Did you know that there are now scholarly studies of popular music? Who knew? A recent study of popular music compared the sentiments expressed in music from the 1950s onward. The news is not good. Joy is down 38%. Anger is up 232%. Disgust is up by 128%.
I have to wonder, why? By any quantitative measure of well-being (income, wealth, crime, health, life expectancy, etc.), Americans are better off by far now than we were in the 1950s.
Not being an expert in this area, still I suspect that it is the spending and preferences of the younger generation that largely drives popular music sales. Surely it was the preferences of the younger baby boom generation, my own, that drove the music of the sixties and seventies. And we liked love and romance and other happy things. Remember “I Want to Hold Your Hand?” “Good Vibrations?” And my personal favorite, “I Got You Babe?”
The percentage of songs devoted to sex and desire has doubled. There has been a huge increase in the percentage of songs focused on wealth and status, as is also true for songs focused on alcohol and drugs. Maybe the concerns of the current younger generations are far different from those of the baby boomer generation. Consider the lyrics to a recent hit, Turn Down for What, “Another round of shots. Another round of shots.” Different.
I wonder if the apparently declining interest in religion is part of the explanation. Research by the economist, Arthur Brooks, has concluded that religious people are happier than non-religious people. Or, maybe he is actually measuring people doing apparently traditionally religious things like caring for one another, contributing to the common good, and improving the lives of others.
In November 2016 Brooks and the Dalai Lama wrote an Op-Ed for the New York Times that argued that the reason that people are unhappy and discontented is that we no longer feel as needed as once we did. Being needed, they write, is part of “a natural human hunger to serve our fellow men and women.” The Buddhists teach “If one lights a fire for others, it will also brighten one’s own way.” Selflessness and joy are intertwined.
The Dalai Lama and Brooks argue that we need, individually and collectively, to work on building a compassionate society that creates a wealth of opportunities for meaningful work so that everyone can contribute and feel needed. All of us can contribute. All of us need to be needed. Together we can turn that need into joyful relationship. Amen, and amen!