MUSIC
Pundits Say Music Has Become “Too Political” — the Numbers Say They’re Wrong
Over 1,800 Billboard Hot 100 Songs from 1978 to 2020 show why
By: Zahra Azzaoui, Erika Chen, and Robert Nooney
They tell me it’s a new gang in town
From Compton to Congress
Set-trippin’ all around
Ain’t nothin’ new but a flu of new Demo-Crips and Re-Blood-icans
Red state versus a blue state — which one you governin’?
They give us guns and drugs, call us thugs
Make it they promise to fuck with you
No condom, they fuck with you, Obama say, “What it do?”
In his 2015 song “Hood Politics,” rapper Kendrick Lamar underscores the hypocritical nature of the American government, drawing parallels between political polarization and gang violence. Along with other songs like “The Blacker the Berry” and “Mortal Man,” Lamar brazenly condemns police violence, government corruption, and systemic racism.
Though he continues to maintain popularity and support, Lamar has received much criticism for his audacious and unapologetic lyrical style and content choices. After performing his song “Alright” at the 2015 BET Awards, Lamar was met with a damning assessment from Fox News reporter Geraldo Rivera, who asserted that “this is why I say that hip hop has done more damage to young African-Americans than racism in recent years. This is exactly the wrong message.” For Rivera and opposition of the like, this camp of music feels too aggressive, harsh, and political.
However, Lamar is not alone.
Prolific artists like J. Cole, Childish Gambino, and Beyoncé have also addressed issues that have permeated mainstream discourse such as race, gender, and poverty. In a time of deep political polarization following Donald Trump’s presidential election in 2016, Childish Gambino addressed gun violence, white supremacy, hate crimes, and other socioeconomic and racial issues in his chart-topping song “This Is America.” The accompanying music video garnered 85.3 million views on YouTube in one week, and even became the number one video on the YouTube Songs chart in 11 different countries. The public’s receptiveness to the song and video’s political message is reflected in the more than 814 million views that it has accumulated to date.
Despite widespread popularity of songs like “This is America,” artists whose work touches on critical political issues are often greeted with sharp backlash from critics who believe their music ought not to explore these themes.
Is music more political now than in the past?
With many political commentators and personalities in the media critiquing both the prevalence and nature of political messaging in contemporary popular music, we questioned if there was any validity to the claim that music is more political today than it has been in the past. This kind of critique has emanated from a number of political pundits, hailing mostly from conservatives. For instance, in response to Beyonce’s “Formation,” a song centered around Black liberation and pride that references police brutality and Hurricane Katrina, Rudy Giuliani of Fox and Friends deemed it “outrageous” and an “attack on police officers”.
Though it might be news to Giuliani, the idea that music can comment on our political reality is nothing new. Artists from the 80s, like U2, Bruce Springsteen, Genesis, and Prince, have used their songs as vehicles for political messaging long before the advent of Beyonce and her peers. One notable example is My Brain is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes To Bitburg)” by The Ramones (1985), which condemns President Reagan’s visit to a German cemetery where Nazi soldiers were buried. In response to this offensive act, Joey Ramone fired back at the president, asking “How can you forget six million people being gassed and roasted?”
To explore the prevalence of claims made by Giuliani, Rivera, and the like, we examined the lyrics of songs on the Billboard Hot 100 and top genre charts in even-numbered years from 1978–2020, collecting over 1,800 songs for analysis. For each song, we used Genius to read the lyrics and contextual annotations to determine whether they satisfied a number of criteria, such as whether lyrics referred to a specific politician/policy issue or if their overall message was political.
One important distinction we made in our criteria was between political and social: a lyric/theme was considered political if it addressed a specific policy or government figure, while social themes were more political-adjacent in nature and less directly focused on government and policy, such as female empowerment or racial pride.
For example, Destiny Child’s “Independent Woman” contains feminist messaging in the lyrics: “All the women who are independent/Throw your hands up at me/All the honeys who making money/Throw your hands up at me/All the mamas who profit dollars”. While the song does not reference neither policy nor politicians, it makes a bold social statement about women’s freedom from financial dependence on men.
So what did we find?
Our most striking finding was that most music is not political at all. Only about 5% of all the songs we analyzed contained any specific political references in their lyrics, and even fewer had an overall message that was political (about 3 in 100). The general lack of political content in music is not surprising given that the recording industry is a business. Political content risks alienating potential listeners who disagree with a song’s message, thus costing the artist social media views and download sales. These findings gain further support when we break down the data by genre. Songs in the Pop genre, which appeals to the widest audience, were extremely unlikely to contain political content; less than 1 in 100 had an overall political message.
Another significant finding was that contrary to critics’ claims, the frequency of political music has not increased over time. Over the past four decades, the number of songs with political content has remained largely steady, with a slight decrease in the percentage of songs with a political overall message (Figure 1).
However, our data does reveal a shift in the genre landscape of popular music which can explain why some may feel that music is more political. Over the last four decades, Hip-Hop/R&B replaced Rock as the dominant non-Pop genre on the Billboard Hot 100 (Figure 2).While the frequency of political music hasn’t increased overall, the specific political themes which are most common in Hip-Hop music have become more prevalent.
For example, Racial Identity/Pride was a theme in only about 2 in 100 songs during the 1980s, but by the 2000s, it was present in nearly 6% of songs. Looking at the specific songs criticized as being “too political,” they tend to be created by Black artists and address issues such as racial discrimination and police brutality.
Numbers speak louder than political pundits
Critics who say music is “too political” are reacting to something, but their claim about the over-politicization of popular music is not supported by the data. While popular music has remained predominantly apolitical, there are notable songs with emphatic political themes. This largely derives from the surge in popularity of Hip Hop/R&B. Given that lyrics in popular music are mostly apolitical, other aspects of music such as the artists themselves and the drastically transformed musical genre landscape may be what critics are really reacting to when they claim that music has become “too political.”
