Andrew Allred and Angela Fields

English 2040

Christopher Blankenship

April 9, 2018

Trends of Writing Styles Within the Billboard Hot 100

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to identify any trends found among song lyrics through categorical writing styles often found as focus among college courses and any that could be connected to song popularity. These styles of writing are narrative, metaphoric, and straightforward or concise writing. A secondary study was to see if there was correlation between the sex of songwriters increase or decrease of those songs overall popularity. Our conclusion is there has been a steady increase in narrative style lyrics and a decrease in straightforward writing styles. There is also a large gap between male and female songwriters but within this time period no significant change in that gap was able to be recorded nor its relation to the type of song and its popularity. 

Introduction

 

In the classes I have taken here at Salt Lake Community College I have found many focuses of writing that could be seen as differing branches yet found within the same department and therefore the same metaphoric tree. However, as I took more and more English courses I soon found that I could often separate the writing focus into categories. It was also true that these focuses would overlap to some degree but primarily all compositions would rely more heavily on one rather than another. At times, the demand in more of the creative writing courses such as Creative Writing, Intro into Non-Fiction Writing, Intro into Fiction Writing, and Writing in the Professions would be that of narrative either of me telling a story of my own or one that presented enough impact or credibility to support the current written goal. In others, such as Intro into Poetry, Publication Studies, and Critical Literature courses, I found myself more often seeking out metaphoric relations to include or to investigate inside most of my written works and readings. While yet other writing courses, such as Technical Writing, Grammar and Style, and Writing Studies, whose focus on concise and straightforward word choice and aware rhetorical focus and moves were key.

Due to these notable connections and the need to set out to create a writing study of our own, finding ways to study these large differences like branches that I often found myself having to swing from seemed like an interesting thing to correlate to other writing from outside the institution. I found myself seeking a popular written form that may have some connection to these trends found in higher education courses and found my answer while listening to the radio driving home from school. In my Intro to Poetry class we were asked to writer a paper on why poetry is important to the world. My answer had been, without it we would not likely have words to our music. The baring of what we write within school may have heavy impacts on the music that is written and impacts it has on our daily lives. The solution then became clear—I wanted to see if there were any trends that could be found in a study of lyrics to that of what I had taken note of in my college courses.

Our study then became one of the top ten songs of a ten year period, from 2017 to 2008, with a stress on the aforementioned types of writing and any trends in the movement among those prominent writing styles found in songs. One exploratory search of our study was to see if it could be determined if any significant connections could be made between the writing styles and shifts in popularity in the written lyrics of these top ten songs. Another trend that was researched was to see if there were patterns between each of the styles and the gender of the writers of the songs. By discovering any commonalities between these relationships it may show possibilities for future hits, and changes in focus of students interest in how they write within school settings.

 

Previous research in conjunction with or in difference to our own

            Many studies on song lyrics have taken place not only on the Billboard Hot 100 but other various popular song charts. Some studies focus more on how lyrics and music have an effect on the communities in which they are consumed and in turn how those communities greatly affect the sales or production of specific types of lyrics. Each type of study uses this data through the focus on overall musical genres as is done in Simon Frith entitled Popular music: Critical concepts in media and cultural studies. Others take a look at the potential connections to political issues such as gender studies with a 2011 study done by Marc Lafrance, Lara Worcester, and Lori Burns. Some studies focus on the song or genre’s influence on or by culture such as a 2015 thesis by Kenneth T. Eng entitled Identifying the Impact of Major Cultural Events on General Music Consumption Habits in the United States.

 Other studies take a more in-depth or internalized look at the music or attributes of it such as individual artists, or the musical industry practice including songwriters and producers as a 2017 study by David Tough entitled “An Analysis of Common Songwriting and Production Practices in 2014-2015 Billboard Hot 100 Songs.”  Research may look at individual aspects of lyric themes or lack of theme despite assertions to contain one, similar to the article published in 2012 by Peter Christenson, Donald F. Roberts, and Nicholas Bjorkanda and the 2010 thesis by Annika White, or through the lens of a singular literary criticism such as in the 2016 article by Mark Flynn.

Despite many of these studies use of the same dataset of the Billboard Hot 100 charts, the research and conclusions vary greatly, imploying with various focus and methodologies. We explored many of these studies not only to see what has been previously researched and to find a credible dataset that other researchers have found value in but also to see what was potentially missing from the studies in order to form a new study of our own that may fill some of those gaps. Since Billboard Hot 100 charts appeared to be a popular base where most of these musical studies were drawing from, such as the specific example referenced above, we felt confident in its use in our research that we hoped would build upon what is already out there.

We also looked more exclusively at research that has been performed in more recent years since music and its popularity has also fluctuated greatly over decades and wanted to find research that more reflected studies, though not exactly with the same elements we incorporated, but with ones that were linked to the same types of music rather ones that delved too greatly into other musical genres. Another reason for exploring these more recent studies was because if our research was extremely fruitful in an unexplored trend then it may be used in further research to the current musical industries rather than ones have over the year phased out. In conjunction to lyrical studies out there, our study adds to the discourse community in a way not previously explored—through an analysis that combines writing styles as focused on in the writing of stories and its presence within the top ten songs of the last ten years and the trends that show an increase or decrease in those styles among them.

 

Methodology

By using a grounded theory at the start of this study we were able to look at the data despite not initially knowing what we would find and build a study on what other studies had not previously explored and trends we found interesting. An example of a grounded study that helped us in our methodology was Clare C. O'Callaghan’s “Lyrical Themes in Songs Written by Palliative Care Patients” found in the Journal of Music Therapy.  In her study and in ours a question and formation of categorical methods of separating the data helped in building the study from the ground up. We decided that we wanted to see if we could find trends within top song lyrics because of public access to the Billboard dataset and current musical study discourse communities and the ties between their studies using the same data. Time was also a factor in this decision which played a large part in the dataset size to a more manageable one that we felt we could study thoroughly enough until trends arose. The use of the U.S. Billboard top songs was because of its variety of six musical genres: Rap, Country, Adult Contemporary, Rock, R&B/Hip-Hop, and Pop. The Billboard Hot 100 list is generally compiled through radio airplay, sales data, and streaming data on a weekly basis (“Music: Top 100 Songs”). By using the Billboard rather than taking a community poll of popular songs that find their way onto the charts or are often played on local stations we were guaranteed a more diverse populous that has the principle effect on popularity through consumption via song sales and by extension the focus on the musical styles we choice to explore within these songs. 

Trends that we thought we may find in the beginning that we felt could have been interesting and useful in a study did not pan out due to time or because we found too many studies already deep into similar research and didn’t want our study to be redundant. Another reason was that the nature of some of these potential studies would be hard to pinpoint needing similar parameters like the ones we used in our final focus. Elements that we thought we may look into when going through the data were: number of songwriters, if there was an increase or decrease in number of males vs females of both songwriters and song performers, concrete vs abstract nouns, slang/elisions, more common themes such as love, violence, drugs, among others and word counts.

Going into this study with no clear specifications for what we were looking for kept the possibilities of what we would find and what we could look for open as it was in Callaghan’s study mentioned above. In many ways we feel this helped us find patterns that otherwise may have been overlooked had we gone into it with more of a hypothesis and conceptions about the data. That possible limitation may have lessened the options for new discoveries that could have significant applications in education settings. The break down used in this study was to categorize each song under one type of writing style using multiple parameters, set and described below, that would best describe elements found within the songs and from there graph the results to see if there was an increase of one writing style type over others through the years as indicator of shifts in popularity within the music industry. Originally we used a total of three categories: narrative, straightforward, extended metaphor or metaphoric in theme. Because of the parameters not all songs were able to be placed directly into any of these and for that reason we felt the need to include a fourth, which was entitled simply, other. The parameters we set from each category are show below:

Narratives

●      Time passes or change in the narrator/subject

●      May contain beginning, middle, and end

●      May contain past, present, or future tense

●      Describes a string of events

●      Primary themes, such as: “Going on a journey, stranger comes to town”

Straightforward

●      No time passes except stream of conscience

●      Direct descriptions (what is, what could be, various ideas)

●      May/often have continuous change in concepts, ideas, images, theme, that don’t alway link to one another

●      May contain parts of a story but is done more in summary rather than the painting of a whole picture

Extended Metaphor/metaphoric

●      Metaphor or simile used and developed throughout the song and could be claimed as the focus or primary pitch

●      Uses terminology in congruence with a main metaphor/theme

●      May have straightforward parts but as a whole the theme is metaphoric

Other

●      Contains too much slang and/or obscure reference to be categorized or words found in no dictionary of any kind

●      Many that are in series cause detachment in overall meaning when grouped phrase to phrase

           

            The parameters we set were not complete at the start of our study but were rather developed to better incapsulate elements that became troubling for song placement. The methods used were individual classifications after developing these standard set of parameters allowed an easier way to identify commonalities among the lyrics. These parameters in turn lessoned the occurances of difference of placement opinion between the two of us resulting in more reliable trends through the agreement and stability of song placement which ultimately gives more credibility to our data. Going through each song individually, working together at the same time, we placed each of them according to the customized parameters outlined above. Should a song not fall under the same category after we had both finished reading it we would discuss why we felt the way we did. This lead to a possible misunderstanding of the lyrics either by the words used within them or if a song contained many of the parameters from multiple categories. How we resolved this was to look up words, many being slang that we would often use the Urban Dictionary to define or attempt to find an existing analysis or synopsis on the song to better help our understanding behind the true meaning behind the lyrics. Luckily, we were in agreement of most of the songs and only had to resort to this further exploration a handful of times.

            We adapted some deviation from the general definition of metaphor or extended metaphor and narrative to help differentiate from the straightforward category. The “May have straightforward parts but as a whole the theme is metaphoric” option under metaphor and the “May contain parts of a story but is done more in summary rather than the painting of a whole picture” found in the straightforward category helped to find more unity with some of the opposing opinions the two of us had with some of the songs. Though the lyrics were simple in nature and could be seen as straightforward the overarching theme contained metaphoric or narrative qualities too strong to be overlooked and often placed it into contrary categories. An example of these were One Republic’s “Apologize” and 21 Pilots’ “Stressed Out.” If looking at “Stressed Out,” lyrics such as “I wish I found some better sounds no one’s ever heard/I wish I had a better voice that sang some better words/I wish I found some chords in an order that is new/I wish I didn't have to rhyme every time I sang,” which seem to be pretty straightforward in nature but if you continue reading the lyrics in the songs the reason for these comments are done so through many more moments of compilation based on how the singer is reminiscing on how it was in the past. There are two lines of transition into this change in focus with the lyrics, “I was told when I get older all my fears would shrink/

But now I’m insecure and I care what people think.” In these two lines we can see a passage of time and a change in character because of it through the singers memories. This is also indicated by several other stanzas that follow with lyrics like, “We used to play pretend, give each other different names/We would build a rocket ship and then we'd fly it far away/Used to dream of outer space but now they're laughing at our face/Saying, ‘Wake up, you need to make money,’” which then give the story behind the aforementioned stanza and, therefore, is more definitively classified as narrative.

After finding a means to help solidify classification through our parameters which helped in some occasions of poor interrater reliability, we realized what also made agreement a challenge at times—the unforeseen variable of college degree study between us. We suspect the necessary additions to the parameters were in large due to our chosen college studies. One being an engineering major, the other an English major, both being very different in academic focus and course qualifications. Our own personal educational conditioning and experience may have hindered our personal selection of categories for some songs, the English major having higher qualifications in seeing patterns that may be more metaphoric or narrative and the engineering major seeing words more for what they are and less specialized for seeing underlying meanings of them and word phrases.

We looked at each song through these categories more as a macro overarching trend within each song rather than analyzing on a micro level by word for word phrase. This is a deviation from the more micro approach found in a 2017 study by Yasunori Nishina of Kobe Gakuin University entitled “A Study of Pop Songs based on the Billboard Corpus” which looks at the number of occurrences of words within the lyrics (126) along with their correlation to the sex of the performer and the possible implication of multiple reference to each word in affiliation to that gender (132). For our study the commonalities we chose to focus on was the relationships between overall writing style types and the sex of those that write them, as well as those overarching themes and their positions in popularity over the years. From this we can draw conclusions on student interest, as one of the primary targets and consumers of the music industry, through the trends we found here.

Similar to other studies using the same data set either in part or in excess to our chosen set, looking at both the meaning behind lyrics and number of producers was an element in the study we present here. Going further than previous studies, we chose to instead take into consideration possible trends behind popularity and the sex of songwriters versus the sex of song performers which has been documented by studies such as Nishina’s mentioned above. We feel the songwriters and their contribution to the song elements under our categories of which we found as prevalent among most of the songs are of more importance in a writing study. These categories were selected based on principle creative written forms studied and developed in many English courses in academic settings which include: narrative, extended metaphor or metaphoric in nature, straightforward and one for the rare instance of a song not finding its way on surface interpretation into any of the other three which we titled “other.”

 

Findings

Our coding and use of literary parameters were implemented to find specific trends pertaining to changes within the Billboard Top 10. Initially, our goal was to gain an insight into how these changes fluctuate due to song production and possible societal influences. Since the Billboard Top 100 lists are well documented as far as production and how they were compiled, we were able to conduct a fairly straightforward analysis of the dataset.

Although[1]  our categories and parameters thereof did not deviate much beyond slight alterations when exploring our dataset and troubleshooting external deviations from initial specifications, we did feel that the first three categories were not enough to incorporate all songs when some varied so drastically from any of the set parameters. Due to this, a fourth category was incorporated to include, rather than to dismiss, some songs of which indicated no connection by either of us to those set parameters. This allowed us to keep all songs within our study. 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 1

            Figure 1 represents the percentage of female vs male songwriters among the top ten songs in each of the ten years researched. As indicated from the top averages there were far more male songwriters than female. This shows a very large gap between the two which may have significance in various studies pertaining to the reasons for popularity because of the general styles used predominantly among writers of those sexes. There is a slight increase in male songwriters (around 0.3%) and a slight decrease in female songwriters of the same amount. This change seems to have no immediate impact on our analysis other than to show that songwriters are typically male. Though we did not have the means to explore this trend further, a larger dataset may provide additional insight into the role of songwriters and thematic trends, and may be in correlation to the trends in writing styles show below if explored further.

 

Figure 2

            In Figure 2 using the 100 songs we complied, we found that there was only a slight increase in the number of producers over the ten year period only averaging up with a 0.4 deviation in number. This change did not illuminate any true insight for the present study but may be used to have greater significance in another type of study. Again, a larger dataset could reveal greater trend significance; however, our limited dataset provided no new meaningful insights in this area. 

 

 

 

 

Figure 3

Figure 3 shows the average number of songwriters per year where each year represents ten songs. From the time range we studied we can conclude that there has been an increase in the number of songwriters by a margin of around 1.5 additional writers. [2] Though there have been far less female writers in the past ten years than males songwriters, we were unable to find a link between the gender difference and the trends of song lyrics styles using the methodology we employed. This slight increase in songwriters could be a direct influence on the current decline in straightforward writing styles; however, our dataset gives no clear answer as to how strong that influence is. Given that it is only a 1.5 increase in songwriters compared to a 40% decrease in straightforward lyrics (listed below in figure 4), we must conclude that societal factors play a larger role in determining the direction of future writing style trends.

 

Figure 4

            The data found in Figure 4 is the primary focus of this study using the three types of writing styles that were explored along with the fourth that was created in order to keep all songs within our writing sample that we were unable to place with any certainty among the other three. This variation in songs is explained in the methodology and the above findings. From this chart we can see that there has been a significant decrease in overall straightforward song lyrics, a slight increase in narrative lyrics, and high variation of average among songs containing more extended metaphor or metaphoric lyrics. From a graphical analysis, we found no clear indication as to why straightforward lyrics are declining and being replaced by narrative themes.

The slight increase in songwriters might play a role in why these lyrical themes are chosen—a higher number of songwriters essentially provides more input on what each writers deems desirable for societal consumption. However, drastic changes in lyrical themes cannot be clearly attributed to a small increase in songwriters at this time. Any type of meaningful correlation would need a greater sample size in both year range and songs per year.   [3] 

 

Limitations

 

Due the scale and variation of data out there in regards to the top songs by year in popular music this study was limited to a more manageable database which may in turn diminish the possible findings should it have been expanded further into those charts and not limited to the top ten. Had we studied the top 100 songs of each year or included samples from an extended time frame, perhaps twenty-five years instead of only ten, our results may have had more fluctuation and shown a greater shift in writing styles. Over the course of decades and shifts in music popularity, taking a view from the perspective we have taken here may show more prominent shifts that could also steer songwriters into considering other styles than the ones they tend to lean, which in turn may help their success within that field.

There may also be a limitation to this study by the primary focus of our categories. We did our best to follow the set of parameters that we created to categorize each song but in doing so we found that there were songs that either contain prominent elements in many categories or that we found difficult to place since many lyrics, like poetry and other creative written forms, are subject to speculation based on the reader’s personal interpretation. One possible correction to this problem would be to have a panel of people categorizing the songs based on these same parameters. By increasing the number of participants with access the dataset and then taking the greater average of placement of each song would diminish interrater reliability. No one song will ever be fully interpreted the same way but with a greater number of surveyors answers may show more uniform results.

Another possible limitation of this study was a traceable link between trends through placement of somewhat subjective categories and indication that each have an impact on song popularity through sales, and the potential impact advertisement alone has on such high placement within these top song charts. It is also true that we looked at lyrics exclusively which leaves out the increase of popularity from the audible aspect of music. Breaking the primary two elements of music, being in the case of all the songs we studied—vocalized words and musical notations, and only making a study on one half in of itself may be construed as large hole within our study. Should another study be performed that has a way to make links between both musical notation in conjunction to spoken lyrics, regardless of placing them under similar categories may reveal quantifiable data that may prove interesting and useful.

 

Possible Further Studies

When researching the top ten songs from the past ten years starting in 2017 back to 2008 we found that many trends could be seen, but what our study lacked was the history of the song writers writing experiences and academic training prior to the development of these songs. What this means is we were unable to explore the possible correlations between what was the primary focus of study by these writers and the lyrics they had success in producing. Had we been able to track such information revealing connection to writing academic study and what finds its way into popularity, may reveal the possible need for change of focus in some writing studies. In short, what students are listening to and what they are asked to learn, may be in opposition to one another and may damage student learning processes. A more in depth study in these possibilities using similar categorical break downs may benefit institution consideration of course focuses, the economic gains of written forms under such categories, and the relationship students have to the written work of which they are asked to produce in these school settings. This study may also reveal a way to predict future lyrical trends in popularity with a connection to these writing styles. This could help the industry in knowing what to expect in the future if it was based on expanded research replicated using this study but going further back in musical history or wider in the top charts than simply the top 10. In the future, we feel that further studies using these types of categorical differentiations may reveal trends that have not been fully explored within the musical enterprise. Should the data set be expanded, we feel confident that these increases and decreases will vary further even if our set of parameters are used or altered.

 

           

Conclusion

While we did find some interesting trends within the music industry over the last decade, we were unable to find any meaningful correlation within the data we used for analysis. We were, however, able to show a rise in producers, average number of songwriters, as well as male songwriters. Furthermore, from this study we conclude there has been an increase in narrative style lyrics and a decrease of more straightforward styles. There has also been great fluctuation in metaphoric themes over the last ten year period. As a result, we suspect that the increase in producer and songwriter roles in music production has some type of impact on theme changes based on our dataset, though it is likely minimal. Nonetheless, as previously mentioned, a larger dataset would be needed for future research in order to gauge whether these trends are, in fact, a result of changes in song production or societal influences.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Work Cited

Christenson, Peter, Donald F. Roberts, and Nicholas Bjork. "Booze, drugs, and pop music: Trends in substance portrayals in the Billboard top 100—1968–2008." Substance use & misuse 47.2 (2012): 121-129. Accessed 1 May. 2018.

Eng, Kenneth T. Identifying the impact of major cultural events on general music consumption habits in the United States. Diss. San Diego State University, 2015. Accessed 1 May. 2018.

Flynn, Mark, et al. "Objectification in Popular Music Lyrics: An Examination of Gender and Genre Differences." Sex Roles, vol. 75, no. 3/4, Aug. 2016, pp. 164-176. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s11199-016-0592-3. Accessed 1 May. 2018.

Frith, Simon, ed. Popular music: Critical concepts in media and cultural studies. Vol. 2. Psychology Press, 2004. Accessed 1 May. 2018.

Lafrance, Marc, et al. "Gender and the Billboard Top 40 Charts between 1997 and 2007." Popular Music & Society, vol. 34, no. 5, Dec. 2011, pp. 557-570. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/03007766.2010.522827. www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100. Accessed 1 May. 2018.

“Music: Top 100 Songs | Billboard Hot 100 Chart.” Billboard, www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100. Accessed 1 May. 2018.

Nishina, Yasunori. “Ljournal.ru/Wp-Content/Uploads/2017/03/a-2017-023.Pdf.” International Journal of Language and Linguistics , June 2017, doi:10.18411/a-2017-023. Accessed 21 April. 2018.

O'Callaghan, Clare C. “Lyrical Themes in Songs Written by Palliative Care Patients”, Journal of Music Therapy, Volume 33, Issue 2, 1 July 1996, Pages 74–92, doi.org/10.1093/jmt/33.2.74 Accessed 3 May. 2018.

Tough, David T. "An Analysis of Common Songwriting and Production Practices in 2014-2015 Billboard Hot 100 Songs." MEIEA Journal 17.1 (2017): 79-120. Accessed 1 May. 2018.

“Urban Dictionary, May 3: Tfti.” Urban Dictionary, www.urbandictionary.com/. Accessed 3 May. 2018.

White, Annika Y. A Content Analysis of Popular Themes and Sexuality in Rap and Reggae Music. Pullman, Wash: Washington State University, 2010. Accessed 1 May. 2018.