When making music, usually a lot of thought and emotion goes into the process. This can mean that a certain song or artist makes you feel a certain way. For example, Taylor Swift may make you feel joy, but Elvis makes you feel angry. This intrigued the guys at Superfi, so they did some research and found out some interesting things about artists and their music.

IBM’s ‘Watson’ software was used to discover the real emotions that artists express with their music. Surprisingly, the fear level on Coldplay’s music was particularly high, with only a little bit of joy. The rolling stones, however, show their real emotion with a high level of anger, and not much else. The software can not only tell emotions, but it also tells us a little more about the artists. Like how extroverted they are and unsurprisingly, Rihanna and Frank Sinatra come in on top followed by artists like Ariana Grande and Adele. Though U2 and Iron Maiden come in low, especially for artists that are always in the spotlight.

The most common emotion was fear, with around 48% of all artists scoring over 50% in the fear category. Now, this was considered a little deeper, and they found that 20% were barely afraid, 32% were fairly afraid and 48% were very afraid.

In the Rolling Stone magazine, Bob Dylan’s song ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ was voted best song of all time in both 2004 and 2010. The song, of course, had to be analyzed. This song had three main emotions, such as disgust, anger and sadness. Though, throughout his career, the prominent emotion was fear, followed by anger and small amounts of sadness and joy.

Music can make us feel a certain way with the lyrics or the rhythm although, our opinions can be bias due to our favorite artists. This Watson software shows all the emotions used through one’s career with the bias opinions. Have a look through and see which analysis surprises you!

An infographic by Superfi.