Hounslow's Ian Gillan - from British rock band Deep Purple - is one of the most miserable songwriters ever according to his lyrics.

An analysis of the sentiment of over 6,000 songs by the Trinity Mirror data unit has revealed that Deep Purple's songs are 67.8 per cent negative making them more miserable than Leonard Cohen.


Only 6.5 per cent of their material was deemed to be positive while the remaining 25.6 per cent was found to be neutral in tone.

Blood From a Stone and Nasty Piece of Work were two of 16 songs written by Gillan, born in Chiswick, to achieve a negativity score of 90 per cent - the highest that can be achieved.

Out of the six acts with West London connections Elton John, who was born in Pinner, was the happiest with 17 per cent of his songs being given a positive rating.             

The study analysed the lyrics to over 6,000 songs by some of the biggest selling British and Irish artists in history as well as some musicians who are famously bleak.

Sentiment analysis involves picking out emotive words or phrases in a given text and placing them in context with the words around them to form an overall impression of the mood of the passage.

London duo The XX were the most miserable band in the study with 87.5 per cent of their songs achieving a negative rating.

At the other end of the scale Sir Cliff Richard was found to have the most positive songs with 23 per cent of his lyrics proving to be happy in nature.

Surprisingly the notoriously dour Leonard Cohen had a much lower proportion of sad songs than the average with 39.9 per cent of his material coming out negative compared to an average of 52 per cent.


48.6 per cent of his songs were neutral and only 11.5 per cent were positive.

The ten artists with the highest proportion of positive songs were:
Cliff Richard
Depeche Mode
T Rex
The Spice Girls
Paul McCartney
Elton John
Queen
The Police
The Beatles
Oasis
The ten artists with the highest proportion of negative songs were:
The XX
Bon Iver
Status Quo
Deep Purple
The Cure
Robbie Williams
Def Leppard
The Smiths
Coldplay
Oasis