A multidimensional analysis of lyrics of modern English popular songs

Abstract

A popular song lyric corpus (PSL) was compiled from 770 top ranking modern English songs on US Billboard charts from 1940 to 2016. Based on the dimensions interpreted by Biber (1988), it was found that PSL had a high level of involvement with listeners, a moderately low level of narrative concerns, a moderately high level of overt persuasiveness, a low level of online elaboration. It was non-abstract and contained situation-dependent references. PSL’s dimension values were compared with the dimension values of 23 spoken and written genres. Additionally, it was found that PSL predominantly consisted of songs with text types of informational interaction, involved persuasion or intimate interpersonal interaction. Further investigation of 100 lexico-grammatical features identified seven predictors for decades and three predictors for main music genres. Rock exhibited significant interaction between decade and music genre, with four predictors. It was found that PSL became increasing verbalised over time. Soul, hip hop and pop focused more on making the author known to listeners, whereas electronic, spoken, reggae, and rock tended to shift the focus on to the object. Rock music was found to be increasingly focused on the objects of current events. Five functional dimensions were found and interpreted, namely, dimension 1: involvement versus information production, dimension 2: group identity versus norm, dimension 3: doing versus saying, dimension 4: socialising versus commanding/ advising, and dimension 5: recounting versus happening/ imagining. The presence of a dimension on group identity suggested that song lyrics may act as an indicator for cultural change.