Thursday, October 11, 2012 at 1:07AM 
I’m a geek! There you go, I said it out loud. I enjoy a wide variety of information and details from history to computer programming, from economics to statistics. And while I know this kind of information doesn’t tickle everyone’s fancy, I’ve learned that hidden inside some of those “geeky details” are some things that songwriters can’t afford to miss.
Over the last several years, I have been working in the world of church music resources with much focus on songs and their use in churches. Having founded WorshipMusic.com and WorshipTeam.com, I’ve had access to many thousands of songs and how they are used, accepted, and adopted into churches. Recently, I decided to see if anything can be learned from gathering statistics on a broad sample of praise and worship songs. I was eager to find if there were any details in the statistical information about songs and lyrics that could give us hints about effective songwriting- specifically in the church/worship context. In my research, I used a baseline of over 6500 published songs including all of the most popular songs used in churches. I studied things such as lyric phrases, writing voice, theme, number of authors and more.
More details of the study will be published later, but I thought it might be good to release some initial thoughts to those of you who are songwriters, since a great deal of “mystique” is often attributed to the craft. This article will focus just on lyrics, since this is a good place to start for lyric writers. The foundation of lyrics is the individual words we use (vocabulary), the kinds of words they are (verb, nouns, adjectives, etc.) and the effectiveness of the words we choose in our songs.
Terse Vocabulary - Focused on Subject
Across 6500 songs in our study, we saw a total of 9,332 different words used. This isn’t extensive, and rates within the scope of what a normal high school graduate might hold as a vocabulary[1]. This tells us, however, that vocabulary development is not happening through worship songs. We are not learning new words (most likely) by listening or singing worship music. I don’t think this is a surprise for anyone. The language of songs in worship and praise has been historically founded on Biblical texts and the language used there (because it was translated) maybe less verbose and articulate in English than if we were writing a new work (say a novel) using the entire breadth of the English language.
Beyond how many words are used I looked at what words are used most often, and what words actually were most effective in being used in songs that were used in churches. First, the most popular words used in those songs (with the number of occurrences)[2]:
None of this is likely a surprise, because these words are the common vocabulary of the subject matter (God, hearts, life, Jesus, king, grace). The point is this: the vocabulary of our songs is terse because we have a focused subject matter. This isn’t necessarily bad, as we need certain words to explain our subject (God, Jesus, King, Lord) and those words are very common throughout the Bible, media and our speech.
Effective Words - Vibrant Descriptors and Verbs
But when you take and look at what words are most effective in songs that become popular, the attention moves away from nouns and moves to adverbs, verbs and adjectives. Here is the ranking of the most effective[3] words used across the 6500 songs (effectiveness ranking in parenthesis):
What the statistics say is that the uniqueness of these words occurring in popular songs is inordinately disproportionate to the norm. These words are unique in their effectiveness at being included in songs that became popular. What does this mean?
As a writer, I can’t help but notice the vibrancy of this second list of words. Can you see how different this list is from the prior list? Instead of being dull nouns (as the prior list was), many of these words are descriptors or verbs. The main point: effective words are full of action, intensity and emotion.
The Final Word
While statistics can’t teach us how to write a great song, they can teach us what word elements contained in those songs prove to be effective for broad adoption in the church. Is there a formula for great lyrics? Perhaps not. But the statistics show that
Writing with you!
Kim Gentes
Kim Gentes is the CEO of WorshipTeam.com in Nashville (http://www.worshipteam.com), and is at the center of both the 21st century church and industry conversations about the future of worship expression - the music that opens us to the God who meets us where we are. As Founder of WORSHIPMUSIC.com (one of the earliest and largest online distributors of worship music in the world), and as a worship leader, songwriter, recording artist and freelance writer, Kim has been a featured speaker and worship leader at events across the US and Canada. He holds a Bachelors of Science in CIS and a Master of Ministry in Classic Christianity. Kim lives in Franklin TN with his wife Carol and their teenage sons, Jared and Cody.
[1] According to Dr. Sebastian Wren, the average adult may know about 50,000 words- although the reality is most of those are duplicates that can be culled away as “word families” duplicates- such that the real vocabulary may be as small as 17000 or even 5000 words. Source: Wren, Sebastian PhD "Developing Research-Based Resources for the Balanced Reading Teacher" BalancedReading.com, Aug 7, 2003. http://www.balancedreading.com/vocabulary.html (17 Sep 2012).
[2] Excluded from this list are determiners, conjunctions and pronouns.
[3] The formula used to determine “effective” is a weighted result of songs that ranked more popular across churches and the particular identifiable attributes of those songs, such as words, themes, authors, etc. Any ranking above 20 is a statistical anomaly and worth considering, since it is beyond the standard deviation of the mean. The words above are extreme statistical outliers.
data, evaluation, lyrics, music, songs, songwriting, statistics, worship in Blog, Creative, Music, Normalize, Songwriting, Technology, Worship
Reader Comments (8)
Several days ago the thought occured to me that if you take today's non christian songs and write christan lyrics to them how many more students and adults would listen to the lyrics than the the music itself? As long as you have the orginal writers permission to do so.
Thanks Kim!
Very insightful. We have started a songwriting circle at our church and I will be sharing this with them. I think the biggest challenge we face as writers of worship music is how to express the timeless truths of the Bible in fresh and accessible ways that speak to our culture, yet resonate with folks who have been in the church for a while. My lyrics tend to "churchy" language,(I've been a church musician practically all my life!) and I want to break out of that rut, and be able to say things in a way that is timeless yet fresh. I guess it's the quest for the radical middle!
Anyway, thanks a lot for your article. Keep up the geeky good work!
At first I wasn't sure if this article would speak to me because I'm not a "stat" person very often. But after reading it I found that it spoke volumes to me. Did anyone else notice that in the list of nouns, Jesus was number 5 and that words like "cross", "blood", "spirit" and "love" didn't even make the list. Sometimes I think we are singing too much about what we need and want from the Lord and not enough about who He is and His nature. I know have a clear direction in what types of songs I need to look for and what my team needs to be writing about. It's the basics of our faith, the cross the blood, the Spirit and the greatest of the gifts, love. Thank you, this article spoke volumes! Music Pastor, Chalmette, La.
Darnell,
Just a note about the information in this article. First, this is a small part of the info to be released more completely in the full book. Rest assured that all the words you mention do "make the list" but are just not in the top 10/11. Where things sit on a pure list of occurrence doesn't necessarily reflect about the given subject. Specifically, saying the word "Jesus" in a song doesn't mean that the song necessarily doesn't talk about Jesus-- it may simply be using another title or name, such as Emmanuel, Prince of Peace, Savior, King, Christ, Lord or others. Of course, we all know there are many names for God and especially that expands when talking about different persons of the Trinity. The point is- pure number of usage is simply a measure of frequency of the raw noun, but does not mean the subject is absent. The more esoteric the concept (such as Trinity, salvation, communion etc) the more likely a variety of different words will be employed to communicate the nuances of the noun. Songwriters especially tend to use the most common nouns sparingly so that the songs don't sound trite and shallow, but force people to consider different aspects of the subject (in this case, God), which is probably good since we are being made to review a more broad picture -- which is one goal of strong theology.
Second, once the full book of information is completed from this study, this information will make more sense in context of correlating data. As you know, things become clearer in broader context in which a single piece of data may not. This information was just meant to be introductory to help people begin thinking about the topic in a slightly different way than we've been viewing it for a long time.
Hope that helps some
Kim
Brilliantly nuanced observations Kim. Many thanks for this. Would love to catch up soon over a coffee or a meal should your schedule allow.
Shalom, sir~
darrell
Hi Kim,
I'm looking forward to reading / hearing more about your statistical analyses - I love the way your mind works!
God bless,
Ryan
You know I would like to say no..songwriting is art and to be totally free, wild and open and maybe even "hey this is how I like to do it or approach it"...but the fact is there is to really reach the most people and connect..yeah, there is unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, a (I hate this word) formula.. The example I give when explaining this is : take the band Rush and look at their market share and them take Fleetwood Mac and look at their market share. Now this is a worship group so I'm not going to get into the debate of which of these bands are "better." that's totally subjective and totally not the point. Rush is a band with very complicated progressions and complex virtuosity and Rush has a lot of fans and loyal followers.. However, Fleetwood Mac is a very commercial band with just as much virtuosity but much less complex progressions. They are a band that keeps their music on the (not simple) but understandable side. I don't have specific numbers do don't pounce but I think it's an agreeable statement to say that The Mac out sells Rush lets just say at least three to one. It's because they make music that appeals to a much broader audience. You can look at this in terms of a format.. This structure and format draws more people to their music.. Rush is very much on the art side of rock and it's harder to call
It formatted or commercial.. So by that comparison and analysis I would say "good" songwriting follows a format.. The argument to that is do more record sales equal better songwriting..? Well, I would say yes..especially in worship music because you're connecting and appealing..that's the point at least the way I see it.. I hope that makes sense..how I've explained it.. Yes good songwriting does have and follow some kind of format. I know that Nashville would answer that question a lot quicker and way more simple....YES! Good songwriting follows a format for sure.. As I agree with that, I tried to give an example that maybe explains why.. Less complex (not played by lesser musicians or virtuosity) songs connect to more people.. Songs you take away and hum the rest of the day really..that's what hits the bullseye.. So again, yes there is a format to good songwriting.. Ok, my opinion..I think a correct one, but don't blast me if you don't agree.. Debate is awesome and would love to hear another side. This is the kind of thing that brings out the "yeah but...and *blast*!" in people. I do stand by that and love all kinds of music..thanks for the opportunity to add.
Oh..as far as that article.. I guess I agree if that research was done.. But I'm not sure writing can be broken down to that level of..this many of these words are used and etc.. I approach it from the example I gave above.. I didn't reference the article because I just can't answer to things that specific is in a creative device. It made me think..for sure.