Is There a Rhythm of the Rain? an Analysis of Weather in Popular Music
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Is there a Rhythm Of The Rain? An analysis of weather in popular music Sally Brown,1 Karen L. singer John Denver discussing how he was weather references in popular music. Lyrics, 2 3 inspired by nature. Also, members of the UK musical genre, musical keys, mimicry and Aplin, Katie Jenkins, band Blur have explained how the Shipping links to specific weather events are all con- Sarah Mander,4 Forecast (a British radio bulletin reporting sidered. In this paper, references to songs are 5 on maritime weather conditions) provided given to both songwriters and performers. Claire Walsh and inspiration for the lyric of a half-written song, The latter is distinguished from the former Paul D. Williams6 ‘This Is a Low’ (Cavanagh and Maconie, 1995; by the presence of the word ‘perf:’ immedi- 1Faculty of Engineering and the James, 2007). Additionally, some versions of ately preceding their name or group. ‘Wind Power’2 by electronic music pioneer Weather – July 2015, Vol. 70, No. 7 70, No. Vol. – July 2015, Weather Environment and Tyndall Centre for Thomas Dolby also feature visual and aural Climate Change Research, University of representations of meteorological phenom- Methodology Southampton ena including pressure charts, wind vanes Thousands of popular songs have been 2 Department of Physics, University of and the Shipping Forecast. written, many hundreds of which con- Oxford These examples indicate that discussing tain references to weather. Using a series 3Environmental Change Institute, Oxford weather – often seen as a British obsession – of lists, databases3 and our own inspira- Centre for the Environment, University is a popular pastime, and much can be learnt tion, 759 weather songs were found, all of of Oxford and Tyndall Centre for from how society portrays weather in music which are listed in the supporting informa- Climate Change Research and the types of weather that inspire musi- tion (Table S1). To ensure a fair, consistent 4Tyndall Centre for Climate Change cians. For example, Smiley and Post (2014) methodology and accurate analysis, a sub- Research and School of Mechanical, use popular music, including songs with set of 419 popular music songs were ana- lysed in detail. These songs were available Aerospace and Civil Engineering, The environmental themes, as a didactic tool. They found that many students improved in a karaoke database. The most suitable University of Manchester their critical analysis skills when geographical was KaraFun4 due to size,5 consistency and 5 Centre for Earth Systems Engineering and environmental concepts were linked to availability of lyrics compared with alterna- Research, School of Civil Engineering music. Simply put, the majority of the popu- tives. Other sources were considered, such and Geosciences, Newcastle University lation has heard or can relate to a piece of as Songfacts (2014), but these lists were and Tyndall Centre for Climate Change weather-related music. Thus the aim of this not necessarily compiled consistently and Research paper is to answer the following questions: did not state, for example, if songs were 6Department of Meteorology and excluded if weather was mentioned in the i) How well is weather represented in title but not the lyrics. Although KaraFun National Centre for Atmospheric popular music, and what phenomena Science, University of Reading proved to be one of the most effective data- are the most commonly described? bases with which to search for songs, it did ii) What are the common methods of have weaknesses. First, songs less appro- Introduction communicating weather phenomena in priate for karaoke were not included (340 popular music? The influence of the environment on compos- songs were excluded from detailed analysis iii) Are popular musicians influenced by from our base list as they were not in the ers, painters, writers, and other creative artists weather? can be substantial. Several authors have ana- KaraFun database. Nearly half were related lysed how our environment has influenced We focus our quantitative analysis on to Bob Dylan – which we address separately music: Wagner (1972) looked at weather in karaoke songs because of the wide range in the Case Studies section). Second, a lim- classical music, followed by Gedzelman (1980) of artists covered and the fact that the songs ited number of singers were associated with and Schmid (1989), who considered meteor- are well known for their lyrics, which is the each song, which can affect some songs that ology in popular music. Aplin and Williams principal method by which to communicate are repeatedly ‘covered’ by different artists. (2011, 2012) recently analysed weather and weather phenomena. The karaoke database We believe the database is representative classical music. Weather phenomena have was used as a starting point for analysis, and of the wider repertoire, as discussed in the also been examined in the context of both a the complete versions of each song were section on Lennon and McCartney. particular artist’s response, and society as a accessed through channels such as artists’ We searched for the following meteoro- whole (e.g. Robock, 2005; Kotarba et al., 2013). websites and YouTube (our choice of data- logical references in the lyrics of the KaraFun Furthermore, it is straightforward to find evi- base is discussed further in the sections on 3 For example: http://karafun.com, dence that popular singers are inspired by Methodology and Case Studies). We apply the methodology of Aplin and Williams http://songfacts.com, http://bobdylan.com, meteorology. For example, a video of the http://www.beatlesagain.com 1 (2011) to compile and analyse a database of song ‘Sunshine On My Shoulders’ features 4 http://www.karafun.com 5 15 000 songs were available on KaraFun up to 198 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrI_VXLUcFk 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNyWRyMIdlY 31 December 2012. database: Blizzard, cloud, cold (and freezing, line or chorus, and secondary (229 songs), shown in Figure 1(a). The seasons and wind/ cool), fair/blue skies, fog, frost, haze, heat/ where weather was mentioned only in a few breeze are the next two most popular refer- warmth, hurricane, ice, mist, rain, rainbow, lines. To avoid ambiguity, the classifications ences in both primary and secondary songs. seasons (including spring, summer, autumn were iterated between the authors. Primary The frequency of weather references then (fall), winter), snow, storm, sun, thunder (and songs are analysed below, with some refer- varies between primary and secondary lightning), tornado and wind (and breeze). ence to the secondary songs and, where songs. Blizzards and frost are the least fre- and popular music Weather To ensure inclusion, selected weather impact appropriate, the 340 not in KaraFun (listed quently referenced, suggesting that generic terms were also searched for in the karaoke in Table S1 of the supporting information). weather terms are more popular. database. Additionally, weather phenomena Throughout our study we assumed, fol- Many songs reference two or more are sometimes strongly implied without the lowing common perception in northwest weather types, as shown in Figure 1(b). use of meteorological terms. An example Europe, that phenomena such as sun and Secondary songs are more likely to refer to is the phrase tree tops glisten from ‘White warm weather are positive aspects of the only one or two weather types per song (53 Christmas’ (Berlin) to indicate cold, frosty or weather, whilst cold weather, thunder and and 30%, respectively) compared to songs snowy conditions. In these cases reliability rain are negative. Of course, there are excep- containing primary weather references (36 was ensured through iteration between the tions to this (such as meteorologists enjoy- and 24%, respectively). By contrast, songs 7 70, No. Vol. – July 2015, Weather authors until agreement was reached on ing thundery conditions, or rain being good with primary weather themes are more the appropriate weather phenomenon. We for crops, particularly in times of drought), likely to refer to three or more weather recorded the weather type represented, the as described in greater detail in the Lyrics types. The maximum number of weather song title, songwriter, singers/bands, year section. types per song was six, found in ‘Baby and year made famous from the karaoke It’s Cold Outside’ (Loesser), ‘Stormy’ (Cobb database, and, where possible, nationality Results and Buie) and ‘The Wreck Of The Edmund of songwriters and copyright year. The lyric Fitzgerald’ (Lightfoot). and musical characteristics of the song are Overview The most common combination of weather also analysed. We found 419 songs (from Out of the 190 songs with weather as a types referred to in the same song are sun a possible 759 based on multiple sources) primary theme, sun and sunshine are the and rain. Table 1 highlights that for primary referring to weather in the KaraFun data- most common references (86 instances), fol- songs, 41 entries in the database refer to base. These were divided into two mutually lowed by rain (74 references). Sun and rain both sun and rain together in the lyrics. exclusive categories: primary (190 songs), represent 37% of the references to weather Other common couplings include sun and where weather was a theme, repeated for both primary and secondary songs, as clouds; sun and seasons; rain and clouds; and rain and storms. This is followed by seasons and cold; sun and wind/breeze; and sun and (a) storms. Of the songs that refer to both sun and rain, the next most common weather type to be additionally referenced is clouds, occurring in 12 of the primary songs. In the primary database, the number of songs containing two or more weather types is similar to the number of songs con- taining exactly one weather type. By con- trast, the number of songs in the KaraFun database containing any weather at all is tiny (just a few hundred out of over 15 000).