This is Scientific American's 60 Second Science.

I'm Christopher Intagiyata.

Many parents are no doubt familiar with their teenager's musical tastes.

But very few are probably inspired enough by them to launch an experiment.

I listen to some of the music that my oldest teenage daughter is listening to.

And I was surprised at how different. oldest teenage daughter is listening to.

And I was surprised at how different that music was

from what I used to listen to.

Natalia Comorova, an applied mathematician at UC Irvine.

Since I'm interested in evolution in general and a mathematical description of evolution,

I thought that studying the evolution of music would be a good idea.

Comorova and her team analysed half a million songs, released in the UK between 1985 and 2015,

using online databases that describe songs musical characteristics, like rhythm, mood and

danceability.

Here's a song that was high on the charts in 2014

that has a high danceability index,

so it's a very danceable song.

Shake it off by Taylor Swift. Here is the 2014 song that has a low

happiness in it. Stay with me by Sam Smith.

Overall they found that songs had become less happy over the 30 year span as well as more danceable, more relaxed, and more likely to have women behind

the mic. But the big hits bucked a number of those trends.

So the behavior of successful songs looked almost like a separate species of songs.

...