“You put on sad songs to feel better”, Gustavo Cerati prayed in “Adiós”, a song from his 2006 album Here we go. It’s hard not to feel challenged by that phrase, since it’s something most of us have done more than once in our lives. This happens because sad music triggers hormonal changes in the body that are normally produced to overcome trauma and induce pleasant feelings, a trick music producers know all too well.
In relation to this statement, the language expert agency Crossword Solver it was proposed to carry out a study based on what people listen to and determine who are the saddest and happiest artists based on their songs. The results were obtained after analyzing some of the most listened to singers on Spotify.
According to Crossword, they made a list with the 120 artists and the 1,000 most played songs on Spotify in the United States. The analysts then collected the lyrics of all songs from the last two albums released by these artists and analyzed language to determine the number of happy and sad words in each song based on the NRC Emotion Lexicona list of English words associated with eight basic emotions (anger, fear, expectation, confidence, surprise, sadness, joy and disgust).
The “saddest” artists
The five “saddest” artists are billie eilish (18.1% of its lyrics contain words that denote sadness), AvaMax (17.3%), The Kid LAROI (17%), Megan Thee Stallion (16.5%) and Machine Gun Kelly (14.9%).
The “Happiest” Artists
On the other hand, the five happiest artists are olivia rodrigo (24.6% of its letters contain words denoting happiness), Bruno Mars (23.7%), lizzo (23.1%), Rihanna (22.5%) and sam smith (22.4%).
happiest modern song
As for songs, the study found the data that “What Lovers Do” from Maroon 5 in its content it contains 72.3% of happy words, turning it into happiest modern song. This is followed by “Love Me Harder” by Ariana Grande & The Weeknd with 59.7% and “Love Myself” by Hailee Steinfeld which has 58.6%.
saddest modern song
A striking fact is that, according to the analysis, the saddest modern song of all would be “humble” of kendrick lamar, since 51.3% of the words present in the lyrics denote sadness. “Supalonely” by BEENEE It would be the one that occupies the second place on the podium of the saddest songs with a percentage of 50.8%. “SAD!” of XXXTENTACION would rank third with 50%.