If there is one word you are going to come across quite a bit today, it's super. So I might as well contribute something to that tally. Here, I do so by looking at English compounds* with the word super in them as they are found in songs from Billboard's year-end Top Ten charts (1951-2015).

First, the words and their frequency of occurrence, both in the number of songs they appear in, and the number of times in the collection in total:

Fig. 1: Super compounds in songs from Billboard's year-end Top Ten charts, by number of song they appear in, and number of times total in collection (Lamont Antieau, wordwatching.org) — Fig. 1: *Super* compounds in songs from Billboard's year-end Top Ten charts, by number of song they appear in, and number of times total in collection (Lamont Antieau, wordwatching.org)

As illustrated by Figure 1, there were 10 different super compounds used in the collection. Superman and supersonic are the only types that occur in more than two songs in the collection; super bass is only used in one song (can you guess the name of it?), but is used the most times in the collection.

Figure 2 shows how the use of super has changed over time in the collection.

Fig. 2: The frequency of super compounds over time in the collection, but number of songs and number of tokens (Lamont Antieau, wordwatching.org) — Fig. 2: The frequency of *super* compounds over time in the collection, but number of songs and number of tokens (Lamont Antieau, wordwatching.org)

As shown, super compounds never appear in songs from the 1950s, '60s, and '80s in the collection, but do in the 1970s, in "The Streak" and "Dancing Machine":

In 1990, a super compound appears in "Vogue," a song that I feel I should post here since it has come up in two posts in a row (see my post from yesterday on royal titles in pop music here):

In 2005, the compound Super Bowl is used in "Gold Digger" (2005):

And, finally, a song that apparently accurately represents the use of the word super in music in the current decade, "Super Bass" (2011):

Well you probably don't need me to tell you this, but have a Superday!

(And for a super word search, click here.)

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* I'm using the concept of compound rather loosely here: for this exercise, it is two words used together, with or without an intervening space (in their written form, as in the texts used here), one of which is super. Thus, super bad and superman are analyzed here, but superstitious is not.