Song lyrics have become simpler and more repetitive over the last five decades - Scientific Reports
Song lyrics have become simpler and more repetitive over the last five decades - Scientific Reports
Music is ubiquitous in our everyday lives, and lyrics play an integral role when we listen to music. The complex relationships between lyrical content, its temporal evolution over the last decades, and genre-specific variations, however, are yet to be fully understood. In this work, we investigate t...
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You show us everything you've got
You keep on dancin' and the room gets hot
You drive us wild, we'll drive you crazy
You say you wanna go for a spin
The party's just begun, we'll let you in
You drive us wild, we'll drive you crazy
You keep on shoutin', you keep on shoutin'I wanna rock and roll all night and party every day
I wanna rock and roll all night and party every day
I wanna rock and roll all night and party every day
I wanna rock and roll all night and party every dayYou keep on saying you'll be mine for a while
You're lookin' fancy and I like your style
You drive us wild, we'll drive you crazy
You show us everything you've got
Baby, baby that's quite a lot
And you drive us wild, we'll drive you crazy
You keep on shoutin', you keep on shoutin'I wanna rock and roll all night and party every day
I wanna rock and roll all night and party every day
I wanna rock and roll all night and party every day
I wanna rock and roll all night and party every day
I wanna rock and roll all night and party every day
I wanna rock and roll all night and party every day
I wanna rock and roll all night and party every day
I wanna rock and roll all night and party every day
Kiss "Rock and Roll All Nite" 1975
Yeah but that's KISS
Two things stand out to me:
This implies that the structure of lyrics is shifting towards containing more choruses than in the past, in turn contributing to higher repetitiveness of lyrics
The two main data sources for our investigation are last.fm and Genius. Given the nature and history of these platforms, in particular last.fm, the studied LFM-2b dataset is affected by community bias and popularity bias.
So, what we're really looking at is that popular songs (those that withstood the test of time, not necessarily popularity on release) of yesteryear were more complicated. So, this basically just confirms that we only care about the good music from the past and we forget the boring and repetitive stuff. And not even necessarily more complicated, just fewer repetitions of the chorus. I'd care more about a comparison that controls for chorus repetition and chart position/popularity
Hard to see, ooh The hang ups we have today Said we need to strive for more liberty Lift yourself upon your feet, let's get it on Lift yourself up on your feet, let's get it on Lift yourself upon your feet, let's get it on Lift yourself upon your feet, let's get it on Lift yourself upon your feet, let's get it on Lift yourself upon your feet, let's get it on Lift yourself upon your feet, let's get it on The hang ups we have today Said we need to strive for more liberty Lift yourself upon your feet Lift yourself upon your feet Lift Lift your, lift your, lift yourself Lift, lift your, lift your, lift your, lift your, lift, lift Hard to see, ooh The hang ups we have today-ay-ay But they don't really realize, though This next verse, this next verse though These bars Watch this some shit, go Poopy-di scoop Scoop-diddy-whoop Whoop-di-scoop-di-poop Poop-di-scoopty Scoopty-whoop Whoopity-scoop, whoop-poop Poop-diddy, whoop-scoop Poop, poop Scoop-diddy-whoop Whoop-diddy-scoop Whoop-diddy-scoop, poopFor many songs the lyrics are completely irrelevant and are simply used as another instrument. So there's not much point measuring how repetitive lyrics are because music itself is repetitive.
Not every song has to be a lyrical masterpiece, or as two wise robots once said:
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