Before detailing how lyrics have become more basic, the study pointed out that US singer-songwriting legend Bob Dylan – who rose to fame in the 1960s – has won a Nobel prize in literature
Interesting read. Never thought about how the emotions of songs have changed. I wish they discussed more on how the different ways people listen to music affects the complexity of the song lyrics.
They briefly mention how most people listen to music as background noise and that the first 10-15 seconds are crucial to whether people listen to the song or skip it.
But there are also other factors I wished they mentioned like how easily accessible songs are (you don't have to go out and buy a physical copy) or other types of audio competition (like audio books or podcasts). Since musicians have to try to appeal to as many people as possible to compete with so many other choices for people to listen to, the lyrics have gotten simpler and more repetitive/catchy.
But I guess it's not so much an explanation of why lyrics have changed but proof that it has.
When did you get out of high-school? Not being facetious or rhetorical. Most people stop expanding their tastes about then, and it's common for people to think that there is no new good music.
I'll concede that pop music has gotten worse over the last 4 decades, but other than that? Music has been fairly consistently good. And you might be limiting yourself and not finding music that fucking goes hard due to being in that rut.
The mainstream corperate space is trash and always will be because of the economic pressure towards conformity and predictablity. There's a hell of a lot more space to be a musician these days though, most of what I listen too is niche