Studies in Linguistics and Literature ISSN 2573-6434 (Print) ISSN 2573-6426 (Online) Vol. 5, No. 4, 2021 www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/sll 140 Original Paper How the Titles of Popular Songs have Changed over the Last 60 Years Cynthia Whissell 1* 1 Liberal Arts/Psychology, Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada * Cynthia Whissell, Liberal Arts/Psychology, Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada Received: November 9, 2021 Accepted: November 20, 2021 Online Published: November 29, 2021 doi:10.22158/sll.v5n4p140 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/sll.v5n4p140 Abstract Billboard magazine has been keeping track of the 100 hottest (most popular) songs of the year since 1958. Lists of the Hot 100 titles from 1960 to 2019 (6001 titles) were used to study the way in which popular song titles changed over time. Based on significant polynomial regression trends and significant results from a discriminant function analysis, it is concluded that there were three main phases in titles (early, middle, and late) and that these phases differ in predictable manners in terms of stylistic features such as length, abstraction, activity, and the use of the word “love”. Early phase titles are longer, more concrete, more passive, and they do not use the word “love” often; middle phase titles are of medium length, more abstract, of medium activation, and use the word “love” frequently. Titles of the last phase are shorter, more concrete, more active, and do not often employ the word love. A possible factor contributing to these differences is the rise in popularity of rock and roll and hip-hop respectively and their different periods of ascendency. Keywords titles of popular songs, Billboard Hot 100, emotion, style 1. Introduction This article describes how titles of popular songs (represented by the songs on the Billboard Hot 100 charts) have changed across time from 1960 to 2019. Titles are analyzed in terms of their length, their pleasantness, activation, and imagery, their use of particular words (“I”, “love”, “you”, and “the”), their use of elision (e.g., rockin’), and the length of the words in them. Graphs plotting changes across time and a discriminant function analysis indicate the presence of three mutually distinguishable phases in title style, with the earliest 20 years (1960-1979) being represented by one type of title, the middle 20 (1980-1999) by another and the final 20 years (2000-2019) by a third. A possible contributing factor to