Does Songwriter Vocabulary Matter?

In a study looking at the largest vocabularies in the music industry, it seems that rappers take the cake. The Musixmatch lyric site found that 4 out of the top 5 largest songwriter vocabularies come from rap. Here's what they found.

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.

In the grand scheme of things, this matters little to the listener and is far from a factor in determining a hit, but you can look at it as a gauge of the intelligence of the writer. On the other hand, Julio Iglecious, Celine Dion, Mariah Carey and Andrea Bocelli also rank high, and no one has ever accused their songs of catering to intellectuals.

Personally, I'd just prefer to listen and not analyze. Do you think songwriter vocabulary matters?

---

Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this blog at no cost to you (just click here).