DO YOU HAVE THE TIME TO LISTEN TO ME WHINE? First person pronoun use in English pop lyrics

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to determine whether a pattern in first person pronoun use can be detected in the lyrics of different music genres. For this purpose, eighty songs were randomly selected by Spotify's "Radio" feature, twenty from each of four different genres: hip hop, pop, punk, and club/house. The statistical data on the use of first person pronouns in these songs appears to indicate that punk lyrics use significantly fewer first person singular and plural pronouns than the other three genres. Club/house lyrics, on the other hand, tend to use slightly more first person singular pronouns than pop, both of these genres using slightly more than the combined average of the four genres. Club/house lyrics also have been found to use more first person plural pronouns than the other genres. The data gathered for the present study appears to conform to patterns observed by previous research, namely that angry people use fewer first person pronouns (Pennebaker 2011) and that the word we can be used to decrease social distance (Semin 2007).