Singer-songwriters from the past have built their careers with songs are filled with rich language as important as the music. Now has that trend continued when it comes to today’s biggest chart toppers?
Wordtips decided to see if today’s biggest stars are as crafty with their vocabulary as those that proceeded them. Here is how they did it. According to Wordtips study, they counted the words used by 100 modern stars and the 100 greatest singers of all time and added up the number of unique words they used per 1,000.
They found that the top of the vocabulary list is dominated by legends, with an average vocab of 124 unique words per 1,000, whereas modern stars only had 107 unique words per 1,000. However, the study also found that both groups had about identical number of singers with vocabularies over 100.
Wordtips also found that the average for modern stars is dragged down due to a higher number of them have songwriter credits to their name. Another thing they found in the study was that modern female songwriters out preformed the men accounting for 7 of the top 10 spots with Billie Eilish leading the way with 169 unique words per 1,000. Ed Sheeran on the other hand was big hitter with his vocab 111/1,000 with three of his songs among the 20 songs with the most unique words.
Other findings included:
Patti Smith taking first overall with 217 unique words per 1,000.
Billie Eilish taking first amount modern stars with 169 per 1,000.
Legend Luther Vandross and modern star Trey Songz tied with the smallest vocab at 66.
The song with the most unique words is Lou Reed’s the Murder Mystery with 639 words.
Check the complete study out at word.tips/singer-vocabularies.
