Songkorpus
Just as pop music has evolved from an originally youth cultural phenomenon into an integral part of modern culture, its textual content has become omnipresent in the realm of everyday language. We are surrounded by pop lyrics, e.g. in the form of in-car radio listening, online streaming services, ambient music for department stores and restaurants, or in the context of TV shows. In view of this high communicative impact factor, there is a substantial desideratum regarding the empirical exploration of pop lyrics in corpus linguistics. The Corpus of Song Lyrics ("Songkorpus") addresses this desiteratum and contains sustainably utilizable, multilayer annotated song texts, featuring phenomena of both written and spoken discourse. It is dedicated to linguistic research, as well as to related disciplines such as media, cultural & literary studies, social sciences, or musicology, who have a scientific interest in contemporary German rock and pop music language.
The corpus is still in its early stages [...]. So far, it comprises:
- Udo Lindenberg Archive (1972-today)
- Konstantin Wecker Archive (1973-today)
- Stoppok Archive (1982-today)
- Ulla Meinecke Archive (1977-today)
- Hannes Wader Archive (1969-today)
- Fettes Brot Archive (1994-today)
Besides, the corpus features some thematic archives:
- FRG Single Charts: the 1800 most succesfull German-language songs from the Top 100 since 1970, according to Chartsurfer
- GDR Single Charts: ca. 500 East German songs from 1970-1990, based on the GDR chart lists
- HipHop Songs: 1000 German rap lyrics, covering more than two decades