<\/p>\n
Feedback is<\/em> New Scientist\u2019s popular sideways look at the latest science and technology news. You can submit items you believe may amuse readers to Feedback by emailing feedback@newscientist.com<\/a><\/em><\/i><\/p>\n Prepare to have fun, whether you want to or not, as the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest<\/a> rumbles into view, with the final taking place on Saturday 16 May.<\/p>\n In a piece of judicious timing, the journal Royal Society Open Science<\/i> has published a big study<\/a> of Eurovision\u2019s history. The researchers compiled data on every contest from 1956 until 2024, a total of 1763 songs. They then classified the songs based on the language used, the themes and lyrics, and musical attributes such as genre. For some of this they used AI tools, which Feedback can understand because the thought of listening to 1763 Eurovision entries<\/a> caused our tympanic membranes to briefly fold back on themselves.<\/p>\n All sorts of things fell out of this analysis. For instance, a previous study<\/a> had identified 12 main themes that describe the most popular songs, including aspiration, desire, breakup and pain. However, Eurovision entries<\/a> really use only 11: \u201cWe excluded \u2018Jaded\u2019 because it appears in fewer than 5% of the songs,\u201d the authors wrote. Feedback feels we could have told them that, because the contest\u2019s gloriously naff sensibilities don\u2019t really allow for anything as complicated as feeling jaded. But maybe that is our own jadedness talking.<\/p>\n One of the steepest declines has been in songs expressing nostalgia, which evidently isn\u2019t what it used to be. However, pain, rebellion, desperation, confusion and escapism have become more prevalent. There was a significant increase in both confusion and escapism in the 1970s, which the researchers suggest was \u201ca response to all the crises of the 1970s\u201d. However, pain started rising only in the 2000s. \u201cIt may not be a coincidence that this is occurring after the Great Recession,\u201d the authors write. Yet desperation remains fairly rare. \u201cThis may be due to the emotional weight of a feeling such as desperation, which could turn voters off,\u201d they say. Feedback cannot shake the feeling that this could all be summarised concisely as \u201cwe don\u2019t know\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Over the decades, songs have become less acoustic and more electronic. They are mostly written in English, as opposed to countries\u2019 national languages. And they tend to be pop, as opposed to any other musical genre, with high levels of \u201cdanceability\u201d. \u201cParticipants actively adjust their entries to match the standards set by recent winners,\u201d it seems.<\/p>\n Finally, there are some curious exceptions to these trends. France, Italy, Portugal and Spain have all resisted the temptation to use songs with English lyrics. Apparently, \u201cpaying a cost for promoting their own languages is a rational choice in a geopolitical context that extends beyond winning at [Eurovision].\u201d Feedback always knew Eurovision<\/a> was part of the Great Game.<\/p>\n The researchers sum all this up as \u201corganizational level learning at the levels of organizers and participants\u201d. Feedback thinks that means \u201cpeople keep trying to game the contest\u201d.<\/p>\n In a previous item, Feedback described a park<\/a> filled entirely with sculptures of microscopic foraminifera, and wondered if there were any scientifically themed tourist attractions that were even more niche. Specifically, we wondered whether there might be \u201ca museum dedicated solely to mosses\u201d (11 April).<\/p>\n Reader John Wilson wrote in to tell us about the Serenity Moss Garden<\/a> in North Carolina. The mosses cover about 900 square metres of a mountainside and can be viewed from a trail. It\u2019s not a museum, says John, \u201cas in a climate-controlled box with pillars and curators sans social skills\u201d (ouch), but nevertheless \u201cit\u2019s a thing, for those so inclined\u201d.<\/p>\n Clearly, Feedback was insufficiently ambitious in our quest for niche attractions. Can anyone find a museum of Plecoptera (stoneflies), or a curated set of beach pebbles?<\/p>\n Despite our place of employment, Feedback still gets nervous about certain kinds of maths. We know intuitively what it means to divide two fractions, but actually doing it requires a pencil and paper. As for converting through orders of magnitude, like changing square kilometres into square metres \u2013 oof.<\/p>\n No such nerves afflict Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the US secretary of health. He faced criticism after claiming that the price of a drug had fallen by 600 per cent, which rival politicians pointed out was mathematically impossible.<\/p>\n Feedback is fairly sure that, in this case, RFK Jr.\u2019s rivals are correct, because if the price of something drops by 100 per cent that means it has dropped to zero, and that seems like a natural limit. We suppose the company could start paying people to take the drug off its hands, meaning the item had a negative price. However, translating that into a percentage change is something we are happy to leave to the mathematicians, and in any case, no pharma company is doing that.<\/p>\n Into this mathematical quagmire stepped RFK Jr<\/a>. \u201cWell, if the drug was $100 and it raises to $600, that would be a 600 per cent rise,\u201d he said. \u201cIf it drops from $600 to $100, that\u2019s a 600 per cent savings.\u201d<\/p>\n We can only conclude that RFK Jr. has invented a new kind of logical reasoning. Unlike a syllogism, where the conclusion follows inescapably from the premise, this is an anti-syllogism, where, despite a clearly correct premise, the conclusion is 100 per cent wrong.<\/p>\n Got a story for Feedback?<\/b><\/p>\n You can send stories to Feedback by email at feedback@newscientist.com<\/a>. Please include your home address. This week\u2019s and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.newscientist.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Feedback is New Scientist\u2019s popular sideways look at the latest science and technology news. You can submit items you believe may amuse readers to Feedback by emailing feedback@newscientist.com Ready for Eurovision Prepare to have fun, whether you want to or not, as the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest rumbles into view, with the final taking place […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2405974,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2405973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Less-nostalgia-more-pain-scientists-study-1763-Eurovision-songs.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2405973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2405973"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2405973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2405975,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2405973\/revisions\/2405975"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2405974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2405973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2405973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2405973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Ready for Eurovision<\/h2>\n
Moss appeal<\/h2>\n
New new math<\/h2>\n