CLARKSBURG, W.Va. — Music artists like to throw in a dirty word once in a while, but just how dirty is the language of popular music? A new study from AT&T has determined how much each of 2021’s top musical artists swear in their songs.
The study analyzed artists who made the Top 200 Songs list at least 100 times in the past year. He then counted the lyrics and profanity of all artists to find the percentage of curse word lyrics that each artist uses.
Of the 1,320,336 words in song lyrics, 19,328 were swear words, less than 2% of all words.
If you’re trying to limit the amount of swearing you or your kids hear, avoid artists like Da Baby, Juice World, and Post Malone, all three of which belong to the Hip-Hop and Rap genres.
Pop seems to be the most appropriate popular genre with artists like Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Dua Lipa and Billie Eilish continuing to be among the most appropriate of the top artists, although Eilish has more than doubled down on his swear words compared to last year, going from 46 curses to 112.
Bruno Mars had the fewest swear words with only 48 in his songs. In comparison, Da Baby had 2,654 swear words.
