This chart takes all of the descriptions of people across all songs and divides them
into four categories. On the left, it shows that women were positively described
seven times and negatively described five times. On the right side it shows that men
were positively described five times and negatively described seven times. From this
we can gather that though women and men are described in nearly equal amounts, women
are more likely to be shown in a positive light and men are more likely to be shown
in a negative light.
This chart takes every instance that occurred of a woman taking some sort of action
and breaks it down to which actions were active and passive. In this case, “active”
is referring to any action that directly changed whatever situation that woman may
have been in (i.e., standing up to an abusive partner or leaving town for a better
life), and “passive” if referring to any action that did not directly change
whatever situation that woman may have been in (i.e., crying over the loss of a
relationship).
As visible in this chart, when looking at women’s actions, the number of active
choices made is more than double that of passive choices made. This shows that
within these songs, the singers were primarily focused on telling stories of women
who made active choices that impacted their lives.
This chart takes every instance of the failure or end of a romantic relationship
between a woman and a man and tracks the reason why it happened and how often it
happened across all songs.
- “No Love” – Eight instances. Refers to cases where either both parties fell out
of love or in some cases just one party.
- “Abuse” – Two instances. Refers to the man abusing the woman, causing the
relationship to fail. There were no instances found of the relationship failing
due to the woman abusing the man.
- “Abandonment” – Fifteen instances. Refers to instances where the woman in the
relationship was abandoned by the man.
- “Money Troubles” – Zero instances. It was theorized by the researchers that
because of the large volume of mentions of money and socioeconomic status within
the songs that issues involving money might be the downfall for some of the
relationships in these songs, but that hypothesis was proven wrong, as no
romantic relationships were ended explicitly due to money troubles.
- “Event” – One instance. Refers to relationships ended due to events or the
ramifications of events out of either party’s control (i.e., a natural
disaster).
- “Cheating” – Three instances. Refers to cases where one party was found to be
cheating on the other and the relationship was then ended due to that
cheating.
- “Death” – Two instances. Refers to relationships ended due to the death of one
or both parties.
As evident, most relationships came to an end due to internal factors and feelings
between parties and not due to outside forces. It is interesting to note that so
many relationships ended due to abandonment, especially as many of the songs deal
heavily with themes of loneliness.