Usually, when someone feels a little bit down, music is used to make life a little bit happier. Anyway, if you, like me, love pop music or at least enjoy it and you are starting to notice than even after listening to your favourite artist, you cannot help youself to feel better, there may be a simple reason to this: Pop music has become more and more depressing in the last thirty years.
According to studies done by the Royal Society Open Science, in the University of California, about half a million songs published between 1985 and 2015 were analyzed and results showed that they had become increasingly sad through out the years. However, they also noticed something very curious, the more sad a song can be, the more danceable it usually is, said Natalia L. Komarova, one of the persons in charge of this curious investigation.
The research mentioned some clear examples and compared songs like "Stay With Me" by Sam Smith and "Whispers" by Passenger, full of sadness and melancholy, with some 1985 hits like "Freedom" by Wham! and "Glory Days" by Bruce Springteen, which although they also have a sad theme, are not as short as the first ones.
It also affirms that nowadays composers are going through the tendency to write sad songs, even though they are not so popular in the music charts. However it is rare because people seem to consume less this kind of songs and instead prefer songs that are happier or fast paced...