The decline of western civilization continues! Some intrepid data-crunchers over at Proofreader went through the pop charts from Billboard, going all the way back to the 1890s to determine the most common words in song titles by their uniqueness to the decade. For example, no one in the 1920s said disco, because disco has always been dead. Just kidding, no one knew what the hell disco was. Narrowing it down to a top five for each decade, the results might surprise you.
In the Leave It To Beaver era of the 1950s, people liked Christmas. The actual words “Christmas” and “Rednosed” make it into the top five. Timewarp all the way to the 2010s and things aren’t so sugar-and-spice-with-everything-nice. HELL YEAH WE FUCK DIE. Those are our words. Seriously. That really could be the rallying cry of our generation.
Other random thoughts from the results:
“Uncle” was a really popular word for two decades. What’s up with that?
In the 2010s we may want to Hell Yeah Fuck Die, but “we” makes its first appearance after two decades of “U” and “You.” Does that mean we are coming together? Or are just inserting ourselves into the equation more often?
Genres of music pop up in titles often throughout the decades: Rock, Polka, Disco, Mambo, Rag all show up. But for the last 30 years, genres have been absent. We have to start using music genres as verbs; it’s the only solution. I think Trap music lends itself most readily. We need Nicki Minaj to make song called Trapped In The Club.
If you like nerdy data you can see how it was processed here.
(Photo: Proofreader)
