Boomer Bob

posted 2mo ago

They don't make love songs like they used to...

Nowadays it's just sex, drugs and me me me!!!

Have you ever seen a comment like this? Boomer Bob is pointing to a growing sentiment: that something about contemporary music is in decline.

This Baby Boomer-centric sentiment seems to crystallize around one topic in particular: modern pop music’s treatment of love and romance—or the lack thereof. According to Boomer Bob, the love song is dying. But is it true? Let’s investigate...

Is the love song dying?

By David Mora and Michelle Jia

Here are all 5,100 Billboard Top 10 hits from 1958 to September 2023. Each bubble  is a song. The bigger the bubble, the longer it spent in the Top 10. Learn more about our methods.

These are the 1,040 Top 10 hits we think Boomer Bob would definitely consider love songs. They’re all unmistakably about romantic love and devotion, sung from one person to another. Let’s call these Serenades.

If you spread these Serenades on a timeline, they do appear to decline… but by how much?

To see, here are the Serenades compared to all other Billboard Top 10 hits. The proportion of love songs in the 1960s was 23%. In the 2020s, it’s 12%. The proportion of love songs has almost halved! So, was Boomer Bob right? Are love songs, in fact, dying?

Not quite: we think Boomer Bob has too narrow a view of love. Sure, these lovey-dovey tunes have declined. But what about other songs? What about Adele’s SOMEONE LIKE YOU? Or T-Pain’s BUY U A DRANK? Or WAP? If we look more closely, we uncover a story that will change how you see love in pop music.