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We explored themes related to sexual desire (lust) and romantic desire (love) in the lyrics of popular music over the past 40 years. We examined whether there have been changes in the prevalence of lust and love themes and changes in how these themes inter-relate in music lyrics over time. The study sample consisted of the top 40 songs of Billboard...
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Citations
... DeWall, Pond, Campbell, and Twenge (2011) reported that their analyses of pop songs from 1980-2007 revealed an increase over time in the use of certain words related to self-focus and antisocial behavior, and a decrease in words related to focus on others, social interactions and positive emotion. Still other studies revealed that over time (from 1959-2010) references to love and romantic relationships in song lyrics became less common, while references to sexual behavior and lust-in-the-absence-of-love became more common (Hall, West, & Hill, 2012;Madanikia & Bartholomew, 2014;Smiler, Shewmaker, & Hearon, 2017). Following a comprehensive analysis of song lyrics, Avery, Ward, Moss, and € Usk€ up (2017) concluded that representations of men as hypermasculine and of women as hyperfeminine sexual objects increased between 1990 and 2010, and these observations were most frequently identified in rap/hip-hop music. ...
Purpose
The purpose of this manuscript is to explore an assignment given to students in an online gender and leadership graduate course as a tool to help them think critically about how music influences perceptions of gender roles in both society and leadership.
Design/methodology/approach
The assignment directs students to review the current Billboard “Hot 100” chart, which lists the top 100 songs in the United States each week based on sales and streams. Students are prompted to identify a song with gendered themes and discuss how the song portrays women and/or men, what gender stereotypes the song supports or refutes, and whether the messaging is positive or negative in nature. Finally, the students discuss ways that the message in the song could influence the listener’s opinion about gender stereotypes and what effect that could have on gendered leadership issues.
Findings
Students use this assignment as an opportunity to apply the course material that relates to the importance of gender representation and the influence of media on gender issues in leadership.
Originality/value
Recommendations are provided to inspire creative ideas for leadership educators who seek to prepare students to understand organizational challenges related to gender issues in leadership.
... People around the world spend, on average, 18 hours listening to music each week (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, 2019), and 82% of U.S. adolescents listen to music every day (Rideout & Robb, 2018). References to sex and sexuality are common in popular music (Madanikia & Bartholomew, 2014;Smiler et al., 2017), yet these references often contain degrading or misogynistic themes (Frisby & Behm-Morawitz, 2019;Primack et al., 2008). Music also includes references to sexual consent communication, whereby singers ask for (e.g., "Do you wanna come home with me?"), assume (e.g., "I can tell you want to ****"), or provide consent (e.g., "I'll let you set the pace") for engaging in sexual activity (Johnson et al., 2017). ...
... These findings are somewhat inconsistent with previous research, which has found that music in the rap, R&B, and hip-hop genres contain the most references to degrading sex and that music videos from these genres contain the most sexually objectifying imagery (Aubrey & Frisby, 2011;Flynn et al., 2016). Moreover, previous work has found that sexualization and themes of lust have increased across genres in the past decades (Cougar Hall et al., 2012;Madanikia & Bartholomew, 2014). This trend may be especially apparent in pop music as the most mainstream genre relative to country and R&B/hip-hop. ...
Given that exposure to sexual messages in song lyrics can influence sociocultural norms and expectations surrounding consent communication between partners, we sought to understand the types of messages regarding sexual initiation and consent language that are available to media consumers. Through the lens of sexual script theory, we conducted a quantitative content analysis of sexual consent in pop (n = 197), hip-hop (n = 193), and country songs (n = 194) from 2016 to 2019. Differences in these messages were examined across singer gender, music genre, and time (pre- vs. post-#MeToo). Results indicated that references to sexual demands (e.g., "Strip that down") and sexual preferences (e.g., "I want it slow") were the most common types of sexual communication, appearing in approximately one-third of the singing parts included in the sample. Sexual suggestions (e.g., "Let's get nasty") and sexual requests (e.g., "Can I hit it?"), on the other hand, were the least common. References to inferred consent (e.g., "I can tell you wanna f***") appeared in approximately one-fifth of the singing parts. Both sexual demands and sexual preferences were more likely to appear in pop compared to hip-hop and country songs; however, these sexual communication messages did not significantly differ by male and female singers. Sexual requests were significantly more likely to appear in pre-#MeToo song lyrics. The messages embedded in popular songs may help to reinforce problematic scripts around sexual consent.
... It is appropriate to state that music has always been an inseparable entertaining and multi-purpose activity in everyday situations with endless positive outcomes, and even more now with the assistance of mobile phones, which have become an essential device with the potential to have a central place (Amali et al., 2012) in the lives of young people. However, for the last few years, an increase in the use of inappropriate language, in particular in song lyrics, (Schellenberg and Scheve, 2012;Madanikial and Bartholomew, 2014), has become a «must» to reach top charts, therefore affecting all means of communication and creating a hardous task for regulations to tackle in an interconnected world. Actually, lyrics have the potential to influence emotions (Taruffi and Koelsch, 2014) and why not, ethics. ...
... Besides, music awakes different emotions (Sloboda and Juslin, 2001). As stated by Schellenberg and Scheve (2012), popular music has become more «sad-sounding» with the passing of time and they have focused on lust, leaving the proportion of love behind (Madanikial and Bartholomew, 2014). This may affect intimate relationships as «the relationship between the body and sex is unambiguously portrayed in contemporary media (Aubrey, 2006), which is supported by the language mirroring social and psychological change« (DeWall et al., 2011). ...
... Music, young people and emotions MLC1: Music has changed over the last few years (Schellenberg and Scheve, 2012;(Madanikial and Bartholomew, 2014) MYPE2: Exposure and social standards (Coyne, 2011) MYPE3: Music as an influencer for behaviour (Hall et al., 2012) LEUEL: Level of English and understanding by L2 learners LEUEL1: English as a foreign language in primary and secondary schools in Spain (Alcaraz Varó, 2000: 14) LEUEL2: English to communicate globally Graddol (1997: 50) LEUEL3: Music stored on phones place (Amali et al., 2012) EEMB: Explicit music broadcasted assisted by globalisation EEMB1: Globalisation, an influential share for society (Graddol, 1997;Sampedro, 2002) EEMB2Rating systems Protection of minors in Spain (Law 7/2010, of March 31, on General Audiovisual Communication) EEMB3Education as key to select MEVFL: Modification of values due to mixed interest MEVFL1,3: Profanity in the language as a change in values (Sortheix et al., 2017) MEVFL2: Values´modification may reflect mixed interests in society (Schwartz, 1992) Considering the information in this section, five hypotheses can be drawn, whose direction is detailed in the model (see Table 3 The arrows in Figure 1 represent the path coefficients and reveal how relevant the effect of one latent variable is on the other, offering the possibility to rank statistical relevance (Wong, 2013). ...
Given the significant influence of the English language in most Spanish educational centres in Spain as well as on main top popular music charts in this country, and considering the current crisis of ethical values on a global level, the aim of this study was to primarily assess the level of parental concern related to explicit language in songs in the English language and relate its connection with own ethical values. The instrument used to collect data was a Likert-scale based questionnaire (with 5 response-options) following the hypotheses of this study (Behaviour and emotions of minors;
Level of English and understanding of the language, explicit music
broadcasted globally and modification of ethical values if in a foreign
language), which were defined through the structural equation model (SEM-PLS), a method recommended for studies in social sciences. A total of 160 responses were collected from parents/tutors claiming they had a lower-intermediate level of the English language and with children/students who were enrolled in different bilingual schools in Extremadura (Spain).
Results actually revealed a relaxed attitude towards ethical values
compromised by explicit language, should these be in a foreign language, therefore evidencing a different personal ranking of values in a foreign language.
... In relation to our research questions, most of the works on gender stereotypes and sexism in song lyrics have targeted popular songs using manual content analysis, which allows studying fine-grained constructs related to sexism such as objectification and sexualization [30,31]. These studies analysed popular songs from the 1960s to the 2000s showing that sexualization and mentions of sexual desire increased dramatically only after the 1990s, while mentions of love decreased. ...
... These studies analysed popular songs from the 1960s to the 2000s showing that sexualization and mentions of sexual desire increased dramatically only after the 1990s, while mentions of love decreased. This is interpreted as a signal of the increase of sexism in songs because lust in the absence of love is likely to objectify the object of the desire [30]. Other works consider both the differences between male and female artists and the gender of the target being objectified. ...
... Other works found similar observations, even though using different definitions or specific aspects related to sexual content. For example, some studies report an increase in sexual content and objectification of women in popular songs during the last five decades [30,32]. In a study limited to the year 2009, the top 10 song charts were shown to be more likely to contain sexual content if compared to songs from the same album by the same artist that did not enter the top 10 [50]. ...
We employ Natural Language Processing techniques to analyse 377,808 English song lyrics from the “Two Million Song Database” corpus, focusing on the expression of sexism across five decades (1960–2010) and the measurement of gender biases. Using a sexism classifier, we identify sexist lyrics at a larger scale than previous studies using small samples of manually annotated popular songs. Furthermore, we reveal gender biases by measuring associations in word embeddings learned on song lyrics. We find sexist content to increase across time, especially from male artists and for popular songs appearing in Billboard charts. Songs are also shown to contain different language biases depending on the gender of the performer, with male solo artist songs containing more and stronger biases. This is the first large scale analysis of this type, giving insights into language usage in such an influential part of popular culture.
... This occurs during the same developmental period individuals typically begin to navigate romance (Christopher et al., 2016;Collins et al., 2009). The majority of popular music contains romantic or sexual lyrics ( Madanikia & Bartholomew, 2014;Wright et al., 2019), bombarding adolescent listeners with romantic content that may influence adolescents' romantic behaviors and attitudes (Bandura, 1999;Carpentier et al., 2007;Gerbner & Gross, 1976;Vaterlaus et al., 2018). ...
... As the vast majority of popular songs are romantic in nature (Madanikia & Bartholomew, 2014;Wright et al., 2019) and adolescent listeners constitute a large proportion of popular music consumers (Delmonte, 2017;Statista, 2020), we sought a selection of current popular songs in the United States. Accordingly, we utilized Billboard's "Top Year End Chart Hot 100 Songs of 2019" (Billboard, 2019). ...
... Accordingly, we utilized Billboard's "Top Year End Chart Hot 100 Songs of 2019" (Billboard, 2019). The music industry relies upon Billboard to track song rankings within the United States, and the company's Top Year End 100 list has been used for many content analyses spanning decades (e.g., Cole, 1971;Madanikia & Bartholomew, 2014;Pettijohn & Sacco, 2009). Thirteen of the songs on this list were not about romance (e.g., "Baby Shark") and were dropped from the analysis for a total of 87 songs (see the Appendix). ...
During adolescence, music consumption drastically increases and many adolescents become romantically involved. Popular songs often depict romance, and teens may incorporate tenets of these lyrics into their own romantic experiences. Romantic attachment style is a primary indicator of relationship functioning, and individuals’ attachment style may shift according to romantic experiences they observe in media. This study comprises a content analysis of the romantic attachment style portrayed in popular song lyrics. Findings revealed that more than 86% of songs illustrated an insecure attachment and various song/artist characteristics were associated with specific attachment styles. We assert that parents, teens, and educators should be mindful of the lyrics adolescents listen to, working together to ensure adolescents navigate music’s messages about romance in a positive way.
... Lyrics of rap and hip-hop music display men as very masculine and sex driven. These lyrics are more focused on women's physical attractiveness and project women as sexual objects (Madanikia & Bartholomew, 2014). Sexual contents within the songs increase the likelihood of sexual activities (Madanikia & Bartholomew, 2014;Martino et al., 2006;Zhang et al., 2008) and the desire to have more sexual partners (Coyne & Padilla-Walker, 2015). ...
... These lyrics are more focused on women's physical attractiveness and project women as sexual objects (Madanikia & Bartholomew, 2014). Sexual contents within the songs increase the likelihood of sexual activities (Madanikia & Bartholomew, 2014;Martino et al., 2006;Zhang et al., 2008) and the desire to have more sexual partners (Coyne & Padilla-Walker, 2015). Adolescents listening to rap music were reported to have higher frequencies for sexual activities (Johnson- Baker et al., 2016). ...
... Contents in music do reflect the cultural norms and values of a society (Madanikia & Bartholomew, 2014;Siddiqi, 2020). Back till 1960s, the American culture restricted women to express their sexuality (Xie & Galliher, 2018). ...
The expressions of sexual assertiveness in lyrics and poetry can be found in the literature of almost every culture. The current study, based on the earlier literature and public perception, assumed an increase in the sexually assertive content in the trending songs because of modernization. The study analyzed the content of 150 popular songs of English, Urdu, and Punjabi from 1970 to 2019 and revealed that the aforesaid assumption was quite valid until 2009. The study found a gradual increase in the frequency of sexually assertive content in English, Urdu, and Punjabi songs from 1970 to 2009. A strange shift in this trend was however observed from 2010 to 2019 whereby the frequency of sexually assertive content decreased. As the existing literature is silent in this regard, the current study opened a new gate of curiosity by sensitizing the researchers to explore the reasons of this decrease further.
... Most of the works on sexism in song lyrics have targeted popular songs and employed manual content analysis to track different aspects of sexism. This allows considering specific aspects of sexism such as objectification and sexualization [13,14]. These studies analysed popular songs from the 1960s to the 2000s showing that sexualization and mentions of sexual desire increased dramatically only after the 1990s, while mentions of love decreased. ...
... These studies analysed popular songs from the 1960s to the 2000s showing that sexualization and mentions of sexual desire increased dramatically only after the 1990s, while mentions of love decreased. This is interpreted as a signal of the increase of sexism in songs because lust in the absence of love is likely to objectify the object of the desire [13]. Other works consider both the differences between male and female artists and the gender of the target being objectified. ...
... Other works found similar observations, even though using different definitions or specific aspects related to sexual content. For example, some studies report an increase in sexual content and objectification of women in popular songs during the last five decades [15,13]. In a study limited to the year 2009, the top 10 song charts were shown to be more likely to contain sexual content if compared to songs from the same album by the same artist that did not enter the top 10 [31]. ...
We employ Natural Language Processing techniques to analyse 377808 English song lyrics from the "Two Million Song Database" corpus, focusing on the expression of sexism across five decades (1960-2010) and the measurement of gender biases. Using a sexism classifier, we identify sexist lyrics at a larger scale than previous studies using small samples of manually annotated popular songs. Furthermore, we reveal gender biases by measuring associations in word embeddings learned on song lyrics. We find sexist content to increase across time, especially from male artists and for popular songs appearing in Billboard charts. Songs are also shown to contain different language biases depending on the gender of the performer, with male solo artist songs containing more and stronger biases. This is the first large scale analysis of this type, giving insights into language usage in such an influential part of popular culture.
... Arguably, the most prolific area in the research literature of popular songs (pop songs) is the sexualization and misogyny in lyrics (Wright & Rubin, 2017). A study exploring themes related to sexual desire (lust) and romantic desire (love) in the lyrics of popular music over the past 40 years discovered that there was a linear decrease over time in the proportion of love songs while there was a significant increase in the proportion of songs with a theme focusing on lust in the absence of love (Madanikia & Bartholomew, 2014). They came to this conclusion from an analysis of 360 songs that represented the top 40 songs of every 5 years in the Billboard Year End Hot 100 single songs. ...
Songs is one of the most popular creations of human language, but linguistic study of this medium is still limited. One popular trend is to study the slangs in songs, but previous studies often used a single song or albums with little data, thus this study aims to explore the word formation of slangs in a pop album known for its numerous slangs in each song, namely the album Heaven & Hell by Ava Max. This study is descriptive qualitative research. The data is the lyrics of the 15 songs of the album which were analysed with content analysis to identify the slang word formation processes. Of the total 545 slangs, results found five types of processes: contraction, shortening, blending, clipping and compounding. Contraction is the most dominant type by a huge margin (77%), which is significantly different with the majority of previous studies’ conclusion that clipping is the most dominant type. This study offers a new insight by extending the amount of data. Similar studies in the past have mostly conducted this study on less than 200 data of slangs in a single song or a selection of a few songs in an album, while this study included all 15 songs in an album to obtain more than 500 data and found the pattern of dominant types of slang word formation process to be different than what has been reported over the years.
... We are unaware of earlier literature discussing the association between popular music and young people's attitude towards cars, but other aspects of cultural changes captured in popular music have been examined. For example, both Madanikia and Bartholomew (2014) and Christenson et al. (2019) find a significant increase (from the 1960s/70 s to the 2010s) in the proportion of songs with themes focusing on sex-related aspects of relationships, which likely reflects a cultural shift toward acceptance of sexuality outside of love relationships. Christenson et al. (2012) found an increase of songs referring to substance use, and in recent decades the use of alcohol and drugs were much likely to be portrayed positively. ...
In recent years, there has been a scholarly debate regarding the decrease in automobile-related mobility indicators (car ownership, driving license holding, VMT, etc.). Broadly speaking, two theories have been put forward to explain this trend: (1) economic factors whose impacts are well-understood in principle, but whose occurrence among young adults as a demographic sub-group had been overlooked, and (2) less well-understood shifts in cultural mores, values and sentiment towards the automobile. This second theory is devilishly difficult to study, due primarily to limitations in standard data resources such as the National Household Travel Survey and international peer datasets. In this study we first compiled a database of lyrics to popular music songs from 1956 to 2015 (defined by inclusion in the annual “top 40”), and subsequently identified references to automobiles within this corpus. We then evaluated whether there is support for theory #2 above within popular music, by looking at changes from the 1950s to the 2010s. We demonstrate that the frequency of references to automobility tended for many years to increase over time, however there has more recently been a decline after the late 2000s (decade). In terms of the sentiment of popular music lyrics that reference automobiles, our results are mixed as to whether the references are becoming increasingly positive or negative (machine analysis suggests increasing negativity, while human analysis did not find a significant association), however a consistent observation is that sentiment of automobile references have over time become more positive relative to sentiment of song lyrics overall. We also show that sentiment towards automobile references differs systematically by genre, e.g. automobile references within ‘Rock’ lyrics are in general more negative than similar references to cars in other music genres). The data generated on this project have been archived and made available open access for use by future researchers; details are in the full paper.
... Interestingly, despite all of those problems the proportion of songs with themes of lust has surpassed the proportion of songs with themes of love over the time (Madanikia & Bartholomew, 2014). Genre of Rap/R&B contains higher frequencies of sexual content than other genres and a strong correlation between sexual content. ...
This research investigates metaphors depicting sex used in the lyrics of Robert Sylvester Kelly’s selected songs, which most of the songs are known for their outrageously sexual lyrics. In this case, the aims of this research are: (1) to find out metaphors depicting sex, (2) to convey the meaning of the metaphors used by Robert Sylvester Kelly. Using qualitative research design, this research employed Conceptual Metaphor Theory by George Lakoff and Metaphor Identification Procedures (MIP) by Pragglejaz Group in analyzing the data. The findings reveal that there are six kinds of conceptual metaphors depicting sex found in the data. They are (1) sex is violence, (2) sex is eating, (3) sex is journey/adventure, (4) sex is game, (5) sex is a lesson, and (6) sex is insanity. Based on the analysis, sex is violence is the conceptual metaphor used most frequently by Robert Sylvester Kelly in both albums. Through Lakoff and Johnson theory, the meaning can be easier to understand. It shows that each conceptual metaphor has its own meaning or interpretation of sex. Keywords: metaphor, conceptual metaphor, sex Abstrak: Penelitian ini menganalisis tentang metafora yang menggambarkan seks dalam lirik lagu pilihan Robert Sylvester Kelly, yang sebagian besar lagunya dikenal dengan lirik yang sangat seksual. Dalam hal ini, penelitian ini bertujuan untuk: (1) mengetahui metafora yang menggambarkan seks, (2) menyampaikan makna metafora yang digunakan oleh Robert Sylvester Kelly. Dengan menggunakan desain penelitian kualitatif, penelitian ini menggunakan Teori Metafora Konseptual oleh George Lakoff dan Metaphor Identification Procedures (MIP) oleh Pragglejaz Group dalam menganalisis data. Hasil temuan mengungkapkan bahwa ada enam jenis metafora konseptual yang menggambarkan seks ditemukan dalam data tersebut. Yaitu (1) seks adalah kekerasan, (2) seks adalah makan, (3) seks adalah perjalanan / petualangan, (4) seks adalah permainan, (5) seks adalah pelajaran, dan (6) seks adalah kegilaan. Berdasarkan analisis, seks adalah kekerasan adalah metafora konseptual yang paling sering digunakan oleh Robert Sylvester Kelly di kedua album tersebut. Melalui teori Lakoff dan Johnson, maknanya bisa lebih mudah dipahami. Ini menunjukkan bahwa setiap metafora konseptual memiliki makna atau interpretasi tersendiri tentang seks. Kata kunci: metafora, metafora konseptual, seks
