A new study has shown that in the past three decades, the trend in popular music has shifted toward sadder songs, according to the Associated Press. In a report from the journal Royal Society Open Science, researchers at the University of California at Irvine studied 500,000 popular songs released in the UK between 1985 and 2015. They categorized each song according to their mood and found that descriptors like “happiness” and “brightness” have gone down, while “sadness” and, counterintuitively, “danceable” and “party-like” have gone up.

“So it looks like, while the overall mood is booming less happy, people seem to want to forget it all and dance,” study co-author Natalia L. Komarova told the Associated Press.

Songs that researchers found with a “high happiness index” included 1985’s “Glory Days” by Bruce Springsteen, “Freedom” by Wham!, and “Would I Lie to You?” by the Eurythmics. On the lower side of the happiness index were 2014’s “Stay With Me” by Sam Smith, “Unmissable” by Gorgon City, and “Whispers” by Passenger.

The study also found that the most successful genres of music have been dance and pop with a “clear downward trend” in the success of rock starting in the early 2000s. The “maleness” of songs has also declined in the last three decades—“successful songs are characterized by a larger percentage of female artists compared to all songs,” the researchers wrote.

Read “Know How the Pop Music Sausage Gets Made? Keep It to Yourself” on the Pitch.