The folks at Spotify think so. Their valence scale (higher = happier, lower = sadder) has “been used to develop a ‘gloom index’ of Radiohead songs, to reveal the most depressing Christmas song, [and] to find out which European countries prefer sad songs (Portuguese fado really is a downer).” So data journalist Miriam Quick took the 1,080 songs that have held the top slot on the Billboard Hot 100 and looked at their Spotify valence scores – and she found that what the algorithm identifies as sad doesn’t quite track with what most humans think of as sadness.