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(Credits: Far Out)
Sun 16 February 2025 17:00, UK
There’s always been tribalism among fans of each genre. In the 1970s, when disco emerged as a genre, rock fans were incensed at its perceived superficiality. So much so that on one fateful evening in 1979, they celebrated their own ‘Disco Demolition Night’, filling a dumpster with disco records only to set them alight.
It’s a curious take to be so offended by the emergence of another genre, mainly when it’s so creatively different to the one you consume. But suppose you lift open the bonnet and examine where the source of so much angst originates. You’ll learn it’s steeped in intellectual obnoxiousness and the idea that one’s own taste represents superior intelligence.
It’s a culture that will most likely never change, and when it doesn’t result in the mass burning of precious vinyl, it acts as a fun centre for pub conversations that see fans passionately defending their favourite artists. But if you find yourself in such a discussion, you might be pleased to know that scientific evidence supports one genre’s superiority. A new study conducted by Prodigy, has examined which artists encourage more intelligence and positivity.
In Prodigy’s study, they examined the lyrics of various musical acts before determining metal as the most ‘intelligent’ genre, for its lyrics ranked at an average of 41% in terms of lexical diversity. And at the top of the list within that category ranked Black Sabbath, who scored 52% with the most lexical diversity, followed by Slayer with 51% and Megadeth with 45%.
Even when all of the separate artists within genres were included, Sabbath still reigned supreme, for only Pink Floyd could match them at 52% for their score on lexical diversity. Other artists who rank in the top 20 list include The Eagles, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Iron Maiden, Radiohead and Motorhead.
The study was a pretty damning indictment of contemporary music, as only Radiohead contributed to the top of the leaderboard. Even then, their qualification as a contemporary artist is still up for debate.
To conduct the study, Prodigy collated a list of today’s top Billboard artists and popular artists from each decade and analysed the lyrics of 10 songs from each artist to calculate their level of sentiment and lexical diversity.
Moreover, while metal has a dedicated fan base, as music has evolved, it’s positioned itself as more of a subculture genre and lacks the more widespread popularity of EDM, country, hip-hop, pop, R&B and rock, which all ranked below it in the standings.
So it begs the question, where has the nuance gone in modern music? It’s a worrying state of affairs for modern music that fans yearning for intellectual nuance have to make their way to one of the Sabbath gigs this summer to watch an increasingly fragile Ozzy Osbourne on stage.
But that being said, the scientific study of such a subjective art form has to be taken with a pinch of salt. Particularly when you consider the metric of intelligence to be lyrics. Of course, the prose of a song is undoubtedly a source of deep intellect, but how can the nuanced approach to classical music be so vastly overlooked in the analysis of music’s intelligence?
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