Finally, what metalheads have always known has been scientifically proven.
Prodigy Education Company analyzed lyrics from popular artists of today and past decades to identify patterns in emotion and lexical complexity. The lexical diversity — i.e., the number of unique words used by a musician in their songs — helped determine which artists and genres have the richest vocabulary.
According to the results of the analysis, Black Sabbath was recognized as the smartest musicians in terms of the lexical diversity of their lyrics — 52%. Among music genres, metal ranks first by this criterion (41%), followed by rock and country (37% each).
Within the metal genre, after Black Sabbath, Slayer and Megadeth have become the most intelligent performers. When looking at music by decade, the highest level of lexical diversity was recorded in songs from the 1970s (38%), and the lowest in the 1990s (29%).
Marvin Gaye became the most positive artist in terms of emotional coloring of lyrics. Pop music in general also has an optimistic and life-affirming tone. At the same time, metal turned out to be the most negative genre, and Slayer was the darkest artist both within metal and among all the musicians studied.
The survey showed that more than 3 out of 5 people listen to music while working, note productivity, and 70% say it improves concentration. Among the favorite genres for workflow are Lo-Fi/Chillhop (92%) and ambient (91%). Jazz and classical music lovers were the most likely to receive a promotion at work (39%), while reggae and folk music fans were the leaders in terms of the number of salary increases (66% and 63% respectively).
Parents reported that children who listen to music while studying spend an average of 9 hours a week on their studies, and more than half of them (57%) have excellent grades. Pop music is the most popular among young music lovers (47%), but parents consider classical, jazz, and ambient music to be the best for concentration.
The researchers analyzed 10 songs by each artist from the charts Billboard and popular artists from different decades. NLTK’s VADER tool was used to analyze the emotional coloring of the texts, and the Open AI API was used to calculate the frequency of words. The survey on the influence of music on work and study performance involved 1000 Americans.