Which genres feature the most profane lyrics? Musixmatch study reveals top "offenders"

Profanity is nothing new in popular music, but this week lyrics company Musixmatch has released a study that puts some numbers on the subject, showing the overall frequency of swear words in diffrent music genres.

Swearing frequency: lyrics vs everyday language

The company in its lyrics-crunching exercise discovered that 80% of swearing is accounted by just 10 words, and swear words account for 0.45% of all words in lyrics. The company states that on average 0.5% to 0.7% of all words spoken by a person are swear words, which would make popular music lyrics cleaner - on average - than a person’s daily interactions. 

The genres with the highest frequency of swear words

The study by Musixmatch reveals that Hip Hop is by far the most profanity-prone genre, with 1 swear word ever 47 words. 

Heavy metal comes a distant second, with 1 profanity every 352 words. 

Electronic Music contains a profanity every 498 words, whilst Pop music is even cleaner at 1 ever 904 words. 

It is perhaps surprising to find that Indie Rock and Rock are in fifth and sixth place, with 1 swearword ever 1037 and 1043 words respectively. 

Finally, it is less surprising to see Folk in seventh place with 1 profanity every 2925 words. Country Music is almost profanity-free, in last place with 1 every 2238 words. 

Hip Hop’s stats are slightly skewed by the inclusion of “nigga” as a swear word given its extensive use in the genre, where it is not generally intended to be offensive. Even without it though, there is still one swearword ever 74 words, far more than in any other genre.