wordwatching

At the crossroads of language and culture

Dedicated to the study of language variation and change in American English, with special regard to the West, pop lyrics, and social media.

New Old Data

A description of a new set of lyric data that I am currently editing and hope to start performing linguistic analysis on soon

An analysis of lyrics from the year-end Billboard Top Ten for 2018

A review of song lyrics from year-end Top Ten Billboard charts from 2017

A look at uses of variants of "God" and "devil" in popular music

A post on the use of ain't in songs from Billboard's year-end Top Ten charts (1951-2015)

A linguistic analysis of some of Fats Domino's most popular songs

A post investigating the use of royal titles in pop lyrics (1951-2015). Includes videos of songs by Aerosmith, The Rolling Stones, and Lorde.

This post looks at how the names of months are used in the lyrics of songs appearing on Billboard's year-end Top Thirty charts (1951-2015)

A quick-and-dirty comparison of the lyrics of the late David Bowie and Glenn Frey, R.I.P.

An analysis of the use of I'ma in American pop music