Why are Today’s Pop Music Lyrics so Self-Obsessed?

If you've been wondering lately about how today's pop music seems to be rather excessively about being self-centered, you aren't alone. Industry observers can't help but wonder about how pop music lyrics these days seem to be all about the individual - be it Taylor Swift wondering about why a boy can't see that he belongs with her or Rihanna screaming about why she can't find a boy who makes her feel like she's the only woman in the world, the world of pop music seems to be turning inward like never before.

The reason this seems to chafe with many people of course is that pop music lyrics haven't always been about narcissism or self-love. A study by psychologists in this matter in the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts psychology journal feels that whereas songs in the past used to be more about society, about friends and family, about feelings, songs today seem stuck on explicitly making everything about oneself. They call it a 21st century health condition - obsessing too much over the significance of one's own grand self.

Using software to analyze pop music lyrics from all the top 10 songs over a 27 year-period starting with 1980, they found that songs near the beginning of the period they were looking at had a tendency to use words like “we” or ”us” a lot. Today, it's mostly about “me”. But of course, narcissism doesn't just stop at promoting oneself over everything else. People dislike narcissism because it usually comes with a gallon-can of meanness. And that, as everyone knows, is in abundant evidence in today's songs.

Pop music lyrics these days are about anger, about open cursing, foaming-at-the-mouth rage. In fact, rage today, is what young people feel identifies closely with freedom. Kanye West, a self-obsessed personality if ever there was one, makes his narcissistic meanness especially evident with lines like “You can't tell me nothing”; other pop stars like Pink love to rant and curse onstage.

Certainly, pop music lyrics may tend towards narcissism today; but not everyone is buying it. Music sells far less today than it ever did before. And one reason it doesn't sell as well is that there are far more outlets available today for indie bands. And of course, today's top 10 stars cater mostly to the team crowd. There is a vast market of grown-ups who just don't get represented on the charts. They listen to music from a long time ago because they will have no part of faddish bubblegum pop.