The Most Metal Word of All

[Laurel]

https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3557/3399351304_1a480bc832.jpg
(image by mike krzeszak, used via Creative Commons)

In one of the heaviest applications yet of the digital humanities, a data-science blogger going by Degenerate State pulled lyrics from darklyrics.com — the lyrics site 12-year-old me would pause Warcraft for to see what the hell those guys were singing about — for a database of 22,623 songs from 7,364 bands. While it’s not an exhaustive data set of all metal ever made, it’s pretty good. The darklyrics.com data was then compared with the Brown Corpus, a collection of documents published in 1961 that’s meant to represent everyday English (but does not, importantly, include lyrics). By comparing the frequency of words’ usage from darklyrics.com with the Brown Corpus, you get the “metalness” of individual words, at least by the blogger’s measure.

The most metal word of all is burn, followed by cries, veins, eternity, and breathe. The least metal word is particularly, followed by indicated, secretary, committee, and university.​

- read the full article A Data Scientist Discovered the Most Metal Word in the English Language (from New York Magazine)​

 

[lovecraft68]

Burn is no surprise at all.

But kitty mama checking in a metal chick is.

Not quite heavy metal, but the first one that comes to mind for Burn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLZ2TDK5DKA

 

[Kantarii]

I would have guessed words I normally associate with "Metal" would have been higher. Words such as Hell, blood, thunder. Oh, well, win some, lose some; it's all the same to me. (Motörhead) maybe I should have quoted Ronnie James Dio from Heaven and Hell instead ?

 

[J_R_Ashunwhy]

Burn is no surprise at all.

But kitty mama checking in a metal chick is.

Not quite heavy metal, but the first one that comes to mind for Burn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLZ2TDK5DKA

lol my first thought for a song entitled 'Burn':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrIrFf90eeM

cello metal is still metal...
so metal it needs no lyrics...just the most metal title.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I would have guessed words I normally associate with "Metal" would have been higher. Words such as Hell, blood, thunder. Oh, well, win some, lose some; it's all the same to me. (Motörhead) maybe I should have quoted Ronnie James Dio from Heaven and Hell instead ?

I think they're scoring words based on how common they are in metal relative to frequency in the non-metal corpus. "Blood" is a pretty common word across a range of topics (medical, discussing kinship, etc. etc.) so it's harder for it to stand out as distinctively metal.

I'm surprised "burn" doesn't suffer from the same effect, but then it does show up a LOT in the stuff I listen to.

 

[oggbashan]

ununseptium - the heaviest metal word of all - so far!

http://gizmodo.com/scientists-have-created-the-heaviest-metal-ever-ununse-1571258317

 

[Bramblethorn]

Now Metal combined with BDSM lyrics. That's hot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lT-yN5dd1Es
or the original
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG8sPqc8Ohw

Google translation

 

[HandsInTheDark]

I wonder how he handled repetition for emphasis, which metal is sort of known for (as it's easier than writing a line with different words): "You're gonna burn, baby. Burn, burn, burn in hell, burn all day, burn all night, crawl in the flames, burn in my sight..." Alright, that's an exaggeration, but Three Days Grace's Burn feels nearly that repetitive. That's not a technique you see in non-lyrical writing very often, so I wonder about his numbers.

 

[glynndah]

Great! Now I got this stuck in my head.

Burn, baby, burn.

 

[Handley_Page]

Great! Now I got this stuck in my head.

Burn, baby, burn.

You and me both.