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Study: Lyrics of No. 1 Hit Songs Average a Third-Grade Reading Level
breitbart.com ^ | May 19, 2015 | Daniel Nussbaum

Posted on 05/19/2015 8:46:45 PM PDT by PROCON


Have you ever been driving along, listening to the latest hit song on a Top 20 radio station, and thought, “Man, these lyrics are really dumb?”

Well, you’re not alone.

According to a new study conducted by data wiz Andrew Powell-Morse, the lyrics for the last decade’s No. 1 hit songs average a third-grade reading level. Powell-Morse analyzed 225 songs that had spent three or more weeks atop the Billboard charts in four different genres (R&B/Hip-Hop, Country, Pop, and Rock) and found that a second-grader with slightly higher-than-average reading comprehension skills would have no problem grasping the lyrics.

While the study’s findings seem obvious to anyone who has flipped on a radio in the last few years, there are a number of surprising points in the data.

According to the study, country music is the “smartest” genre lyrically, with an average grade-level of 3.3. Pop and rock tie at 2.9, while today’s hip-hop could be fairly well-understood by a second-grader in the latter half of the school year.

(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...


TOPICS: Chit/Chat
KEYWORDS: 2016election; 3rdgrade; berniesanders; election2016; freecollegetuition; lowinfovoters; morons; popmusic; racism; reparations; vermont; whiteprivilege
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To: PROCON

Can you imagine the mondegreens if they used lyrics like, “Oh honey, your animadversions are most incommodious!”


21 posted on 05/19/2015 9:08:54 PM PDT by Harmless Teddy Bear (Proud Infidel, Gun Nut, Religious Fanatic and Freedom Fiend)
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To: PROCON
He's an old one with some 'class'.

Martha (from 1938)

22 posted on 05/19/2015 9:09:26 PM PDT by Fiddlstix (Warning! This Is A Subliminal Tagline! Read it at your own risk!(Presented by TagLines R US))
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To: 21twelve

If you can catch Rush’s tour this year do it.

I saw them in Lincoln last week. They started with their newer stuff, then worked backwards through their catalog.

They played all 10+ minutes of Xanadu.

Ended with Working Man.

A great show.


23 posted on 05/19/2015 9:10:40 PM PDT by bakeneko
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To: PROCON

Care to run the same analysis on an opera? Or especially on many of the tunes our great grandparents and their grandparents sang to each other?

This shouldn’t be a surprise.


24 posted on 05/19/2015 9:10:57 PM PDT by kingu (Everything starts with slashing the size and scope of the federal government.)
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To: Norm Lenhart

Oooga chugga ooga ooga ooga chugga.


25 posted on 05/19/2015 9:11:18 PM PDT by EQAndyBuzz (Liawatha, because we need to beat a real commie, not a criminal posing as one.)
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To: Harmless Teddy Bear

“Oh, Baby, The poetics of desire recapitulates the systemization of the gendered body, and I Love You”.


26 posted on 05/19/2015 9:11:26 PM PDT by PROCON (CRUZing into 2016 with Ted.)
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To: PROCON
Here are a few for the smart set:
27 posted on 05/19/2015 9:12:02 PM PDT by Fiji Hill
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To: PROCON

There’s a killer on the road.
His brain is squirming like a toad.
Take hey long holiday.
Let your children play.
If you give Al Gore a ride
Sweet memory will die,
Gotta love Ma Earth.


28 posted on 05/19/2015 9:12:40 PM PDT by tumblindice (America's founding fathers: all armed conservatives.)
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To: EQAndyBuzz

“Inna Gadda Davidda honey.....”


29 posted on 05/19/2015 9:13:33 PM PDT by Norm Lenhart
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To: ConservativeStatement

“You are black and I am white...

I’m as blind as a bat and you have sight...”


30 posted on 05/19/2015 9:14:52 PM PDT by Norm Lenhart
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To: 21twelve

“Red Barchetta”

My uncle has a country place
That no one knows about
He says it used to be a farm
Before the Motor Law
And on Sundays I elude the eyes
And hop the Turbine Freight
To far outside the Wire
Where my white-haired uncle waits

Jump to the ground
As the Turbo slows to cross the borderline
Run like the wind
As excitement shivers up and down my spine
Down in his barn
My uncle preserved for me an old machine
For fifty odd years
To keep it as new has been his dearest dream

I strip away the old debris
That hides a shining car
A brilliant red Barchetta
From a better vanished time
I fire up the willing engine
Responding with a roar
Tires spitting gravel
I commit my weekly crime

Wind
In my hair
Shifting and drifting
Mechanical music
Adrenaline surge...

Well-weathered leather
Hot metal and oil
The scented country air
Sunlight on chrome
The blur of the landscape
Every nerve aware

Suddenly ahead of me
Across the mountainside
A gleaming alloy air car
Shoots towards me, two lanes wide
I spin around with shrieking tires
To run the deadly race
Go screaming through the valley
As another joins the chase

Drive like the wind
Straining the limits of machine and man
Laughing out loud with fear and hope
I’ve got a desperate plan
At the one-lane bridge
I leave the giants stranded at the riverside
Race back to the farm
To dream with my uncle at the fireside


31 posted on 05/19/2015 9:17:32 PM PDT by Norm Lenhart
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To: PROCON

Mares eat oats

And does eat oats

And little lambs eat ivy

So what’s new?


32 posted on 05/19/2015 9:17:54 PM PDT by Peter W. Kessler
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To: PROCON

Bttt.


33 posted on 05/19/2015 9:18:00 PM PDT by Inyo-Mono
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To: bakeneko
Lucky you! I'm debating. I saw them the last few tours. The last one was at Key Arena (Seattle) a couple of years ago and the sound in there is really bad. And can't feel like I can spend the money again this year. But the reviews I keep reading say this is something special. We'll see.

Nothing will compare to seeing them at the open air GORGE Amphitheater in Washington State from the ninth row with my 13 year old son on their Vapor Trails. Thinking how fortunate to see them playing again.

34 posted on 05/19/2015 9:18:12 PM PDT by 21twelve (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2185147/posts It is happening again.)
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To: PROCON

And then there’s Bohemian Rhapsody. I person wrote it and one person produced it. Justin Beiber needed four writers and how many producers to give us Baby Baby.


35 posted on 05/19/2015 9:19:14 PM PDT by SkyDancer ( I Was Told Nobody Is Perfect But Yet, Here I Am ...)
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To: PROCON
Our blithesome love has engendered transformation and become superannuated.
36 posted on 05/19/2015 9:19:23 PM PDT by Harmless Teddy Bear (Proud Infidel, Gun Nut, Religious Fanatic and Freedom Fiend)
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To: PROCON

Spring was never waiting for us, girl
It ran one step ahead
As we followed in the dance
Between the parted pages and were pressed
In love’s hot, fevered iron
Like a striped pair of pants
MacArthur’s Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet green icing flowing down
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don’t think that I can take it
‘Cause it took so long to bake it
And I’ll never have that recipe again
Oh, no
I recall the yellow cotton dress
Foaming like a wave
On the ground around your knees
The birds, like tender babies in your hands
And the old men playing checkers
By the trees
MacArthur’s Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet green icing flowing down
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don’t think that I can take it
‘Cause it took so long to bake it
And I’ll never have that recipe again
Oh, no


37 posted on 05/19/2015 9:19:45 PM PDT by Rebel_Ace (HITLER! There, Zero to Godwin in 5.2 seconds.)
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To: Harmless Teddy Bear

LOL, “Darling, the eroticization of the gaze carries with it the engendering of linguistic transparency, that’s why I love you”.


38 posted on 05/19/2015 9:24:07 PM PDT by PROCON (CRUZing into 2016 with Ted.)
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To: Norm Lenhart

3,898 search results: Government Mandates Red Barchetta


39 posted on 05/19/2015 9:26:19 PM PDT by 21twelve (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2185147/posts It is happening again.)
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To: PROCON

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVDfmn_TMkI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNYcviXK4rg

a couple of nonsensical, but catchy early new wave “hits”! ;)


40 posted on 05/19/2015 9:28:19 PM PDT by TangibleDisgust
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