A Canadian company using artificial intelligence tools Genius Education We analyzed the lyrics of English songs by the best contemporary artists and popular musicians of the past decades, according to Billboard. As a result, it was possible to find out whose compositions are distinguished by the greatest variety of words and therefore provide more food for the mind.

10 songs of each artist representing different musical genres were included in the study. These include rock, metal, pop, country, rhythm and blues (or R’n’B), rap and others (15 in total). Experts evaluated the emotional color of the texts as well as the richness of the lexical content and found frequently repeated words.

Among musicians of all genres, the British band Black Sabbath, often cited as one of the pioneers of the heavy metal direction, became the leader in vocabulary diversity. Another cult rock band from Britain shared the first place with it. Pink Floyd. The lexical richness of both texts was estimated at 52%.

Also on the list of 20 bands and individual musicians are American metal bands Slayer and Megadeth, Icelandic-Chinese jazz singer Laufey, American singer Bruce Springsteen, legendary 60s songwriter-performer Bob Dylan, rock band Eagles and others.

Analysis broken down by genre showed that the greatest lexical content is characteristic of compositional texts in the “metal” direction. This is followed by rock, country, rap, R’n’B, pop and electronic dance music.

Taking into account the temporal component, it turns out that the highest vocabulary diversity – 38% is characteristic of song texts of the 70s, and the lowest – 29% is characteristic of compositions of the 90s of the XX century. Interestingly, since the early 2000s, the situation began to improve, and in the 2020s the indicator increased to 34%.

Looking at the frequency of words in songs from different artists and genres, researchers found that the five most popular were “love,” “know,” “time,” “good” and “wish.”

Analysis of the emotional tonality of lyrics helped to reveal that the lyrics of artists in the metal genre have the most negative mood, despite their high intellectuality. Pop and country emerged as the most positive genres.

Among individual musicians, the first place in terms of positive songs was taken by American singer Marvin Gaye, and in terms of negative songs, the above-mentioned group Slayer.

Because Prodigy Education specializes in education technology and game-based learning software, the company surveyed 1,000 Americans to find out which genres are most productive for adults in the workplace and what their children like to listen to while studying.

Lo-fi hip-hop or chill-hop and the electronic music style called “ambient” turned out to be favorite genres for productive work. For kids, pop and rap topped the list.

Note that although the results of the Prodigy Education study have not been published in a peer-reviewed journal, scientific articles on such topics are not uncommon. For example, Austrian and German scientists have previously found that in recent years the lyrics of English songs have become simpler and more monotonous due to repeated words. But this is not surprising: in another study, researchers from Curtin University (Australia) found that the simpler the lyrics are for the listeners’ brains to perceive, the more popular they are and occupy the first places in the music charts.