About Culture is Music
Uncovering cultural patterns through six decades of Billboard Hot 100 data
The Story
Music doesn't just reflect culture—it shapes it. The words we sing, the stories we tell through melody, and the artists we celebrate all reveal something profound about who we are as a society.
Culture is Music began as a simple question: “How has language in popular music changed over the past 60+ years?”
What started as a curiosity evolved into a comprehensive analysis of 6,294 songs from the Billboard Hot 100 year-end charts (1959-2021), revealing fascinating patterns: love themes peaked in the 1970s disco era (52% of songs), while explicit content increased 400% from the 1960s to 2010s, reflecting broader cultural shifts in self-expression and artistic freedom.
Methodology
Data Collection
- ✓ Scraped Billboard Hot 100 year-end charts (1959-2021)
- ✓ Retrieved lyrics for 6,294 songs
- ✓ Normalized and cleaned text data
- ✓ 85% lyrics coverage achieved
Analysis
- ✓ Word frequency analysis across 5 categories (love, profanity, b_word, n_word, p_word)
- ✓ Temporal trend tracking (year-over-year changes)
- ✓ Artist-level aggregation and comparison
- ✓ Cultural context analysis and societal pattern recognition
By the Numbers
From Videos to Web App
Before this interactive platform, these insights were shared as animated bar chart races on YouTube
Artist with most F words in Hot 100 music lyrics
An animated bar chart race showing which artists used profanity most frequently in their Billboard Hot 100 songs.
Artist who used the word love the most in Hot 100 music lyrics
Tracking the evolution of love songs and which artists expressed love most often in chart-topping hits.
Artist with most B words in Hot 100 music lyrics
Analyzing the usage of gendered slurs across decades of popular music.
Artist with most P words in Hot 100 music lyrics
Examining explicit sexual language trends in mainstream music.
Artist with most N words in Hot100 songs
A cultural analysis of how hip-hop shaped language in popular music.
Technology Stack
Backend
- • FastAPI (Python)
- • SQLAlchemy ORM
- • SQLite Database
- • Pydantic Schemas
- • RESTful API Architecture
Frontend
- • Next.js 14 (React)
- • TypeScript
- • Tailwind CSS
- • D3.js Visualizations
- • React Query (TanStack)
Data Tools
- • Python (pandas, numpy)
- • Jupyter Notebooks
- • Web Scraping (BeautifulSoup)
- • Natural Language Processing
- • Statistical Analysis
Interactive Features
Song Explorer
Search and filter through all 6,294 songs by year, decade, artist, or lyrics content
Data Visualizations
Interactive D3.js charts showing trends, comparisons, and distributions
Cultural Analysis & Insights
Written analysis of linguistic patterns, cultural shifts, and meaningful trends across 63 years of music
Artist Comparison
Compare multiple artists' chart success, career spans, and lyrical patterns
Future Directions
Expanded Analysis: Genre-specific patterns, sentiment analysis, and musical feature integration
More Data: Streaming era (2022+), international charts, and alternative music sources
Machine Learning: Predictive models for chart success and trend forecasting
Community Features: User-submitted analyses, custom word tracking, and collaborative insights
Built with passion for music, data, and cultural understanding
All data sourced from Billboard Hot 100 year-end charts (1959-2021)