Sad songs are more likely to top the charts: Britain's number one was in a minor key for 45 WEEKS in 2017

Website Popbitch analysed the top hits of 2017 in the UK
Post Malone's Rock Star, Sam Smith's Too Good At Goodbyes, Ed Sheeran's Shape of You and Havana by Camila Cabello all led the charge
Songs were slower, with the average bpm chart topper slipping under 100bpm

Published: 19:25 EDT, 8 January 2018 | Updated: 19:32 EDT, 8 January 2018

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Chart topping hits are becoming more depressed and slower it has been claimed.

Gossip website Popbitch analysed the top hits of 2017 in the UK - and found those in minor keys were far more likely than in any other year to top the charts.

It found Post Malone's Rock Star, Sam Smith's Too Good At Goodbyes, Ed Sheeran's Shape of You and Havana by Camila Cabello all led the charge, concluding 'Ever since Bowie died in early 2016, things have been getting steadily more bleak — both in the world at large, and in pop charts too.'

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Singer Camila Cabello performs at the 2017 MTV Europe Music Awards at Wembley Arena in London. Her minor key hit Havana was at number one in the UK for five weeks.

RECORD YEAR FOR STREAMING

Music sales grew at a robust pace for a third straight year in the United States in 2017 as listeners kept flocking to streaming outlets, an industry monitor said Wednesday.

Analytical firm BuzzAngle Music said that consumption in the world's largest music market jumped 12.8 percent in 2017, well outpacing the 4.2 percent growth seen a year earlier.

On-demand streaming services led by Spotify are quickly replacing downloads on platforms such as iTunes, which shook up the music business a generation ago.

All are in minor keys, and all were at number one for multiple weeks.

This figure of 87 per cent compares with 62 per cent in 2016 and only 29 per cent in 2015. In 2014 it was 46 per cent and in 2013 58 per cent.

Popbitch, which conducted the research, named its study 'whine of the Times'

'Just six weeks of 2017 so far will have had a major key number one – whereas 45 will have had a minor one,' it concluded.

It also found 2017's songs were slower, with the average bpm of a number one record slipping below 100bpm.

Popbitch found that while major key songs did top the charts, the rarely stayed for more than a week - including Harry Styles's Sign of the Times, Clean Bandit's Symphony and DJ Khaled's I'm the One.

A 2012 study in the American Psychological Association journal 'Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts' looked at 1,000 top-40 tunes from the last five decades, analysing the emotional clues in them.

Sam Smith's Too Good At Goodbyes was another minor key hit, and was at the top of the charts for three weeks in 2017

It concluded 'popular music has, in general, become sadder-sounding over time, with an increasing use of minor mode and slower tempo'.

'Purely happy-sounding things, which are emblematic of children's music, have become less fashionable,' says E. Glenn Schellenberg, PhD, a psychologist at the University of Toronto Mississauga, who co-authored the study with Christian von Scheve, PhD, of Freie Universität Berlin.

Over the last half century, the researchers found, pop songs have become slower and minor keys have become more prevalent — both qualities that evoke sadness in Western music.

Ed Sheeran’s minor key song Shape of You was one of those that inhabited the top of the charts last year, with 14 weeks at the top. Pictured, Sheeran performs on stage during day two of Capital's Jingle Bell Ball with Coca-Cola at London's O2 Arena

Mixed musical emotions are also more common in modern music, with today's fast-paced dance tunes much more likely to be written in minor keys.

However, the researchers concluded 'pop music probably works in cycles, and what once sounded childish now sounds fresh.'

Popbitch also cited a 2009 study by American researchers at Carolina University, which looked at number ones in the Billboard chart from 1955 to 2003.

The researchers found that 'when social and economic times were relatively threatening, songs that were longer in duration, more meaningful in content, more comforting, more romantic, and slower were most popular'.