A recent study in the made-up field of “lyric intelligence” claimed that chart music wordsmiths are getting dumber each year, on the basis of Billboard number ones from the past decade. The American review was made by a ticket sales company, who used a Readability Score to determine what US grade-school reading level each track was.
What’s really disappointing is that Nickelback came out of the analysis looking alright. They topped the Intelligence- o-metre in the rock charts, beating bands such as Soundgarden and Metallica. Nickelback have since gotten involved in the racket of “bringing disco back”; their latest single is responsible for the words: “Funky little monkey, she’s a twisted trickster, Everybody wants to be the sister’s mister, Coca-Cola rollercoaster”.
This kind of standard is what earned them the average reading level of a third-grader, the yank equivalent of our Third Class, or Rang a Trí. This is somehow smarter than every other rock artist listed.
Meanwhile, country music has earned the title of smartest genre. The author claims this is because country songs regularly feature words such as cigarette and tacklebox, but probably more convincing is the indisputable gold of song titles such as If The Phone Don't Ring You'll Know It's Me or Get Your Tongue Outta My Mouth 'Cause I'm Kissing You Goodbye.
In the pop charts,the IQ levels are reliably kept down by the valiant efforts of T-Pain's Buy U a Drank and the Black Eyed Peas Boom Boom Paw. However, the study did not indicate the statistical significance of its findings, so there's still a chance that science may someday demonstrate that Nickelback are objectively awful.
