Here’s a bit of trivia that may interest you.
From 1962 until 1970—a period of eight years—the Beatles collectively composed and released about 200 original songs. Various experts have estimated that the average Beatles song has about 200 words. Some have more and some have fewer, but that’s the average. As a songwriter myself, this sounds about right. So that means the four moptops—mostly John and Paul, but also George and Ringo—produced about 40,000 words in eight years.
(As a side note, the emergence of rap music in the 1980s exploded this formula. Rap songs can have hundreds of words! The full-length 1979 version of “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugarhill Gang runs a reported 3,000 words. Eminem’s 2013 track “Rap God” holds an official world record with 1,560 words in just six minutes and three seconds.)
The total of 40,000 Beatles words is actually inflated. If you know anything about pop songs, it’s that they’re highly repetitious. The standard verse-chorus format means the chorus—the heart of the song—is repeated, often several times. So I think a more accurate total would be 20,000 original, non-repeated words.
Think about that! Twenty thousand words between four writers in eight years. Of course, writing words was just one part of the job. They also had to write the music for each set of lyrics and then perform the songs themselves. For many artists, that alone would be a full-time job.
The Total Career Vocabulary
We may wonder how many unique words pop songwriters use over the course of their careers. In other words, what’s their total vocabulary? According to a June 2015 study by the music lyrics website Musixmatch, the songwriter with the biggest vocabulary—that is, the biggest dictionary of actual words used across their entire catalogue—is Eminem, who as of that year had used 8,818 unique words. Rap artists including Jay-Z, Tupac, and Kanye West held down the other four top spots. The only similarly wordy pop songwriter was Bob Dylan, whose career vocabulary comprised 4,883 unique words. The Beatles were far down on the list, which is no doubt a reflection of their focus on the simplicity and universality of their songs. They used simple words that anyone could grasp and understand.
At the other end of the spectrum, consider that William Shakespeare is estimated to have used a vocabulary of more than 20,000 words in his plays and poems. His works provide the first recorded use of over 1,700 words in the English language, many of which he invented. But of course theatrical plays are highly word-intensive, and feature characters who collectively may talk nonstop for two hours or more.
Discipline Can Be Difficult—But Necessary
This topic is pertinent to novelists who are generally unconcerned with the constraints of the word count. Unlike pop songwriters who face a three- or four-minute time limit, or short story writers who face limits when entering competitions, and self-help authors who may work under the eagle eye of a penny-pinching editor, novelists often enjoy free rein to crank out as many words as they can manage. Under a skilled and disciplined hand, this is no problem; but how many times have you been reading a highly touted novel and thought to yourself, “Can we please quit the chit-chat and just get on with it? Why is this author babbling on about stuff that doesn’t matter?” Excess wordiness often takes the form of the author striving to ingratiate themselves with the reader by being “chummy” and “conversational,” as if speaking to the reader and regularly poking them in the ribs and saying, “Are you with me? Are you listening? Do you like me? Are you impressed by my artistry?”
Once in a while, it’s good for any novelist to step back and say, “I’m not the reader’s friend. I’m a storyteller and I’m going to do my job. How can I deliver the biggest bang for the buck? What can I delete that the reader doesn’t need?”
The best way to captivate your reader is to respect their time and intelligence. It doesn’t matter if they like you; they need to like your work.
