Has there been a more miserable year for pop music?
Just to be clear, I don’t mean that all current music is unlistenable rubbish that is auto-tuned into something that would embarrass even R2-D2.
We are talking literally miserable. Bleak. Hopeless.
Where are the uplifting major chords, the screaming hooks and the paeans to fleeting teenage love?
Just as this has been a year marked by one of the most negative American elections in history, built on uncertainty, insecurity and fear, so too this has been the year of the big musical gloom.
You can just imagine Leonard Cohen’s disappointment as he released his “You Want It Darker” album. His nine songs tackle the inevitability of death and other less cheerful themes, yet they barely challenge his younger rivals in the misery stakes. By the warped yardstick of this year, he has hit mainstream.
Take Lukas Graham’s “7 Years.” It is, according to recent figures, one of the biggest-selling songs in the UK and the United States.
It is not a coming-of-age love song or a country crossover about hitting the middle years of marriage. It’s a melancholic memorial to a long life not yet lived, all set to something resembling a dirge.
Or the Chainsmokers’ “Closer,” which hints at a euphoric crescendo but delivers only a two-tone comedown with lyrics delivered in therapy speak (“I drink too much, and that’s an issue”).
It is no surprise that music writers in the serious papers and the less serious websites all searched for the year’s summer anthem and came up short. An uplifting, up-tempo, major-chord filled banger? Forget it.
As Sean Ross, who studies trends in pop music and radio play at Edison Research, told The Washington Post: “This was the summer of unhappy popular music.
“There’s an almost complete dearth of up-tempo, major-chord happiness.”
Instead it was the season of anxious, reflective tunes.
And is it surprising? Music is, once again, mirroring our times and shining society right back at our down-turned faces.
This has been an anxious and reflective year. Who are we? Where are we headed? What sort of society do we want to be?
The rise of Donald Trump and his nativist, authoritarian politics have coincided with a year of paralyzing uncertainty. What happens next? What is the future for America, the world, the Republican Party? (OK, the last one is optional.)
Remember his speech to the Republican National Convention in July, which set out his dark vision?
“Our convention occurs at a moment of crisis for our nation” was his apocalyptic way of putting it. “The attacks on our police, and the terrorism in our cities, threaten our very way of life. Any politician who does not grasp this danger is not fit to lead our country.”
It doesn’t matter whether any of that is true or not. When uttered by a nominee for leader of the free world, the words are a self-fulfilling prophecy, sending ripples of crisis through the world.
So it is no wonder that therapists have been reporting a surge in patients describing discomfort and distress at such a bad-tempered election.
And now, perhaps inevitably, we have a poll to prove that the effect is real. Or at least that respondents think it is real.
A survey conducted for the American Psychological Association found that 52% of American adults said the 2016 election is a very or somewhat significant source of stress.
They even had a handy list of ways to handle these feelings, such as avoiding the news, ditching any sense of helplessness by making sure to vote and imagining the candidates on the toilet.
At which point it is surely time to take a deep breath and have a sit-down.
I have never watched an episode of “The Apprentice,” shopped at a Trump store, played golf on a Trump course or eaten a Trump steak. Why should I let him affect my serotonin levels now?
Trump might be awful, but he’s not worth getting ill over — and he’s not to blame for everything bad happening in America or elsewhere.
This year would have been rubbish without him: We lost David Bowie and Prince, there is a never-ending war in Syria, an epidemic of sinister clowns, thousands are on the brink of starvation in Yemen and mosquitoes are spreading a fetus-deforming virus.
A dose of pop music offering nothing but a hedonistic escape from it all could be just the thing. I’m looking at you Taylor Swift.
