My Body is not Just Flesh and Blood, it is Emotion and Feeling. Exploring Body Parts in Songs

Our study investigates the symbolic and emotional significance of body part references in pop song lyrics. For the purpose of our investigation, we built a corpus of 100 song lyrics, namely, the top 10 songs on the Billboard Charts for the years 2011-2020. Through a combination of qualitative, quantitative, and co-occurrence analyses, the study explores how references to body parts evoke themes of intimacy, sensuality, and identity. We found recurring motifs involving various body parts, with a particular focus on the heart, hands, and face, with the heart often symbolising love and emotional connection, while the hands were found to be associated with touch and interaction. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that examines the use of body parts in a corpus of 100 topten songs.