Application of Latent Dirichlet Allocation on the lyrics of the top 100 songs from Billboard Charts 1964 – 2015

1. Application of Clustering Methods on Lyrics
5th
February 2019
Philip Oedi

2. 2
T
Can clustering methods be used on lyrics?
What methods can be used?
M
What topics are being addressed in popular music?
Are topics trending?
B
Prediction of trends
Tool for decision making
Business
Technology
Music
Background

3. 3
D
Acquisition of data
P
Establishing of properly formatted data
C
Application of Clustering/Topic Modeling algorithm
I
Inspection of top words and songs per topic
V
Over time changes in topic popularity
Approach
Data
Preparation
Clustering
Inspection
Visualization

4. 4
Data
Rank Song Artist Year Lyrics
6 downtown petula clark 1965 when youre alone
and life is making ...
7 help the beatles 1965 help i need
somebody help not
just anybody help ...
8 cant you hear my
heart beat
hermans hermits 1965 carterlewis every
time i see you lookin
my way baby baby
cant ...
... ... ... ... ...
●
Billboard Charts 1964 – 2015 Song + Lyrics
●
Top 100 Year End
●
5100 rows
●
https://www.kaggle.com/rakannimer/billboard-lyrics

5. 5
Preparation
Raw Lyrics
Fix contractions
won’t → will not
Remove long words
lalalalalalalaaye
Remove meaningless words
Even, as, ...
Remove lyric duplicates
Remove description
Chorus, repeat, ...
Remove short words
Ah, ya, yo, ...
Filtered and
meaningful/relevant
words

6. 6
Clustering
Beauty
Money
Money
Beauty
Love
Love
Topic 1
Topic 2
Topic 3
Latent Dirichlet Allocation
Songs using similar words
Topic

7. 7
Words per Topic
Topic 3Topic 2Topic 1

8. 8
Words per Topic
Love/
Affection
Aggression/
Party
Dream/
Surreal

9. 9
Songs per Topic
Love/
Affection
Aggression/
Party
Dream/
Surreal
born to be alive by patrick hernandez
say it loud im black and im by proud
james brown
lucky star by madonna
you make me feel like dancing by leo
sayer
in the house of stone and light by
martin page
shoulder lean by young dro featuring
ti
party like a rockstar by shop boyz
cashin out by cash out
shake shake shake shake your booty
by kc and the sunshine band
damn by youngbloodz featuring lil jon
let me love you until you learn to love
yourself by neyo
real love by mary j blige
give your heart a break by demi
lovato
nothings gonna stop us now by
starship
doesnt really matter by janet jackson

10. 10
Number of Songs
per topic as an
indicator for
overall popularity
of that topic

11. 11
A
Love/Affection and
Dream/Surreal
dominate
B
Rise in popularity of
topic
aggression/party
A
B