracks feel fast, loud, and noisy. For example, death metal has high energy, while a Bach prelude scores low on the scale. Perceptual features contributing to this attribute include dynamic range, perceived loudness, timbre, onset rate, and general entropy.
Danceability: Describes how suitable a track is for dancing based on a combination of musical elements including tempo, rhythm stability, beat strength, and overall regularity. A value* of 0.0 is least danceable and 1.0 is most danceable.
*all values converted to 0 to 100 scale for simplicity
Instead of listening to songs and giving them my own biased scores based on personal taste and experience, I decided to rely on Spotify’s data. It’s not a perfect system, but I’m confident in their overall accuracy.
Song Selection and Method
I’m choosing to focus on the Billboard Hot 100 charts and every #1 song since 2000. Songs that top the charts tend to be unavoidable commercial hits – they are played in heavy rotation on hundreds of radio stations, and get favorable placement in advertisements and retail spaces. Songs that go #1 help define our cultural moments and become inextricably connected to them. Think “Despacito” in 2017, “Old Town Road” in Summer 2019, and “I Gotta Feeling” in 2009 (a song that played at my high school prom multiple times alongside “Sandstorm”).
Songs further down the Billboard Hot 100 tend to have shorter shelf life and lack the same mainstream cultural impact. When Billie Eilish released When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, streaming enthusiasm placed 11 singles on the Hot 100. I dig Billie Eilish and like the album, but I can’t tell you a thing about “8” or “Listen Before I Go.” But “Bad Guy?” Everyone knows it.
I weighted each of these songs based on the number of weeks they spent at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 – for example, “Old Town Road” has 19x more mainstream cultural significance in 2019 than Travis Scott’s “Highest in Room,” which blipped into the #1 spot for a single week in October.
The graphs to follow will show a blue line connecting each XY data point, side-by-side with a black dotted trend line. The green area measures the 20-year average plus and minus one standard deviation. The area of standard deviation is the expected range for the given variable.
Tempo – Comes in Waves
When looking at Tempo, there’s a convincing sine-wave shape over the past twenty years. Number one hits generally fell between 90 and 107 BPM, but rose steadily into the early 2010s with fast party tracks like Kesha’s “Tik Tok” and LMFAO “Party Rock Anthem.” Around 2012, the tempo started dropping as we entered mainstream EDM, which uses more moderate tempos. It’s wasn’t until 2017 when trap influences struck gold with Drake and Post Malone that we see tempo drop out of the expected range.
Conclusion: We are in a slow tempo cycle, but this trough is deeper than 2003.
Billboard’s Slowest #1 Hit of the ‘10s: The Hills - The Weeknd (2015)
Billboard’s Fastest #1 Hit of the ‘10s: Can’t Hold Us – Macklemore (2013)
* “All I Want for Christmas is You” Mariah Carey scored highest, but released in 1994
Danceability – Steady as She Goes
Similar to tempo, danceability appears to come in waves, but within a much narrower score range between 68 and 75. Danceability rewards repetitious and predictable beats, which explains the rise from 2013-2019, correlating with the popularity of EDM and Trap.
Conclusion: Not much to see here. People like dancing, and pop hits will always have a decent level of danceability via original master or remix.
Billboard’s Least Danceable #1 Hit of the ‘10s: We Are Young – Fun. (2012)
Billboard’s Most Danceable #1 Hit of the ‘10s: Bodak Yellow – Cardi B. (2017)
Energy - Chill Out.
Now the numbers start to show some promise: with a wide expected score range of 61-74, Energy has much more variation than Tempo and Danceability. We have a standard sine wave from 2000-2010, where average Energy peaks with a ludicrous 82 score in 2010. I had just graduated high school, and the party anthems were bumping: “Tik Tok,” “Like a G6,” “Teenage Dream” all topped the charts at the start of the decade. Every party had two ingredients: loud bass and original formula Four Loko.
The good times couldn’t last forever, and as the FDA pulled Four Loko from the shelves, song energy fell in kind. The Patron Saints of Partying, Pitbull and Kesha, tried to save us in 2014 with “Timber,” but even they couldn’t stop the downward spiral.
Based on the graph above, we expected 2016 to be a low point and for Energy to rise as the end of the decade approached. But that never happened, and Energy scores plummeted out of the range of standard deviation. The culprit is likely a combination of a rise in the popularity of streaming and Soundcloud/Trap music.
Trap music, driven largely by Soundcloud, tends to be more laid back and chilled out than traditional CHR Pop and Hip-Hop. Streaming further amplified the genre’s appeal and success — when we stream music, we listen for long periods of time while working, cleaning, or studying. Club anthems aren’t appropriate or even tolerable in these situations, which drives listening toward the moody and vibey song spectrum. Once streaming became factored into Billboard’s charts, it was game over, and Trap won. Streaming pushed more and more Trap styles onto the charts, which snowballed onto radio playlists. Radio listeners hear the songs on the radio, and complete the cycle by streaming them at home.
Conclusion: Energy ebbs and flows in pop music, but the rise of streaming and incorporation of trap stylings has pushed us into uncharted enervate territory.
Billboard’s Least Energetic #1 Hit of the ‘10s: All of Me - John Legend (2014)
Billboard’s Most Energetic #1 Hit of the ‘10s: Timber - Pitbull (2014)
Happiness
Honestly, I was hoping for an “a-ha!” moment when I ran the numbers for Valence/Happiness. I didn’t get one. These scores had a wide standard deviation of 8.5 points, which makes sense. Sometimes a “Happy” by Pharrell goes #1, and sometimes Adele hits it big with “Hello” — you can’t always predict a hit. But we’ve been seeing a steady decline in the valence of Billboard #1 hits since the beginning of the millenium. 2014 was an anomaly when we were all creepily upbeat (I’m looking at you, Pharrell and Megan Trainor), but for the most part, it’s been a downhill slide that really accelerated in 2015.
Why are Americans sad? Who knows. It may have something to do with the state of our politics, global climate, lack of economic mobility, student and medical debt, and increasing social isolation, but those are just some guesses. I read that Gen Z is the least likely to report positive mental health.
Conclusion: We’re stressed out, anxious, and pissed off, and our listening patterns reflect that.
Billboard’s Saddest #1 Hit of the ‘10s: “Highest in the Room” - Travis Scott (2019)
Billboards Happiest #1 Hit of the ‘10s: “Happy” - Pharrell (2014)
It’s Complicated
As I mentioned at the top, not every song on the radio is a drag, but we are at a point in musical history where our biggest songs, on average, are the slowest, saddest, and least energetic we’ve seen in 20 years (but the most danceable!). CHR radio playlists are tight, so if a sad song goes #1, we’re going to be hearing it A LOT. Heavy rotation for a sad song can be exhausting, and it only serves to amplifies the perceived notion that “Pop music today sucks!”
The Pop CHR format is democratic and (usually) genre-agnostic. If a song is a verified hit, you’ll hear it on the radio. Country doesn’t have the same commitments. Earlier this year, Billboard removed Lil Nas X and “Old Town Road” from the Hot Country Songs chart for “not embracing enough elements of today’s country music.” That type of gatekeeping doesn’t exist in Pop CHR, which makes the format subject to the current zeitgeist, for better or (in this case) worse.
However, the unpredictability of Pop CHR this past decade was incredible. Who in 2009 ever would have guessed that Lizzo, Billie Eilish, and Lil Nas X would be among our biggest stars? They are each, in their own way, a total rejection of the factory-cookie-cutter pop star archetype. “Royals” and “Panda” were both chart toppers, and Mariah Carey’s 25 year-old Christmas song finally went #1. What a way to end the decade!
Pop is in a more democratic and interesting place than we left it in 2009. The cross pollination of genres is more active than ever, and more unexpected artists are having breakout moments. I’m excited to hear what the 2020s will sound like, but I’m hoping, for Pop CHR's sake, that it has a little more energy.