Abstract
Billboard magazine has been keeping track of the 100 hottest (most popular) songs of the year since 1958. Lists of the Hot 100 titles from 1960 to 2019 (6001 titles) were used to study the way in which popular song titles changed over time. Based on significant polynomial regression trends and significant results from a discriminant function analysis, it is concluded that there were three main phases in titles (early, middle, and late) and that these phases differ in predictable manners in terms of stylistic features such as length, abstraction, activity, and the use of the word “love”. Early phase titles are longer, more concrete, more passive, and they do not use the word “love” often; middle phase titles are of medium length, more abstract, of medium activation, and use the word “love” frequently. Titles of the last phase are shorter, more concrete, more active, and do not often employ the word love. A possible factor contributing to these differences is the rise in popularity of rock and roll and hip-hop respectively and their different periods of ascendency.
Highlights
This article describes how titles of popular songs have changed across time from 1960 to 2019
Beall concludes that popular song titles should be three of four words long, that they should be unique, that they should be found within the song itself, and that they should be expressed in the second rather than the first or third person, i.e., they should speak about “you” rather than “I” or “she/he”. 1.3 Why would we Expect Titles to Change across Time? It is probably not time itself but factors associated with time that are responsible for changes in the titles of popular songs
4.3 Conclusions In one approach to understanding changes in popular song titles over a sixty-year range, we can envision the sixty years as being underpinned by three phases
Summary
This article describes how titles of popular songs (represented by the songs on the Billboard Hot 100 charts) have changed across time from 1960 to 2019. Titles are assigned at the time of a song’s publication and used to represent the song in charts, on the radio, on television and on streaming and downloading platforms This means that a title is an identifier of a song (a “handle”): it is an indication of the song’s contents (a “summary”). Many critics and analysts agree that by 2010 rock and roll was supposedly “dead”, and that it had been replaced by other popular genres such as disco, pop, metal, grunge, and new metal All of these genres arrived on the scene during the 60 years studied, as did hip-hop. The research described below aims to outline how the titles of popular songs have changed over the last 60 years; the author discusses one possible contributing factor to the changes observed
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
