Andrew Powell-Morse, a staffer at entertainment, sports, and ticket data blog SeatSmart, just compiled information on pop music lyrics over the past 10 years, and the results are pretty interesting.
He found that most of the lyrics from popular songs over the last decade average at around a third-grade reading level.
The Flesch-Kincaid test uses a formula that takes into account the number of words and syllables used in a passage and assigns a number based on a grade so it’s easy to understand. Basically, if a song gets a score of 4.2, that means your average fourth-grader would be able to comprehend it.
Powell-Morse only measured songs that spent at least three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard music charts. For genres, he looked at pop, country, rock, and R&B/hip-hop. After giving the songs punctuation, he plugged them into Readability-Score.com, which analyzes text.
Country music had the highest reading level of the genres, at 3.3 — which means your average third-grader can read and understand the lyrics.
Powell-Morse admitted that the study is partially flawed because it’s largely based on the way that artists in different genres write lyrics, with word length playing a big role:
Country is the only genre generally devoid of words like “oh” or “yeah” repeated 20 times in a row. Sorry everyone else, but if you say it in the song, it’s counted as a “lyric.”
But it’s also about the syllables. Country music is full of words like Hallelujah, cigarettes, hillbilly, and tacklebox. Add to that long place names like Cincinnati, Louisville, Mississippi, and Louisiana, and Country has a serious advantage over the competition.
Unfortunately for Pop and R&B/Hip-Hop, places like L.A. and New York just don’t score that many points. But take a song like Dani California, and you’ll see that throwing in the word “California” more than a dozen times can make a real difference.
The other genres’ reading level average was 2.9 for pop and rock, and 2.6 for R&B and hip-hop, all lower than a third-grade reading level.
Dancehall de a preschool level and quality ole school reggae de a highschool senior level.
PP
I think that reggae should be in a different category from dancehall. Reggae tends to have more positive qualities attached to its name, while dancehall music tends to have more of a raw underlying edge with its lyrics, and performers that could have either sexual/ political/ violent overtones coming from them. For example, when it comes to the overall contents of a good reggae performer, Beres Hammond would get a higher score because his songs are more decent and well – written, compared to Gage who would get a lower score from me as a dancehall performer, because his songs are not fit for airplay, and his performances are suitable to adults, and not children. So, a grade would depend on if its reggae or dancehall, and the type of song/performer.
Dats why mi stick wid Motown, jazz and classical. Dem nowadays music caan even hold up to a good 70s disco chune.
Stokey, Crazy Chris, Mikey B and T, Lovern, Shelly, and all di oddas over the best music station thank y’all for keeping a high standard wid di music unno play.