Across the world and throughout history, people use song to express themselves, connect with others, and create meanings. Whether they are Irish folk, African storytelling, Christian hymns, Heavy Metal or Country, these songs share common features such as rhythm, harmony and lyrics. However, songs can also be different and are usually grouped into genres such as pop, rock, country or rap. Some genres, such as jazz or classical music, are a mixture of several styles.
A song is a short poem or other set of words that are put to music and meant to be sung or rapped. It typically has a musical structure with verses and a chorus, and can be performed by vocalists or accompanied by instruments. Often, it has a theme and is based on a story or event.
In a recent experiment, we asked listeners around the world to rate the function of a selection of songs. We found that three common types of song-dance songs, lullabies and healing songs-elicited accurate and reliable form-function inferences from the listeners. Listeners from most regions shared notions of which songs are used for dancing and which ones are sung to soothe babies, although their agreement on the function of healing songs was lower than for those of dance or lullabies.
In a subsequent experiment, we showed that contextual features, in addition to song form, explain perceived song functions. Models with these features were more predictive than models that included only the principal components or a simple indicator variable for each type of song. In addition, the models with contextual features accounted for 74.6% of the variance in the dance song function rating, whereas a model that included the two principal components and an indicator variable for the dance song explained only 68.4% of the variance.