Song Genre Classification: A Lyrical Approach

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Song Genre ClassificationA Lyrical Approach

• Brian Sanderson
• CS 601-R
• Dr. Eric Ringger

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What's the Problem?

• How well do song lyrics correlate with the genre
  of a song?
• I lost my dog, lost my truck, she left me, and
  I'm drunk. gt Country
• You can tell by the way I do my walk ... gt
  Disco
• Been a long day, don't got lots to say, mon...
  gt Reggae

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Why should we care?

• Offers a solution to some potential issues
• Finding out what an emerging garage band's genre
  would be compared to other bands.
• Finding out the potential genres of a song which
  has only lyrics, but no music.
• Finding out what emails, text blurbs, and poems
  might be if they were put to music.

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Methodology

• Data sets
• azlyrics.com For the training data (12,000
  songs),
• mp3.com For classifying artists to genres
• sing365.com For test data lyrics.
• Parser
• Parses song data, extracts features, titles, and
  genres.
• Classifier
• Uses the extracted features of the training data
  to classify new lyrics.

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Methodology

• Features we are looking for
• Word existence
• Word frequencies
• Use of profanity
• Number of unique words
• Number of times the title occurs in the song
• How many questions are asked
• Features were weighted in this order

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Methodology

• The features of each test song were scored based
  on their correlation to the feature sets of the
  trained genres.
• An EM-type algorithm is used to discover the
  optimal weights on the 6 features
• Pick initial weights for features
• Classify each training song, record answers
• Adjust weights based on feedback and repeat
• The test set is then introduced, and scores are
  tallied

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Results

• 52 accuracy on test set.
• Some difficulties
• Mislabeled training and test data
• Artists often can be associated with multiple
  genres
• Some songs can't be described by one genre name
• 3rd party errors in lyric transcription (like
  punctuation insertion).

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Love Letter

• ... this last month has been amazing. You are
  one of the most wonderful people that I've ever
  meet and are really special to me. I feel
  privileged and lucky to have you as my boyfriend
  and amazing friend. You've done a wonderful job
  on balancing your schedule by the way. I know
  it's hard. I'll see you tonight. Thanks for
  always making me smile
• Guess?

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Love Letter

• ... this last month has been amazing. You are
  one of the most wonderful people that I've ever
  meet and are really special to me. I feel
  privileged and lucky to have you as my boyfriend
  and amazing friend. You've done a wonderful job
  on balancing your schedule by the way. I know
  it's hard. I'll see you tonight. Thanks for
  always making me smile. Love Amy
• Guess? Country

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Emily Dickinson

• I bring an unaccustomed wine to lips long
  parching, next to mine, and summon them to drink.
  Crackling with fever, they essay I turn my
  brimming eyes away, And come next hour to look.
  The hands still hug the tardy glass The lips I
  would have cooled, alas!Are so superfluous cold,
  I would as soon attempt to warm the bosoms where
  the frost has lain Ages beneath the mould. Some
  other thirsty there may be to whom this would
  have pointed me had it remained to speak. And so
  I always bear the cup if, haply, mine may be the
  drop some pilgrim thirst to slake, if, haply,
  any say to me, Unto the little, unto me, when I
  at last awake.
• Genre?

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Emily Dickinson

• I bring an unaccustomed wine to lips long
  parching, next to mine, and summon them to drink.
  Crackling with fever, they essay I turn my
  brimming eyes away, And come next hour to look.
  The hands still hug the tardy glass The lips I
  would have cooled, alas!Are so superfluous cold,
  I would as soon attempt to warm the bosoms where
  the frost has lain Ages beneath the mould. Some
  other thirsty there may be to whom this would
  have pointed me had it remained to speak. And so
  I always bear the cup if, haply, mine may be the
  drop some pilgrim thirst to slake, if, haply,
  any say to me, Unto the little, unto me, when I
  at last awake.
• Genre? Folk

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Shakespeare - RomeoJuliet

• Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace, profaners
  of this neighbour-stained steel,-- Will they not
  hear? What, ho! you men, you beasts, That quench
  the fire of your pernicious rage With purple
  fountains issuing from your veins, On pain of
  torture, from those bloody hands Throw your
  mistemper'd weapons to the ground, And hear the
  sentence of your moved prince. Three civil
  brawls, bred of an airy word, By thee, old
  Capulet, and Montague, Have thrice disturb'd the
  quiet of our streets...
• Genre?

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Shakespeare - RomeoJuliet

• Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace, profaners
  of this neighbour-stained steel,-- Will they not
  hear? What, ho! you men, you beasts, That quench
  the fire of your pernicious rage With purple
  fountains issuing from your veins, On pain of
  torture, from those bloody hands Throw your
  mistemper'd weapons to the ground, And hear the
  sentence of your moved prince. Three civil
  brawls, bred of an airy word, By thee, old
  Capulet, and Montague, Have thrice disturb'd the
  quiet of our streets...
• Genre? Hip-hop / Rap
• Length294 words, 143 unique. 7 Questions.

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Future Work

• Having more careful labeling and transcription of
  lyrics from songs.
• Labeling lyrics per song, and not per artist.
• Collecting More data
• Allowing multiple genre classifications per song.