“Words of nuance, words of skill/Words of romance are a thrill/Words are stupid, words are fun/Words can put you on the run…”
What are words worth? So asked pop band Tom Tom Club in their 1981 hit, Wordy Rappinghood. For some stars, a big vocabulary is priceless. Singer-songwriters from Patti Smith to Nick Cave have built careers with songs whose rich language is as important as the music. We wondered if today’s chart-toppers used such a diverse word set.
We already know that some Hip Hop artists have access to a breathtaking array of expressions. But what about other contemporary stars?
WordTips 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.
Image Credit: .
Methodology
The list of Modern Stars was defined as Spotify’s most listened-to singers, as recorded by Kworb. The Legends were collated from Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Singers of All Time list.
To count the number of words and unique words used by each singer, lyrics for all their self-penned songs were pulled using Genius API. Only singers with at least 25 songs where they had writing credits were included.
We then used a language-processing algorithm called “tokenization” to identify the number of unique words across the corpus of each singers’ discography. In total, 17,667 songs written by 156 singers were analyzed.
For singers that are/were part of bands, both their solo tracks and the songs performed by their bands were analyzed for writing credits. Songs with duplicate names, remixes, live versions of studio-recorded songs, etc., have all been removed from the dataset, along with unreleased albums and tracks.
Data was collected in May 2021.
Image Credit: DepositPhotos.com.
Which singers have the biggest vocabularies?
Since the days of opera, music has been telling stories of love, loss and everything in between. Legendary singers carried on the art of lyricism and took it into new territories, but are modern artists less imaginative with their wordplay and use? We decided to find out.
We compared the discographies of 100 modern pop stars and Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Singers of All Time – excluding songs where they didn’t have writer credits – to discover the vocalists with the highest frequency of unique words among their self-penned tracks.
Below are the artists ranked by the number of unique words per 1,00 words.
Image Credit: istockphoto.
50. Steve Tyler
Unique words: 125
Image Credit: Abog / Wiki Commons.
49. Bazzi
Unique words: 127
Image Credit: Jean_Nelson/ DepositPhotos.
48. Roy Orbison
Unique words: 128
Image Credit: David Shoenfelt / Wiki Commons.
47. Marvin Gaye
Unique words: 129
Image Credit: Edward Bailey / Wiki Commons.
46. Morrissey
Unique words: 129
Image Credit: Caligvla / Wiki Commons.
45. Bob Dylan
Unique words: 130
Image Credit: .
44. David Bowie
Unique words: 130
Image Credit: .
43. Bono
Unique words: 131
Image Credit: Peter Neill / Wiki Commons.
42. Lou Reed
Unique words: 131
Image Credit: Man Alive! / Wiki Commons.
41. Steve Perry
Unique words: 131
Image Credit: Joe Mabel / Wiki Commons.
40. James Arthur
Unique words: 133
Image Credit: Vinch / Wiki Commons.
39. James Taylor
Unique words: 133
Image Credit: Paul Keleher / Wiki Commons.
38. Kevin Parker
Unique words: 133
Image Credit: Raph_PH / Flickr.
37. Steve Winwood
Unique words: 133
Image Credit: Gorup De Besanez / Wikimedia Commons.
36. Annie Lennox
Unique words: 134
Image Credit: Britt Berger / Wiki Commons.
35. Joji
Unique words: 134
Image Credit: Samuel Kenwright / Flickr.
34. Neil Young
Unique words: 134
Image Credit: Raph_PH / Flickr.
33. SZA
Unique words: 134
Image Credit: Fuse Box Radio / Flickr.
32. Alessia Cara
Unique words: 135
Image Credit: Ted Eytan / Wiki Commons.
31. Rod Stewart
Unique words: 137
Image Credit: s_bukley/ DepositPhotos.
30. Anderson .Paak
Unique words: 138
Image Credit: The Come Up Show / Flickr.
29. John Fogerty
Unique words: 138
Image Credit: s_bukley/ DepositPhotos.
28. Sam Cooke
Unique words: 138
Image Credit: RCA Victor Records / Wiki Commons.
27. Chris Stapleton
Unique words: 140
Image Credit: Library of Congress Life.
26. Kali Uchis
Unique words: 140
Image Credit: Ralph Arvesen / Flickr.
25. Tom Waits
Unique words: 140
Image Credit: Gut (Anna Wittenberg) / Wiki Commons.
24. Kurt Cobain
Unique words: 141
Image Credit: Julie Kramer / Wiki Commons.
23. Iggy Pop
Unique words: 142
Image Credit: magicinfoto / Deposit Photos.
22. Chuck Berry
Unique words: 143
Image Credit: Joop van Bilsen / Anefo / Wiki Commons.
21. Sly Stone
Unique words: 143
Image Credit: Flickr / Jonas Nockert.
20. Gregg Allman
Unique words: 144
Image Credit: Andrea Klein / Flickr.
19. Muddy Waters
Unique words: 146
Image Credit: Lionel Decoster / Wiki Commons.
18. Freddie Mercury
Unique words: 148
Image Credit: Carl Lender / Wiki Commons.
17. Don Henley
Unique words: 149
Image Credit: Derek Russell / Flickr.
16. Janelle Monae
Unique words: 149
Image Credit: Raph_PH / Flickr.
15. Lorde
Unique words: 149
Image Credit: benhoundijk / Deposit Photos.
14. Paul Rodgers
Unique words: 151
Image Credit: Beatle 93 / Wiki Commons.
13. Shakira
Unique words: 151
Image Credit: PopularImages/ DepositPhotos.
12. Thom Yorke
Unique words: 151
Image Credit: arp/ DepositPhotos.
11. Lizzo
Unique words: 153
Image Credit: benhoundijk / Deposit Photos.
10. Johnny Cash
Unique words: 158
Image Credit: DepositPhotos.com.
9. Bonnie Raitt
Unique words: 159
Image Credit: bossmoss/ DepositPhotos.
8. Harry Styles
Unique words: 159
Image Credit: Wirestock /Depositphotos.
7. Don Everly
Unique words: 163
Image Credit: Library of Congress.
6. Hank Williams
Unique words: 167
Image Credit: Public domain.
5. Billie Eilish
Unique words: 169
Image Credit: benhoundijk / Deposit Photos.
4. Jim Morrison
Unique words: 177
Image Credit: Elektra Records promotional image / Public Domain.
3. Bjork
Unique words: 197
Image Credit: Zach Klein / Wiki Commons.
2. Joni Mitchell
Unique words: 199
Image Credit: David Leyes / Wiki Commons.
1. Patti Smith
Unique words: 217
This article
originally appeared on Word.tips and was
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Image Credit: benhoundijk / Deposit Photos.
