So What Does “Set Fire To The Rain” Really Mean? A Typology for Analyzing Pop Song Lyrics Using Narrative Theory and Semiotics

Abstract

Lyrics that tell a story have always been a defining characteristic of American popular music, yet the narrativity of pop music is underrepresented in academic literature. This paper utilizes a combination of semiotics and narrative theory to present a systematic method that can be used to analyze and codify the lyrics of virtually any pop song into one of four major categories based on whether it has an open or closed reading and a defined or undefined narrative. It is hoped that this typology can be used both to better understand how pop music plays a role in cultural storytelling and to aid teachers and students in the development and understanding of songwriting pedagogy.

Tourist Attractions in Campursari Lyrics: Analysis of Figurative Language and of Meaning

“…Using song lyrics taken from websites, they explained how to process a standard text to understand its semantic features and further determine the similarity of meaning of how the text is processed. Randle and Evans (2013) ways for analyzing and structuring pop song lyrics into four major groups based on whether the song lyrics have implied or unimplied texts and specified or unspecified texts. Fell and Sporleder (2014) analyze and classify lyrics by experimenting well with more sophisticated features with different dimensions whose models of song texts, such as vocabulary, style, semantics, orientation to the world, and song structure.…”