“What’s a computer?” Intuition Meets the Science Law in a Complete Fall Lyrics Corpus

Abstract

This chapter outlines experiments with the Wmatrix software programme in identifying significant semantic categories and thematic patterns in a corpus of the complete Fall lyrics, from their inception in 1977 to the death of frontman Mark E Smith in 2018. The 84,703 words is edited down to 60,720 words to remove repetition, and researcher intuition is balanced against the results generated by the software. The findings, for instance, that the words 'man' and 'head' and the semantic category 'Anatomy and Physiology' are deemed highly significant, open up pathways for further investigation into one of the most prolific and dense lyrical outputs in modern popular music history.