Study Shows Which Five Rock + Metal Bands Are Most Likely to Make Fans Feel Sad
What rock and metal bands are most likely to make fans feel sad or angry? A newly published study has the answers!
Preply poured through Reddit communities, taking into account over 200,000 "popular posts" centered around 92 very successful musical artists. Then, they broke down those results into different categories, offering up the Top 10 artists that are most and least likely to make fans feel certain emotions.
The Methodology
The analysis took place in March of this year and the list of artist Preply compiled featured musical acts that were active at any point over the last 40 years. Record sales, awards, critical acclaim and the size of their subreddit communities were all factored into the final results.
The study states, "On average, we analyzed 175 post and 2,200 comments per act."
Regarding how all of that data was crunched, the study continues, "Treating each individual post and comment as an isolated 'statement,' we used a Python-based machine learning tool that measures the sentiment of language. Each statement was scored on characteristics of 'sadness,' 'joy,' 'love,' 'anger,' 'fear,' and 'surprise.' Then each statement was tagged with the emotion it scored highest for. To establish which fans are saddest, for example, we calculate which subreddit has the highest percentage of its statements tagged 'sad' above all else."
The Results
Below, we've shared the categories that feature at least one rock or metal act. Let's take a look!
Note: Not all lists will feature a traditional one through 10 ranking as there are some ties, so you will see gaps in the ranked numbers to reflect the tied positions.
All rock and metal artists in bold.
Artists Most Likely to Make Fans Feel Sadness
A total of five rock and metal artists are featured in this category.
1. Panic! At the Disco
2. Linkin Park
3. Metallica + Nirvana (tie)
5. Britney Spears
6. Halsey
7. Madonna
8. Lil Nas X + SZA (tie)
10. Avicii, John Mayer + My Chemical Romance (tie)
READ MORE: Are Linkin Park Emo?
Artists Most Likely to Make Fans Feel Angry
Two of heavy music's most infamous tourmates tie for the No. 6 spot.
1. Cardi B
2. Megan Thee Stallion
3. Kanye West
4. Eminem, Travis Scott
6. Guns N' Roses + Metallica (tie)
8. Kendrick Lamar + The Weeknd (tie)
10. Nicki Minaj
Artists Least Likely to Make Their Fans Feel Happy
Both Metallica and Nirvana have a lot of gloomy lyrics, so they're an ideal fit for this category.
1. Cardi B
2. Megan Thee Stallion
3. Travis Scott
4. Nicki Minaj
5. Kanye West
6. Metallica
7. Britney Spears
8. A$AP Rocky
9. Nirvana
10. Eminem
Artists Least Likely to Make Their Fans Feel Love
Apparently Tool fans haven't opened their third eye nor their heart chakra quite enough because it appears fans don't feel much love when listening to the mind-bending band.
1. Drake
2. Travis Scott + Daft Punk (tie)
4. The Weeknd, Eminem, Childish Gambino + Bad Bunny (tie)
8. Tool
9. SZA + A$AP Rocky
See all of the study's results here.