{"id":421746,"date":"2010-03-12T14:47:01","date_gmt":"2010-03-12T19:47:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/business\/archive\/2010\/03\/recessions-are-good-for-pop-music-lyrics\/37437\/?rss=37437"},"modified":"2010-03-12T14:47:01","modified_gmt":"2010-03-12T19:47:01","slug":"recessions-are-good-for-pop-music-lyrics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/421746","title":{"rendered":"Recessions are Good for Pop Music Lyrics"},"content":{"rendered":"

The recession is making us sick<\/a>, and fat<\/a>, and hungry<\/a>, and ugly<\/a>. But what is it doing to our pop music?<\/p>\n

It’s making the lyrics more thoughtful<\/a> (via Ryan Avent):<\/p>\n

The lyrical content of Billboard No. 1 songs for each year from 1955 to
\n2003 was investigated across changes in U.S. social and economic
\nconditions. Consistent with the environmental security hypothesis,
\npopular song lyrics were predicted to have more meaningful themes and
\ncontent when social and economic conditions were threatening. Trends
\nfor more meaningful, comforting, and romantic lyric ratings were
\nobserved in more threatening social and economic times. Using
\nLinguistic Inquiry and Word Count software, songs with more words per
\nsentence, a focus on the future, and greater mention of social
\nprocesses and intergroup themes were popular during threatening social
\nand economic conditions.<\/b> Limitations and possible implications are
\ndiscussed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That sounds about right to me. “MMMBop”<\/a> and “Summer Girls”<\/a> could only have been written in the middle of one of the greatest economic expansions in American history.


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The recession is making us sick, and fat, and hungry, and ugly. But what is it doing to our pop music? It’s making the lyrics more thoughtful (via Ryan Avent): The lyrical content of Billboard No. 1 songs for each year from 1955 to 2003 was investigated across changes in U.S. social and economic conditions. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-421746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=421746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421746\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}