Word up: why metal singers get a bum rap

Science has confirmed that rap music has among the most audibly prominent lyrics, second only to country music.

Rapper LL Cool J. Picture: Getty Images

In 1987, the rapper LL Cool J instructed listeners: “Take heed to the speech, it’s gonna reach your ear / Don’t try to say you can’t hear, cuz the words are clear.”

Thirty-six years later, science has confirmed his intuition: rap music has among the most audibly prominent lyrics, second only to country music. Heavy metal, conversely, gives the lead vocalist the least weight.

The findings come from a study of 75 years and more than 700 songs in the US Billboard charts. In the paper, published in the journal Jasa Express Letters, scientists separated out the vocals and the music for each song, calculating the ratio between the two.

They found, on average, this ratio changed over time, steadily decreasing in the 1950s and 1960s. When the Beatles told people to Twist and Shout, the lyrics were still given enough weight that shouting was rarely necessary. When, a few years later, Simon and Garfunkel sang The Sound of Silence, the backing music was veering yet further from silence.

From the mid-1970s, this trend stabilised and the ratio, on average, remained the same. The scientists, from the University of Oldenburg in Germany, say this may have been due to improvements in technology. “The increasing electrical amplification of guitar and bass … meant vocal levels had to be increased significantly,” they write.

But the uniformity of the ratio since 1975 masks persistent differences by genre. As A Boy Named Sue shows, in country music, words are everything. For metal fans, as Motorhead sang in Ace of Spades: “It makes no difference what you say.”

The Times