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Pop stars under the lens of artificial intelligence

Intro


The image of pop stars attracts millions of audiences, it consists of the appearance, music, actions, and of course the lyrics of their songs.
What are popular artists singing about? At all times, the themes are the same: love, loneliness, sex, entertainment, eternal values.


However, surely you yourself felt that from each artist there is a deposit in the soul, a taste. And the words seem to be the same, but the shades are different. And each has its own.


The picture that the artist draws in his own words is unique and reflects their inner world, their psychological portraits.


In the article, we try to look behind the veil of words through the prism of AI and discern behind them the soul of such popular stars as Drake, Rihanna, Coldplay, Twenty One Pilots, Dua Lipa, The Chainsmokers and Katy Perry.
Found someone from your favorite artists and you want to know their hidden emotions and experiences?




Read on to see how the modern language processing technology from IBM Watson Personality Insights helps to “read between the lines” of emotions, needs, values, and psychological characteristics.


Couplet


So ... In the left corner of the ring - the subjects, namely, 7 super-duper top pop stars of international level, as well as verses from their songs. All attention to spotlights:

  1. Drake with album 2018 - Scorpion
  2. Coldplay album 2015 - A Head Full of Dreams
  3. Katy Perry with album 2017 - Witness
  4. Dua Lipa with album 2017 - Dua Lipa
  5. Rihanna with album 2016 - Anti
  6. The Chainsmokers with the album 2016 + 2017 - Collage + Memories ... Do Not Open
  7. Twenty One Pilots with 2015 album - Blurryface

To understand the article familiarity with their work is not necessary. But if you are familiar with them, it will be especially useful for understanding the nuances of their image matching the results of the analysis.
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In the right corner is the IBM Watson Personality Insights service.

A few words about him.

The service is designed to analyze a coherent conversational text that people communicate in social networks, letters and forums. Based on this text (it is desirable that the text length exceeds 500 words), the service provides 4 sets of characteristics:

  1. Psychological characteristics of the person according to the theory of "Big Five"
  2. Needs
  3. Values
  4. Consumer preferences

Yes, at once I will make a reservation that the service does not understand Russian, you can bypass this restriction by direct online translation into English, losing some of the original information, but keeping the context sufficient for automated application of the service. I drove through Personality Insights, translated via Google.Translate Borodino of Lermontov, and the overall impression is quite acceptable results.

A little about the research methodology.

For the analysis, the last most successful marketing albums of several top stars were selected. A complete set of poems from each album as a solid text was sent as a solid text for analysis to the Watson Personality Insights service provided by IBM. As a response to each request from the service, JSON was received of the following form:

JSON with Watson Personality Insights service response
{ "word_count": 1365, "processed_language": "en", "personality": [ { "trait_id": "big5_openness", "name": "Openness", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.9970814244982862, "significant": true, "children": [ { "trait_id": "facet_adventurousness", "name": "Adventurousness", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.7897453561510404, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "facet_artistic_interests", "name": "Artistic interests", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.9946576519208276, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "facet_emotionality", "name": "Emotionality", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.7671631753694048, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "facet_imagination", "name": "Imagination", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.3116772371947263, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "facet_intellect", "name": "Intellect", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.9965199807027889, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "facet_liberalism", "name": "Authority-challenging", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.7979072721493274, "significant": true } ] }, { "trait_id": "big5_conscientiousness", "name": "Conscientiousness", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.986401677449357, "significant": true, "children": [ { "trait_id": "facet_achievement_striving", "name": "Achievement striving", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.8403728912342892, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "facet_cautiousness", "name": "Cautiousness", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.9441869457422986, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "facet_dutifulness", "name": "Dutifulness", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.7946276293038677, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "facet_orderliness", "name": "Orderliness", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.761074150640708, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "facet_self_discipline", "name": "Self-discipline", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.7128649175839024, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "facet_self_efficacy", "name": "Self-efficacy", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.6994302718651376, "significant": true } ] }, { "trait_id": "big5_extraversion", "name": "Extraversion", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.08530058556548387, "significant": true, "children": [ { "trait_id": "facet_activity_level", "name": "Activity level", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.9624016313415944, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "facet_assertiveness", "name": "Assertiveness", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.9198609213386711, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "facet_cheerfulness", "name": "Cheerfulness", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.2293639969883619, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "facet_excitement_seeking", "name": "Excitement-seeking", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.21024192850794732, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "facet_friendliness", "name": "Outgoing", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.7085191412979603, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "facet_gregariousness", "name": "Gregariousness", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.22458619358371484, "significant": true } ] }, { "trait_id": "big5_agreeableness", "name": "Agreeableness", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.18753528603194114, "significant": true, "children": [ { "trait_id": "facet_altruism", "name": "Altruism", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.9713302006331768, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "facet_cooperation", "name": "Cooperation", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.8229934901276241, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "facet_modesty", "name": "Modesty", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.7613188148341663, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "facet_morality", "name": "Uncompromising", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.9471478882849425, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "facet_sympathy", "name": "Sympathy", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.9991179451374892, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "facet_trust", "name": "Trust", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.830111046812001, "significant": true } ] }, { "trait_id": "big5_neuroticism", "name": "Emotional range", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.9438564164580441, "significant": true, "children": [ { "trait_id": "facet_anger", "name": "Fiery", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.013938100678606846, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "facet_anxiety", "name": "Prone to worry", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.06202578945407233, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "facet_depression", "name": "Melancholy", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.35285841125133055, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "facet_immoderation", "name": "Immoderation", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.011684379342278672, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "facet_self_consciousness", "name": "Self-consciousness", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.19347068940127599, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "facet_vulnerability", "name": "Susceptible to stress", "category": "personality", "percentile": 0.06994539774378472, "significant": true } ] } ], "needs": [ { "trait_id": "need_challenge", "name": "Challenge", "category": "needs", "percentile": 0.0032546536914943025, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "need_closeness", "name": "Closeness", "category": "needs", "percentile": 0.370227811018078, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "need_curiosity", "name": "Curiosity", "category": "needs", "percentile": 0.845180482624851, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "need_excitement", "name": "Excitement", "category": "needs", "percentile": 0.11505596926601463, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "need_harmony", "name": "Harmony", "category": "needs", "percentile": 0.4664217424750164, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "need_ideal", "name": "Ideal", "category": "needs", "percentile": 0.02263412995273051, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "need_liberty", "name": "Liberty", "category": "needs", "percentile": 0.10802987716455864, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "need_love", "name": "Love", "category": "needs", "percentile": 0.011895333821013376, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "need_practicality", "name": "Practicality", "category": "needs", "percentile": 0.018888178951272094, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "need_self_expression", "name": "Self-expression", "category": "needs", "percentile": 0.1848978280656295, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "need_stability", "name": "Stability", "category": "needs", "percentile": 0.3946227431440061, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "need_structure", "name": "Structure", "category": "needs", "percentile": 0.8880129689346332, "significant": true } ], "values": [ { "trait_id": "value_conservation", "name": "Conservation", "category": "values", "percentile": 0.5065929218618476, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "value_openness_to_change", "name": "Openness to change", "category": "values", "percentile": 0.6287516949462554, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "value_hedonism", "name": "Hedonism", "category": "values", "percentile": 0.005253658217921009, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "value_self_enhancement", "name": "Self-enhancement", "category": "values", "percentile": 0.0011936431143393933, "significant": true }, { "trait_id": "value_self_transcendence", "name": "Self-transcendence", "category": "values", "percentile": 0.3429609693883737, "significant": true } ], "warnings": [] }


The data obtained were analyzed using Excel, highlighted the most characteristic features inherent in the texts of each of the artists.

Without in any way claiming to be the ultimate truth, nevertheless, this study is of interest for understanding the limits of the applicability of the methods of natural language language and the objectivity of the results obtained. Poems can be considered as the most artificial form of textual information, images and words used by poets are often hypertrophied and have many portable meanings, allusions and information hidden “between the lines”, the more interesting it is to see how IBM's algorithms coped with such complex material.

Chorus


So, we have a table of values ​​of each artist according to the results of the above analysis:




Looking carefully at it, we can single out 3 singers who surpassed the rest by one or several metrics: Drake, Dua Lipa and Rihanna. As we will see further, the psychological portraits of each of them are fairly integral and reflect the image that is broadcast through the media.


Somewhat unexpectedly, Rihanna stands out in the conservation metric, but the second in terms of this indicator is Drake, which fully matches his muscular image.


Hedonism or the search for pleasure and sensual reward for yourself is the second most noticeable metric of Rihanna, along with Drake, this characteristic is very much expected for pop culture.


The openness to change metric shows high values ​​for Drake (again!), Dua Lipa (which is quite normal for a young girl) and Katy Perry (which fully confirms her new image).
Below is a graph visualizing the values ​​of the table:



A similar analysis was conducted in the category of “Needs”. The results are in the table below. The highest values ​​in each of the needs are highlighted, which means that for a given artist this need for verses is translated more strongly than for others.
I invite you to independently participate in the analysis of this table, for sure you will discover something interesting for yourself.




For example, Drake has verses (by the way, his album contains about 2 times more words than any other album of analyzed artists) more than other “patients”, expressed the needs of Structure, Stability, Practicality and Ideal - a real alpha male !

To be on the safe side, I’m citing a graph on which it’s difficult to sort something out, but you can see several prominent lines. For example, yellow and orange in curiosity (curiosity) in Katy Perry and Drake, blue and gray in closeness (proximity) in Rihanna and Dua Lipa, the need for challange (call) in Rihanna, etc.




Outro


The purpose of this article was to give a general idea of ​​the capabilities of the Watson Personality Insights service (the categories used and their content), to recall the beautiful (music and poetry) and to invite discussions about the role of artificial intelligence in the future of creative professions.

I hope that at least something of my plan was possible.


If there is interest, write comments, as there is still interesting material on the insights of what is common in the lyrics of the “newcomers” of the music scene, i.e. what values ​​are translated by successful new stars who have made a breakthrough.

In addition, I can share an analysis of how the image of the Coldplay group evolved based on their lyrics over 20 years of history. Interestingly, Personality Insights really capture the development of a psychological portrait from teenagers to mature men in their work.

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/425139/

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