How Fight Songs Generate Hype

Tempo (BPM) vs. lyrical aggression, measured by trope count and fight-word density

Lyrical aggression combines the number of aggressive clichés (trope count) in each song with the density of the word “fight,” normalized by total lyric length (word count). Median lines divide songs into four stylistic categories. Big Ten schools are highlighted within the full dataset to provide comparative context. Some points overlap due to similar tempo and aggression values (i.e. Michigan State and Penn State); hover to identify individual schools.
Chart: Drew Glassman and Edward KimGet the dataCreated with Datawrapper