ArticlePloS one2024
Songs tell a story: The Arc of narrative for music.
Article in PloS one, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- An album is a story: Feature arcs in sequences of tracks.PloS one · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Research suggests that a core lexical structure characterized by words that define plot staging, plot progression, and cognitive tension underlies written narratives. Here, we investigate the extent to which song lyrics follow this underlying narrative structure. Using a text analytic approach and two publicly available datasets of song lyrics including a larger dataset (N = 12,280) and a smaller dataset of greatest hits (N = 2,823), we find that music lyrics tend to exhibit a core Arc of Narrative structure: setting the stage at the beginning, progressing the plot steadily until the end of the song, and peaking in cognitive tension in the middle. We also observe differences in narrative structure based on musical genre, suggesting different genres set the scene in greater detail (Country, Rap) or progress the plot faster and have a higher rate of internal conflict (Pop). These findings add to the evidence that storytelling exhibits predictable language patterns and that storytelling is evident in music lyrics.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.