Superheroes in pop music
There's been plenty of talk about superheroes among my students lately (well, truth be told, it's pretty constant fodder), with today's discussion centering around a site of superhero jokes that we came across. So, of course, I had to see what my lyric collections might contribute to future discussions. The Billboard year-end Top 30 collection (1951-2015) revealed several patterns in this regard.* First, one superhero in particular garnered far more attention than the others combined. Care to guess which one? Allow me:
Table 1. Individual superheroes mentioned in the Billboard year-end Top 30 charts (1951-2015) (Lamont Antieau, wordwatching.org)
Given the popularity of Superman in general, and of the value of super compounds in pop music lyrics more specifically (see my earlier post), this result shouldn't be too surprising. It should be noted that the names of Superman's and Batman's alter-egos were not found in the collection (although Lois Lane did appear in one song). I must admit that I was surprised, and a bit disappointed, not to find a single mention of Spiderman in the collection.
The analysis also revealed a more frequent use of the names of superheroes in recent decades, which is perhaps not surprising given the proliferation of superheroes in movies and other facets of pop culture in recent years:
Table 2: Frequency of superhero names in the Billboard year-end Top 30 charts (1951-2015) by decade (Lamont Antieau, wordwatching.org)
As Table 2 shows, the number of songs in the 2010s that mention at least one superhero is nearly double that of the total number from the 2000s. Only time will tell if the total number of instances will match that of the aughts.
In chronological order, the 10 Top 30 songs that make reference to superheroes, beginning with the excellent "Sunshine Superman" by Donovan:
And, last but certainly not least, the theme from the TV series Batman:
*This post was made possible by Dr. Clayton Darwin and the KwicKwic tool.