Whether by design or sheer coincidence, two seemingly unrelated Top 100 lists have popped up within the past week to forge a sort of perfect storm of pointless analysis and time-wasting critique. The lists themselves are enormously interesting and informational; it’s my own uncontrollable urge to conflate the two that presents the black hole of inanity. Vain hopes of unlocking the hidden synchronicity amongst their ordered logic consume me. Numbers swell backwards and forwards in a taunting ebb and flow. 100 to 1 and 100 to 1. What’s the connection? Your asses are mine, lists; show yourselves.

The first list in question appeared within an article called “Making Every Word Count” on The Wall Street Journal’s website this past Friday. It contained lists of the 100 most-used words in the English language, sortable by ranking within the various sources in which they appear, from spoken conversations to newspapers and Oxford English Corpus. Don’t worry, it’s not as highbrow as it sounds, check it out.

Now, the other list is right in EAR FARM’s wheelhouse. It compiles the Billboard Hot 100’s top 100 songs from August 1958 through July 2008, the chart’s first 50 years existence. Yes, that is correct, this is a top 100 list of a top 100 list, so needless to say I surrendered many productive hours to it yesterday. It was during this century-themed blackout that something specific occurred to me: if this Billboard list represented the very hottest of hot songs over the past 50 years, wouldn’t the titles of these songs skew heavily towards many of the WSJ’s top 100 most-used words?

Think about it; this is a list of the most popular, widest reaching, mass-commercialized universal moments in recorded music since 1958. The perceived universality and connective power of the lyrics undoubtedly had much to do with many of these songs’ success (“Macarena” notwithstanding), so it would only make sense that their titles reflect the same words that people use most often on a day to day basis. Or so I thought.

My approach was simple. I cross-referenced both lists, comparing words within song titles to the top 100 conversational words (choosing the conversational filter instead of that of the newspaper or Oxford English because songs are an oral tradition, duh). And while I failed to uncover an overwhelming correlation between the two, I had my moments…

First, let’s discount the song titles featuring words that don’t really exist: “Whoomp! (There It Is)” by Tag Team (#58 Hot 100), “Abracadabra” by Steve Miller (#70 Hot 100, note: no I don’t think “abracadabra” should be considered a real word, I mean check out its spooky inverted-cone structure), and “Un-Break My Heart” by Toni Braxton (#10 Hot 100, note: “un-break”? C’mon Toni, you couldn’t have opted for “fix” instead?). Now, of the remaining 97, the following are the titles that match up perfectly with the top 100 most-used conversational words:

#93 Hot 100. “Do That To Me One More Time” by Captain and Tennille (peak 2/16/80). Most-Used Word Breakdown: “Do” (29) That (09) To (05) Me (64) One (55) More (82) Time (79)

#74 Hot 100. “Say You, Say Me” by Lionel Richie (peak 12/21/85).
Breakdown: Say (98) You (02) Me (64)

#42 Hot 100. “No One” by Alicia Keys (peak 12/1/97). Breakdown: No (53) One (55)

#35 Hot 100. “Say Say Say” by Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson (peak 12/10/83). Breakdown: Say (98)

Okay, so not too compelling an argument based on the above evidence, I agree. But as I scrolled through the remaining hot top 35 of the top 100 of the last hot 50 years of the hot Billboard charts, something else occurred to me. Though I hadn’t found a secret code connecting language with top song titles, the one amazing thing this analysis might prove useful for is in identifying the most universal song of the past 50 years. Argue all you want, but it’s entirely possible that the song with the one-two punch of the highest Billboard rank AND the purest concentration of most-used words within its title should in fact be considered the ultimate communal American song since 1958.

And guess what that song would be?

#11 Hot 100. “Yeah!” by Usher feat. Lil’ Jon and Ludacris (peak 2/28/04). Breakdown: Yeah (8)

This is why I never took a statistics class.

above photo found HERE