wordwatching

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More on "work" in Top Ten music

In light of my recent analysis of the lyrics of the most popular music in the past year, I wanted to take a look at the lemma of work in Billboard's year-end Top Ten charts (1951-2016). Using all variant forms of the word (besides the compound firework and workout) revealed 166 uses of work forms, from a-working in 1963's "Sugar Shack" to the 89 uses of work in 2016's "Work." Thus, the total number of uses of the bare work form in the latter song is greater than all forms in the rest of the collection.

A few of my favorites from the collection of Top Ten work songs are as follows:

And a few others not in the collection:

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