Welcome to the new age.
Elektra Records
RCA
Although 2003 gave us the lyric "The money we ought to be stashing / I make sure every quarter be cashed in" (Fabolous, "Into You"), 2013 was the year pop music insisted we live for today — as Pitbull says in "Feel This Moment," "I see the future, but live for the moment."
I did a lyrical analysis of all the top 10 songs in 2003 and 2013, looking at whether or not they expressed some sense of the "feel this moment"/carpe diem/YOLO ideology, and therefore speak to anxiety about the future. After looking at the lyrics of 58 songs for 2003 and 61 for 2013, analyzing the tenses the songs used and whether they referenced something that would take place tomorrow or further in the future, it's clear that pop music in 2013 is far more concerned with the here and now, and, therefore, is way angstier than the pop music of 2003. Our music is saying, "We might as well do this now because who knows about tomorrow."
Another unintentional finding of this study: I miss Missy Elliott more than I realized.
Here's a breakdown of the results.
