Memory for lyrics

Background How much do we remember of song lyrics? By far, human voice is present in the largest part of sold and listened music. Pure instrumental music occupies a very little market sector. Furthermore, in Italy, for example, examining charts from 1970 to 2005, we have that 74% of sold music is actually sung in English and not Italian, and many listeners do not have a good English knowledge. Not directly understanding the lyric, therefore, seems not to affect the aesthetic and emotional value of music. Many examples can be found in the history of music in which the meaning of what is sung is not comprehensible for the co-occurrence of concomitant voices, as in counterpoint, or because the singer through vocal ornaments underline musical aspects that conflict with lyric understanding. Aims The aim of the study was to verify the amount of lyric words of an unpublished song that is remembered at a short interval after it has been listened to. Method Participants were 30 university students (16 males and 14 females; mean age 21), without any systematic musical training. Participants had to listen to two unpublished songs, one with complex arrangement (four instruments), and one with simple arrangements (one instrument). Control condition was a recited lyric (without musical accompaniment) of an unpublished song. Presentation order of the two experimental conditions and of the control condition was counterbalanced within subjects. Participants were told that the study was focused on aesthetical judgments of unpublished songs and were not aware of the aims. At the end each participants was requested to evaluate the pleasantness of each song, and to report as much words they remembered of the two songs, and of the recited lyric. Results Memory scores in the three conditions were significantly different. In the control condition participants correctly reported 12.05% of the lyric. In the experimental condition with simple arrangement the memory score was 4.02% of the lyric, whereas in the experimental condition (complex arrangement) the memory score was 3.86%. Complexity of musical arrangement, as well as the evaluated pleasantness of the songs did not influence the amount of remembered words (r = 0.24). Conclusions Memory for lyrics is very poor, also when assessed at short interval after listening. Whereas the presence of human voice is very important in determining pleasantness of a song, the content of what is effectively sung seems much less critical. Apart few exceptions, lyrics have a poetic like style, semantically evocative, and syntactically poorly structured, which hinder the memorization of the text. The results of this study foster the hypothesis that much of the evocative power of music originates from vocal affective prosody, and that the semantic counterpart of language is not as important as vocal-prosodic properties. Key words: Lyrics, Memory, Voic