So I’m currently editing some new data that I’m looking forward to analyzing: lyrics from about 150 popular songs that describe nuclear warfare, extramarital affairs, body-shaming, public intoxication, arming young children with guns, animal abuse, child abuse, and acts of violence (including murder) committed against neighbors and officers of the law. Yep, it’s the Billboard year-end Hot 30 and 35 lists from 1946-1950.

Sure, it’s got some of the sappy and, often, beautiful songs one would expect from that era, and it also presents more than enough xenophobic, racist, and sexist attitudes than any right person could possible care for, but it also covers some unexpected territory, including some of the topics above, and one song from the collection is even named for the future wife of a Beatle, a member herself of the 1970s rock band Wings.

There is plenty of language of interest in the collection to keep a linguist busy, including a fair amount of Spanish, some Italian, and a sprinkling of French, some representations of Southern American and African American English, as well as some attempt at “Beatnik English.” A couple of my favorite linguistic features appear very frequently in the collection, namely a-prefixing and ain’t, which should give me reason to revisit those features and their use in pop music, as doing so is probably past due.

The collection is also noteworthy for the number of times the same songs occur throughout a given year or two. For instance, 1946 has 9 songs that appear as multiple versions in the top songs of that year, one of them by five different artists. This actually presents another area of interest for the linguist, as lyrics differ from version to version, some subtly, say by an insertion or a replacement of a pronoun or an adverb here or there, or an added line, but others much more radically, including different verses, or differences in verse and chorus ordering, or in the absence or presence of spoken or sung introductions to songs.

Really looking forward to getting in and messing around with the language of this set, and using it to expand my general lyric corpus.