1. Eminem - 8,818 unique words
2. Jay Z - 6,899
3. Tupac - 6,569
4. Kenye West - 5,069
5. Bob Dylan - 4,883
It should be noted that many artist/writers like Bruce Springsteen don't make the list because they haven't granted permission for Musixmatch to use their lyrics.
There have been other studies that have looked at parameters like lyric density and intervals between new words, but this is the first to check overall vocabulary size.
The study looked at 93 top artists across 25 different genres that ranged from pop to new age.
Personally, I'd just prefer to listen and not analyze. Do you think songwriter vocabulary matters?
4 comments:
I think different things matter to different people for different reasons and even at different times. I enjoy large vocabularies in hip hop/rap, but I prefer complex ideas broken down into simple concepts and words for most songs, especially pop. Then again, I like surprises too.
Art is about simplification. If you can say something profound with simple language and few words, THAT is impressive.
Nobody counts the colors used in a painting.
As the previous commentator stated I agree songwriting is the art of communicating with the least amount of words. this practice can be very difficult to do at times. But so many words and syllables can fit into a given measure. Breaking up the words to fit into a given melody is the challenge. Cramming a lot of words destroy often times destroy melody and in music melody and rhythm is king.
I'm sorry, did I miss something? Since when has (c)rap ever qualified as music?
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