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Emotional Cues in American Popular Music: Five Decades of the Top 40

Authors:
E. Glenn Schellenberg at University of Toronto
E. Glenn Schellenberg
Christian von Scheve at Freie Universität Berlin
Christian von Scheve
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Some musical characteristics are cues to happiness (fast tempo, major mode); others are cues to sadness (slow tempo, minor mode). Listening to music with inconsistent emotional cues leads to mixed feelings and perceptions, or simultaneous happy and sad responding. We examined whether emotional cues in American popular music have changed over time, predicting that music has become progressively more sad-sounding and emotionally ambiguous. Our sample comprised over 1,000 Top 40 recordings from 25 years spanning five decades. Over the years, popular recordings became longer in duration and the proportion of female artists increased. In line with our principal hypotheses, there was also an increase in the use of minor mode and a decrease in average tempo, confirming that popular music became more sad-sounding over time. Decreases in tempo were also more pronounced for songs in major than in minor mode, highlighting a progressive increase of mixed emotional cues in popular music.
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... Traditionally, in Western music, major modes are perceived as bright, happy, and uplifting, while minor modes are linked to more sombre, melancholy, or dramatic emotions [4][5][6]. However, since the Baroque period composers have used both major and minor modes to convey a wide range of emotions and affective states [7,8], as well as the association of musical modes with emotional content varies both historically and across cultures [9,10]. For instance, composers of the 17th and 18th centuries did not exclusively use the minor mode to express sadness; rather, it was often employed to evoke private, sensual, or fragile emotional states. ...
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