Through the decades, the ever-shifting vocabulary of popular song reflects cultural changes in America
Through the decades, the words used most in popular songs has changed as the culture changes. Songwriters of each era often pay attention to the the most prevalent words, and intentionally use them to attach their songs to the current cultural development or popular craze of the time.
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In 1911, for example, hit songwriter Irving Berlin wrote many popular songs using the word ‘ragtime,’ as ragtime was the hottest new musical genre then, as written and performed by black composers such as the legendary Scott Joplin.
Berlin’s song “Alexander’s Ragtime Ball,” for which he wrote both words and music, was the most popular of these and has become a standard. Though it refers to ragtime in the title and lyrics, there’s no real ragtime, musically, in the song.
Lamont Dozier, of the Holland-Dozier-Holland hitmaking team at Motown, told us that they used the word ‘baby’ often because so many hit songs of the 60s used it. He and his partners then wrote “Baby Love” and “Baby I Need Your Loving.” They started “Where Did Our Love Go?” with the word repeated three times: “Baby, baby, baby, please don’t leave me” and also starts the chorus with it: “Baby, baby, where did our love go?”
The Beatles, who were usually the only ones to knock Motown songs off the number one spot, also used the word ‘baby’ for this reason, as they did ‘yeah.’
The source of the information on which this essay is founded is courtesy of a great resource, Wordcounter; the voluminous data they have acquired on every kind of word usage there is, including popular songs, is a great resource for this and other explorations.
Each decade has its own share of these words, and a quick survey of the most popular ones, from the 1920s on, reveals how dramatically American culture has evolved. The word ‘polka’ was used often in the 1940s when that genre was hot, as the word ‘disco’ wa used often in the 1970s. ‘Mammy’ is a word which was prominent in the songs of the 1920s, but rarely since, whereas in the 90s comes the prevalence of the word ‘thang.’
Here’s a quick look at the most popular words in songs from the 1920s to now.
Popular Words in Popular Songs through the Decades:
1920s
- Blues
- Pal
- Sweetheart
- Rose
- Mammy
1930s
- Moon
- In
- Swing
- Sing
1940s
- Polka
- Serenade
- Boogie
- Blue
1950s
- Christmas
- Penny
- Mambo
- Three
1960s
- Baby
- Twist
- Little
- Lonely
1970s
- Woman
- Disco
- Rock
- Music
- Dancin’
1980s
- Love
- Fire
- Don’t
- Rock
- On
1990s
- U
- You
- Up
- Get
- Thang
2000s
- U
- Like
- Breathe
- It
- Ya
Since 2010
- We
- Yeah
- Hell
- Die
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