It was a rainy day here in Wilmington. Since it was the anniversary of Karen Carpenter's death, I was going to compare The Carpenters' Hot 100 lyrics to the lyrics from Billboard's year-end Top Ten for the 1970s as a whole, but then I saw the news that Maurice White from Earth, Wind and Fire had passed away. So I decided to take a look at both groups in this post: two great acts; huge hitmakers (The Carpenters had 11 songs in Billboard's year-end Hot 100, and Earth, Wind and Fire had 10); very different in many ways; and both able ambassadors of 1970s pop music.

Here are the 10 highest-ranking words for the 1970s; The Carpenters 11 Hot 100 songs; and Earth, Wind and Fire's 10 Hot 100 songs:

Some observations: When I had considered just analyzing The Carpenters' collection and comparing it to the 1970s, I thought the two collections would show very similar results, because who, I wondered, epitomized the 1970s more than The Carpenters? Well, in some ways, Earth, Wind and Fire, as shown in Figure 1.

Before I analyzed the lyrics of the two collections together, I speculated that it might be difficult to find two groups that were any more different: one being popular in the first half of the '70s, an easy listening duo with a relatively low-key onstage demeanor; the other popular in the latter half of the '70s (and into the '80s), a large funk band (at first, but a more diverse band you might hard-pressed to find), replete with horn section, a very flashy on-stage presence, and extravagant sets. Linguistic differences do indeed appear in their lyrics, as seen in Figure 1 (such as the high ranking of the nonce words ya and de in Earth, Wind and Fire's wordlist, probably a product of their dance numbers).

When I applied the stoplist (as discussed in an earlier post) to filter out function words, and omitted the nonce words as well, differences remained, as shown in the figure below:

Some of the notable differences in words that were used are perhaps the product of genre: The Carpenters' wordlist has several words suggesting the melancholia that can be associated with easy-listening music, especially that of the '70s, e.g. wait, hurting, hanging. On the other hand, the only word that comes close to that introspective state in the Earth, Wind and Fire wordlist is remember; otherwise the words are reflective of the dance orientation of many of their hit tunes: dance, boogie, groove. 

The two wordlists, however, also have words in common that are not in the 1970s set as a whole: sing and song. In the spirit of this commonality, I'd like to conclude this blog with Earth, Wind and Fire's "Sing a Song" (to complement The Carpenters' "Sing," which appears at the beginning of this post) and then videos for the two biggest songs for these acts (according to Billboard's year-end Hot 100 charts). Enjoy!

For a word search on the most frequent content words in the hit songs of The Carpenters and Earth, Wind, and Fire, click here.

*As was the case in my blog on Bowie and Frey, I ask that you disregard the influence a single song could obviously have on the single-group collections at this juncture (as shown by please, mister, postman for The Carpenters and shining and wonderland for Earth, Wind and Fire. (In time, I will be able to deal with that problem more efficiently, which will then be reflected in my analyses.)