top of page
  • Writer's pictureBig Rick Stuart

Are Your Lyrics Metal-Enough? This Study Shows What Words To Use And Which To Avoid


This is something that I posted about 5 years ago, but it’s still fascinating because of the thought and actual data behind it. It’s some research put together by Iain Barr, who’s actually a data scientist and obviously a metal-head. You can’t help but be impressed with the depth of his study, which is in three very detailed parts and has the express intent of showing you if your lyrics are “Metal-enough.”


The study was incredibly comprehensive. It evaluated the lyrics from 222,623 metal songs with a data set that included songs from 7,364 bands spread over 22,314 albums. Although Iain did it for his own amusement, it’s still pretty amazing to see just what passes for metal words.


As an aside, some of the non-metal words are hilarious. For instance, I’d love to read the lyrics from the songs where the words “fiscal,” “literary,” “residential,” and “administrative” come from.


So here they are – the top and bottom 20 metal words are shown in the tables below, along with their “Metalness”.



stock Wix photo

8 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All
bottom of page