Songs tell a story: The Arc of narrative for music

Research suggests that a core lexical structure characterized by words that define plot staging, plot progression, and cognitive tension underlies written narratives. Here, we investigate the extent to which song lyrics follow this underlying narrative structure. Using a text analytic approach and t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2024-05, Vol.19 (5), p.e0303188-e0303188
Main Authors: Alberhasky, Max, Durkee, Patrick K
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biology and Life Sciences
Computational linguistics
Computer and Information Sciences
Datasets
Dictionaries
Genre
Humans
Language
Language processing
Lyrics
Motion pictures
Music
Musical performances
Musicians & conductors
Narration
Narratives
Natural language interfaces
Plot (Narrative)
Problem solving
Psychology
Rap music
Social Sciences
Song
Storytelling
Text analysis
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Summary:Research suggests that a core lexical structure characterized by words that define plot staging, plot progression, and cognitive tension underlies written narratives. Here, we investigate the extent to which song lyrics follow this underlying narrative structure. Using a text analytic approach and two publicly available datasets of song lyrics including a larger dataset (N = 12,280) and a smaller dataset of greatest hits (N = 2,823), we find that music lyrics tend to exhibit a core Arc of Narrative structure: setting the stage at the beginning, progressing the plot steadily until the end of the song, and peaking in cognitive tension in the middle. We also observe differences in narrative structure based on musical genre, suggesting different genres set the scene in greater detail (Country, Rap) or progress the plot faster and have a higher rate of internal conflict (Pop). These findings add to the evidence that storytelling exhibits predictable language patterns and that storytelling is evident in music lyrics.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0303188