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spicer2 OP t1_jc6fzop wrote

Tools: Excel

Source: MusicBrainz (online music encyclopedia)

Methodology/FAQs: I've seen a few other people attempt to figure this out but I've never been completely satisfied with their methodology. Music YouTuber David Bennett Piano has a video where he used Wikipedia disambiguation pages to arrive at a final list which is clever, but not robust enough for my tastes.

I had to do some careful filtering on the data to make it useful, so to be clear on what you’re seeing: this is the number of *original compositions* with that title. This means cover versions are excluded – if you don’t do that, the list is just full of Christmas songs that have been recorded many times over. I also filtered it so it is only *songs* – this means things like musicals, soundtracks, and classical albums are excluded (otherwise you get a load of “Preludes”). This is also why the figures are lower than some other sources you might have seen for this kind of data.

Some other interesting tidbits:

-”I Love You” is 28th in the all-time list;

-The most common animal is “Butterfly” (55th);

-The most common color is “Blue” (61st);

-”Untitled” (as in, an actual title called “Untitled”) is 63rd;

-The most commonly used place name is "California" (75th);

-If you exclude “Grace”, the most common name is “Maria”. And if you exclude that, it’s “Caroline” (unsweetened).

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srv50 t1_jc6g0l8 wrote

“Intro”? Kinda generic. Odd there isn’t more. Does this include the Intro section of most classical music pieces?

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Gmonkey_ t1_jc6gaua wrote

I imagined "One" would be somewhere up there.

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Nervous-Eye-9652 t1_jc6hx12 wrote

  • in English. I doubt they have translated the song titles from other languages. It would have been good, things like California the most frequent place or what is the most common name, could give another result.
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Upstairs-Boring t1_jc6l8f6 wrote

Replying to spicer2 (#2,227,441)

This is quite interesting!

I'm curious about what the difference is in having the title "untitled" and what you classified as untitled? I'm assuming the latter means that it was blank but does that mean the title exists but was missing from the database or that the song had been purposely left with no name?

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Starbuksman t1_jc6ljh4 wrote

M83 got some titles in here- not very original apparently…

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RuinLoes t1_jc6lml7 wrote

Replying to srv50 (#2,227,444)

Classical music rarely has anything titled "intro". If there is anything like that, the convention is usually "prelude", but its not like a two minute intro you get to an album.

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frocsog t1_jc6mvzz wrote

The next successful hit will be "Time to stay at home tonight by the fire forever with you alone, lost angel, falling into lost Paradise Heaven, Goodbye Shine, hold on rain - Intro"

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-domi- t1_jc6n3zi wrote

I think I've ran into one or two Homes, and one Time. Are these meant to be full titles, or nouns within title names? I'd think there'd be at least one two-word title in the list...

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El_Bean69 t1_jc6oywf wrote

Full Titles or nouns within the title? I know a Home, Time, Stay, Angel and Hold On but if these are nouns within the title Im sure I know hundreds of qualifiers

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ChiefDuo t1_jc6qjte wrote

This is just the track list from Phobia by Breaking Benjamin

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Fats_de_Leon t1_jc6qy85 wrote

Does this take movie scores into account? Because I'm not even particularly an officianado and I have 13 tracks called Main Titles and 7 called Main Theme.

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Thebeckmane t1_jc6whsb wrote

If you read from lost going down it almost sounds like a song.

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stanger828 t1_jc6xxyg wrote

Id like it to be disaggregated by genre next!

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artaig t1_jc716s4 wrote

"Outro" that many times makes me sad for the absolute moronic state of society nowadays.

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Ath23 t1_jc724rb wrote

Intro to home, a time untitled to stay as an outro forever with the angel, lost and alone you hold on to rain as a goodbye to heaven, tonight, fire will be falling to shine in paradise.

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d3nafelseed t1_jc72ts6 wrote

What a horseshit information supported by the worst possible database ever. How does the word "love" not make it into the list? Also songs with title containing "intro"/"outro"? Arent they a bit out of place? How do they make it in the top ranks too?

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nsnyder t1_jc7314c wrote

Imagine writing another song called Stay, when Lisa Loeb already wrote the perfect one.

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geofurb t1_jc73drc wrote

If you count covers, the answer is "Crossroads", followed by "Cross Road Blues".

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2baked t1_jc76ics wrote

Home, home again, I like to be here when I can.

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se_nicknehm t1_jc7ccvb wrote

Replying to spicer2 (#2,227,441)

a search for "intro" on discogss gave me 436.842 results... but 52.371 results for record titles, 529 results for artists and 238 results for labels should be excluded

this still leaves me with 330.556 results - some of them are double or even tripple because discogs counts each release/version of the same record (f.e. CD, vinyl, "special edition" etc.), but still ...it's a MUCH higher number than 694

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cibbwin t1_jc7g42h wrote

This might be why every time I see an 'untitled' track on an album I twitch.

I love Sigur Ros but their album ( ) is ALL untitled and will forever make me rage, lol.

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sendabussypic t1_jc7igqi wrote

Now do one with songs that have come out in the last 2 years about voices in your head.

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dw444 t1_jc7mig6 wrote

Replying to Gmonkey_ (#2,227,455)

I have two songs called “One” on my everyday playlist, one by Metallica and the other by Ghostface (both are considered classics for their respective artists, and are on albums that are also considered classics). I wonder if there’s any others.

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Hitlerclone_3 t1_jc7xv9b wrote

Man intro seems way lower than it should be honestly. How are there only 700 when there are like a billion songs?

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LustfulBellyButton t1_jc81mg7 wrote

Replying to spicer2 (#2,227,441)

I did’t get the methodology.

  1. The numbers relative to each word in the chart represent how many songs are named with that word/syntagma or how many songs contain that word/syntagma?

  2. What’s the country/language frame? Are the data counting only the songs made in the US, or they are also counting the songs written and published in English from other countries?

  3. What’s the time frame, or what’s the oldest song of the data?

  4. Because of #2 and #3, I’d also like to say how misleading/English-centered this title “of all times” can be

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jakke_koala t1_jc83kd5 wrote

It kinda hurts that there aren't as much outro's as intro's

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hellwisp t1_jc89lo9 wrote

Read it all in a newscaster voice and it almost makes sense

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notade50 t1_jc8k86e wrote

I was afraid to read this. Thought I was being Rick rolled.

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Psypho_Diaz t1_jc8l9wj wrote

I don't like that hold on is considered one word

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Indybin t1_jc8q991 wrote

List of bangers right there 👆

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AlexandreAAPG t1_jc900ei wrote

"Outro" representing Portuguese language, my language.

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Hargelbargel t1_jc9028j wrote

"Intro into Home Time" the untitled masterpiece by Stay Outro Forever, off their platinum "Angel Lost and Alone, Hold on" album.

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_Uulyaoth_ t1_jc92l6j wrote

It would be interesting to know which band has the most amount of these titles.

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pierowmaniac t1_jc93g3p wrote

I am genuinely surprised “baby” didn’t make this list

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jellyvish t1_jc940b7 wrote

intros and outros arent always songs tho

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MegaManZer0 t1_jc95rks wrote

At this point, untitled is pretty much a title.

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Gloomy_Sleep8588 t1_jc960d0 wrote

[Untitled] ... 169... Source: MusicBrainz... I just might be too immature for this forum.

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Friggin_Grease t1_jc993sp wrote

Somehow "Standing Outside of a broken phone booth with a handful of quarters" doesn't make the list?

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epicmylife t1_jc9de0z wrote

Replying to Friggin_Grease (#2,232,855)

Well neither does “Someday, in the Event That Mankind Actually Figures Out What It Is That This World Revolves Around, Thousands of People are Going to Be Shocked and Perplexed to Find Out It Was Not Them. Sometimes, This Includes Me.” But here we are…

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bostiq t1_jc9e5po wrote

I thought I was gonna get Rick rolled reading down the titles 😁😁

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tupadhya t1_jc9gg3p wrote

Looks like half of them are Coldplay songs

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Triials t1_jc9gm9c wrote

This could be a list of songs by Three Days Grace

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Torieth t1_jc9jrvi wrote

Outro means other in Brazilian 😁

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nmrt95 t1_jc9qf8p wrote

"intro" by Home takes It all

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Atomik919 t1_jc9qu3v wrote

ill be coming home, just to be alone!

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_314 t1_jc9u1b4 wrote

Also there are so many different, all pretty well known "all of me"s.

Obviously it has multiple words so it's not gonna show up as often because of that.

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ultrafud t1_jc9ug33 wrote

Yeah I don't believe this data for a second. Considering the millions upon millions of albums released over the last century, I simply don't believe only 694 songs were called "Intro"

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23materazzi t1_jc9x7fh wrote

Crazy how the pareto system is displayed even here

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Four_beastlings t1_jca0txh wrote

What are those numbers? I doubt there is only 600something songs called Intro...

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snekbat t1_jca4782 wrote

Meanwhile Dutch Techno artists are like:

Kankerdikke Natte Tering Visstick

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miclugo t1_jcajreh wrote

Replying to spicer2 (#2,227,441)

I get why you consider excluding "Grace" (because probably when it appears in song titles it's often as the common noun) but why exclude "Maria"? Also, what's the most common male name?

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timmeh87 t1_jcbh26t wrote

does untitled count songs with no title, songs titled "untitled", songs titled "[untitled]" or some combination?

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metalstats t1_jcd4zuf wrote

I find musicbrainz to be a fairly incomplete source myself. Wouldn't doubt intro is number 1 though.

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digitalhobbit t1_jcda29y wrote

This is very interesting. I'd love to see the top 100, in case you'd be willing to share the spreadsheet.

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