Masculinity in Music

Abstract This study evaluated the concepts of hypermasculinity and hegemonic masculinity in relation to music of different genres and over several decades. Lyrical content in music reflects the attitudes within a culture over time and the depth of different genres can have varying implications. Hegemonic masculinity is a form of negative masculinity that focuses on dominance and positions of power. Hypermasculinity involves an exaggerated form of masculinity that falls into the stereotypes of what it means to be masculine. For the present study, we created lists of words that might appear in lyrics and indicate the presence of hegemonic masculine or hypermasculine themes. Each list had three subcategories (power/dominance/control, wealth, and competitiveness for hegemonic masculinity, and aggression/hostility/toughness, calloused sexual behaviors, and risk-taking behaviors for hypermasculinity). We then created a database of song lyrics over six decades beginning in the 1960’s (according to the Billboard Top Twenty) and used the Linguistic Inquiry Word Count paradigm (Pennebaker et al., 2007) to generate scores for each song in each category. Data were analyzed using a multivariate ANOVA. Results indicate that between decades, there was a higher rate of wealth mentioned in the 2000’s in comparison to the 1970’s, 80’s, and 90’s. There were also higher rates of risk-taking behaviors when comparing the Country genre with the Rock genre. Keywords: hegemonic masculinity, hypermasculinity, music, genres, decade