Lyrical Notes
Allison Wong, Ien Whang, Kelly Heaney
Prelude
The Billboard Hot 100 is the music industry standard record chart in the United States for singles, where chart rankings are based on sales, radio plays, and online streaming. It has been around since the August 4, 1958, and the first song to be in the coveted number one spot was Ricky Nelson’s “Poor Little Fool”. The current number one song is "Nice for What" by Drake.
*Cue Dramatic Music*
Narrator with deep radio voice:
Like all things that have stood the test of time, the Billboard Hot 100 has stories to tell. It has seen the coming of generational talents, the rise and fall of one-hit wonders, the soundtrack of pivotal socio-political movements, and the timeless legacy of icons.
The Hot 100 tells the story of the human experience, because it is less about how we found the songs we love, and more about how the songs we love found us. It tells the story of change, and it tells the story of constants.
So with the data that we’ve compiled of Billboard’s weekly Hot 100 charts from 1990 to 2015, and the lyrics of all songs that featured on the chart in between that time period, we hope to tell that very story.
*Music Fades Out*
Let’s get to it then.
First appearance:
Number of appearances:
The chart shows how each artist’s success accumulated over time, and looking the trajectories, it’s clear that there’s no single route to the top.
In Taylor Swift’s case, it was her succession of dropping pop anthems that spent extended periods on the charts that propelled her to the top in a relatively short period of time. In Mariah Carey’s case, it was the occasional soul-bearing ballad—and her eternal christmas jingle—that set up her steady rise and explosive comeback.
But how has the music changed?
In our research, we came across a visualization on pudding.cool that was about repetition in the pop music industry, and it made us wonder if there could be similar trends present in the data we possessed.
We decided to start with the number of unique words in a song, expecting to see a general decrease over time. But, contrary to what we thought, the number of unique words in a song did not actually vary much. Instead, what we did find, that was interesting, were the songs that did have the highest vocabularies.
What we did find interesting, however, was that the songs on the higher end of thevocabulary spectrum are songs that have lengthy rap sections like Thrift Shop (in the upper right hand corner), Gold Digger, and Get Low. Hover over each circle on the chart to see that song’s title, artist, vocabulary count, and number of appearances on the Hot 100.
Following that train of thought, we wanted to visualise the usage of specific words over time with the idea that the words used might give us an insight into the pop culture. So we modified our data, selected some of the most frequently used words, charted them, and was rewarded with some interesting results.
If you’re wondering how the usage of other words varied, simply input your favorite word (or name, or slang) in the search bar to the right and if it’s among the 46,193 unique words that we’ve rostered, the graph will output your word’s usage over time.
Postlude
While we are pleased with the insights that we’ve managed to extract from the data, we are disappointed that we didn't get to explore our many other gorgeous ideas—as told by the teardrops on (our) guitar.
In our wildest dreams, we would loved to have visualize the characteristics of popular music genres, and perhaps even tracked Taylor Swift’s emotional state with sentiment analysis, seeing if it coincided with her numerous makeups and (not so) delicate breakups. But for now, this is the end game and some blank spaces will suffice. We’ll shake it off and maybe down the road begin again.