Is Popular Music Getting Dumber?

New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Writer Andrew Powell-Morse carried out a study on the SeatSmart blog where he used the Readability Score that analyses writing to create an average US reading level of a piece of text. After analysing 225 songs that had spent at least three weeks at number one on the Billboard charts for pop, country, rock, or hip-hop for any given year, he found that over the last 10 years third graders would not have struggled with the lyrics of the most popular songs.

What was interesting however is that lyrics appear to have dumbed down over the years. In 2005, chart-toppers read between a third and fourth grade level, but a decade later that average has declined fast. Last year's Billboard number one singles averaged between a second and third grade reading level, with the trend declining steadily over the last 10 years.

Additionally, the grade score takes into account the number of syllables words have, and as words such as hallelujah, cigarettes and tacklebox are fairly commonplace in country music it has a clear advantage over other genres.

This data shows that the number of words in a song does not necessarily mean that it is automatically more sophisticated: Kanye West has the longest songs, with an average of over 800 words and yet only achieves a reading grade level of 2.8 - essentially, he's talking a lot and not saying much.

Of the 225 songs that Powell-Morse analysed, Ke$ha scored the worst of any of the major artists by a large margin, with an average grade level of just 1.5, although with lyrics such as "everybody getting crunk, crunk, boys tryin' to touch my junk, junk", is that really surprising?