It Must Have Been Love (But It's Over Now): Thematic Changes in Popular U.S. Song Lyrics Across 4+ Decades

Over time, U.S. marriage rates have decreased, as people increasingly expect romantic relationships to satisfy high-level needs. Concurrently, interest in sexualized relationships (e.g., hook-ups; consensual nonmonogamy) has increased. Reflecting these patterns over time, song lyrics may become less about prototypical romantic love and more about noncommitted sexual relationships. Using the Meaning Extraction module in LIWC-22, four independent content themes were pulled from the top 25 songs of the Billboard Hot 100 from 1980 to 2024 ( N = 1,129). Themes were correlated with chart year and LIWC linguistic categories. Lyrics high on a Fall in (or out of) Love theme (content words like love, heart, break ) became less common and used past and future tense. In contrast, lyrics high on a Contact theme (e.g., talk, stop, call) became more common, more sexualized (sexual and swear words), and avoided future tense. The advantage of Meaning Extraction for testing hypotheses about language with large data is discussed.