Depiction of the elderly in songs not music to greying population

They analysed images of aging conveyed in 76 songs whose lyrics invoke the topic. Most images were negative, they found.

“We’re aware that the number of people over age 60 will probably double by 2050, and we’re very keen that that ageing experience is a positive one,” said lead author Jacinta Kelly of Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, UK. 

Music can powerfully influence mood, and for older people, the negative depictions of ageing in most popular music can be a downer, researchers say. In music, ageing is often associated with dependency and frailty and physical decline rather than with attractiveness, Kelly said. 

“What we’re trying to get across is that this kind of bitterness or hostility is promoted or conveyed and it’s not a trivial thing to explore,” she said. “You can absorb negativity and it can have consequences for your health.”

Harbouring hostile attitudes toward ageing can have negative effects on cardiac health, while a positive outlook can actually improve longevity by five to seven years, she said. 

The researchers searched lyrics databases for English language songs relating to age or ageing, settling on 76 relevant songs, mostly from the US and UK, with an average of nine songs recorded each decade between the 1930s and today. 

The number of relevant songs increased sharply in the 2000s. They found three major categories of depictions of ageing: “contented and celebrated,” “pitiful and petulant” or “frail and flagging.” 

Only 21 songs, including Dusty Springfield’s Goin’ Back and Bob Dylan’s Forever Young took a positive view of ageing, while 55 took a negative view, according to the results in the Journal of Advanced Nursing. 

The rest characterized older people as self-pitying and lacking in self-esteem, as in Kris Kristofferson’s Feeling Mortal and Leonard Cohen’s Because Of or with fear and loneliness, as in Celine Dion’s All By Myself . 

The study “demonstrates one aspect of ageism in society and in popular culture,” said Gerard M. Fealy of the University College Dublin College of Health Sciences, who was not part of the new study. “We tend to identify older people with negative terms,” Fealy said.