A trend analysis on concreteness of popular song lyrics

Kahyun Choi, J. Stephen Downie

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Recently, music complexity has drawn attention from researchers in Music Digital Libraries area. In particular, computational methods to measure music complexity have been studied to provide better music services in large-scale music digital libraries. However, the majority of music complexity research has focused on audio-related facets of music, while song lyrics have been rarely considered. Based on the observation that most popular songs contain lyrics, whose different levels of complexity contribute to the overall music complexity, this paper investigates song lyric complexity and how it might be measured computationally. In particular, this paper examines the concreteness of song lyrics using trend analysis. Our analysis on the popular songs indicates that concreteness of popular song lyrics fell from the middle of the 1960s until the 1990s and rose after that. The advent of Hip-Hop/Rap and the number of words in song lyrics are highly correlated with the rise in concreteness after the early 1990s.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings of DLfM 2019
Subtitle of host publicationThe 6th International Conference on Digital Libraries for Musicology, a Satellite Event of ISMIR 2019
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages43-52
Number of pages10
ISBN (Electronic)9781450372084
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 20 2019
Event6th International Conference on Digital Libraries for Musicology, DLfM 2019, a Satellite Event of ISMIR 2019 - The Hague, Netherlands
Duration: Nov 9 2019 → …

Publication series

NameACM International Conference Proceeding Series

Conference

Conference6th International Conference on Digital Libraries for Musicology, DLfM 2019, a Satellite Event of ISMIR 2019
Country/TerritoryNetherlands
CityThe Hague
Period11/9/19 → …

Keywords

  • Concreteness of words
  • Readability
  • Song lyrics
  • Text complexity
  • Trend analysis

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
  • Computer Networks and Communications

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'A trend analysis on concreteness of popular song lyrics'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this