What are the most common words used in pop music?
Pop music is a language, and those who master it are guaranteed prime chart spots, provided they come up with the perfect earworm. As good as the hooks and melodies can be, nothing will beat a catchy line or title, but as music history moves through the years, you’ll notice the keywords change. In the 1950s and ’60s, “baby” and “love” reigned supreme, as typified by the double-whammy of ‘Baby Love’ by The Supremes. In the ’70s afterglow of psychedelia, hit songs could often be considered weather-based: ‘Mr Blue Sky’, ‘Aint No Sunshine’ and ‘Fire and Rain’, or rest on highly-specific names, à la ‘Lola’, ‘Layla’ or ‘Rhiannon’.
In 2023, that sense of cohesion seems to be lost, at least when it comes to titles. If we look at the big hitters of this year’s pop offerings, Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘Vampire’, Miley Cyrus ‘Flowers’ and Morgan Wallen’s ‘Last Night’, you can’t pick out one similar theme, let alone a word. But as varied as titles can be, pop music rarely diverts from its mission statement. Get people singing and dancing.
There are a few ways to do this. One is simply to instruct listeners to dance. This has recently taken the form of the Barbie soundtrack gem ‘Dance The Night Away’, but historically has been both “let’s” and “last” dance. It’s an instruction as much as an invitation, and ensuring a song is in current rotation on dancefloors is a handy way to ensure its enduring popularity, which is likely why the word “dance” itself is so commonplace.
The next ingredient to a pop hit is love, as it has been since time immemorial. It doesn’t take an etymologist to tell you the universal ache and ecstasy of love has kept the word firing through the airwaves on a near-constant loop. The Beatles alone used the word “love” some 613 times in their songs, slightly cheating the stats a bit on ‘All You Need Is Love‘. Since 2000, 365 songs that appeared on the Hot 100 chart had “love” in their titles, exactly one for each day of the year – and that’s without considering re-charting entries.
To that end, popular follow-ups to “love” include “heart”, “girl” and “you”. All evoke a sense of personal matters from the heart. Pop producer supremo Jack Antonoff has shed light on the logic there, saying that the dominance of female artists like Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey has given rise to more frank assessments of matters of the heart.
“I’ve always been extremely drawn to female artists who are being brutally honest,” he told The Guardian. “That is so much more attractive to me than a lot of the weird paths certain male songwriters lead you down that hide and mask emotions.”
The ripples of Antonoff’s process, which is as follows: “[Find] the saddest, most upsetting, most real things someone might go through, and then finding a way to sew those into pop songs,” can be felt throughout the current landscape. Love is now dealt with in a joyously cynical way. From Rodrigo’s ‘Vampire’ to Cyrus’ ‘Flowers’, it’s clear “love” has enduring pop buzz. While the inclusion of the word itself might be a time-honoured tradition, how it’s creatively tackled is clearly shifting as the years go by.
The most common words used in pop music:
- Baby
- Love
- Heart
- Girl
- Night
- Dance
- Life
- Time
- World
- You
