Why do so Many of Today’s Pop Songs Decry Love?

Pop songs of the 1950s featured primarily male singers and their songs generally extolled the glories of love. Of the top 100 songs from 1950 to 1959, only four were by female singers: Ruth Brown, Patti Page, Mary Ford and Faye Adams.

A hit song of 1951, "Glory of Love," was epitomized by the line, "As long as there's the two of us, we've got the world and all its charms."  Ray Charles in "I've Got a Woman," sings of a woman across town who loves him. "She saves her lovin' just for me, oh she loves me so tenderly. I got a woman way over town that's good to me, oh yeah."  In "Good Golly Miss Molly," Little Richard croons about a girl who is rocking and rolling and inspires him to marry her. "I'm going to the corner; gonna buy a diamond ring."

Of course there were occasional songs of unrequited love, such as "Hound Dog," by Elvis Presley, with its famous line, "You ain't nothing but a hound dog, crying all the time." However, for the most part the songs of the fifties expressed positive feelings, and if they contained negative feelings they were more likely to be regretful or humorous rather than hateful.

In contrast, women dominate the top ten in the 2000s, and most of their songs focus on the men who love them and disappoint them.  Katy Perry, one of the top-selling singers of all time (she had five number-one hits in her album, "Teenage Dream," tying Michael Jackson's earlier feat) almost always decries the regrets and hurts in the area of romance.  In her most recent song, "Wide Awake," she sings of having awakened from a relationship in which she had naively allowed herself to fall in love with a man who shattered her. "I'm wide awake, yeah, I am born again, out of the lion's den."

Taylor Swift, another top-selling singer of the 2000s, winner of the Grammy for the Album of the Year in 2010, among many other awards, is famous for songs about ex-boyfriends. Her most recent album contains a song about a boyfriend who puts her down, cheats , lies and drives her crazy. "I'm never ever ever getting back together!" she exclaims throughout the song.

Lady Gaga sprang to prominence on the basis of a slew of songs proclaiming the toxicity of romance and of men.  In the music video of "Telephone," she goes around killing off men and refusing to answer her telephone calls from her ex.  In "Bad Romance," she sighs, "I want your ugly, I want your disease." Rather than extolling the glories of love, her songs bemoan the pathology of love and the joys of revenge.

Pop songs tell us about the values of the times.  In the 1950s, male singers were adulated and what those males valued were good relationships with women. "The Glories of Love," noted that in love "You have to cry a little, laugh a little," emphasizing the give-and-take of healthy relationships. Most of the pop songs today are by women, and most of their songs seem to value dumping men, who are seen as cheaters, liars, and abusers. 

The emphasis today is not on making relationships work, but on leaving them the minute they don't work. Bad relations have become the norm, not just among pop singers but also among their fans. The current pop songs reflect the values that are borne out by statistics. For example, the U.S. leads the world in divorce rate; here 50 percent of marriages end in divorce. Generally first marriages end in divorce, indicating that young people go into the marriages without a clue about how relationships work. It is generally women nowadays who initiate divorce, and current values that that make men culpable for problems in relationships seem to encourage them to do so.

Pop songs clearly indicate that today's young people are finding relationships difficult.  In the songs mentioned above, the female singers almost entirely blame men for their problems in relationships. There is no semblance of any kind of self-objectivity. It is always easier to blame others for our failures than to look at ourselves. And the male singers are no different.  Bruno Mars, one of the top male singers today, in his song, "I'd Catch a Grenade for You," calls out an ex: "Oh, take, take, take it all, but you never give."

Relationships are difficult because they require people to be in touch with their own feelings and to be able to empathize with the feelings of others. If we aren't in touch with how we are occasionally uncaring to others, we won't be able to understand those who are uncaring to us.

Does this mean that the people of the 1950s had better values than the people of today? In some ways they did and some ways they didn't. The values that encouraged male singers but not female were of course not healthy. But the values that spoke about the ups and downs of relationships and the importance of being willing to work on them were very healthy.

The songs we sing are the products of the feelings we feel. I suggest we pay more attention to what we are feeling than what we are singing.