Study Shows Who the Most ‘Intelligent’ Metal Bands Are

Do you know who the most intelligent metal bands are? A new study from Prodigy has broken down how music shapes your productivity and which artists have promoted intelligence the most through their choice of lyrics.

Do you feel smarter listening to Black Sabbath? You should! In fact, according to the study, metal is the genre exhibiting the most intelligence based upon lyrical vocabulary! As part of the Prodigy Education Study,  it was determined that metal ranked above all other genres with an average of 41 percent lexical diversity.

Sitting at the top of their breakdown was Black Sabbath, who received a 52 percent score for lexical diversity. Classic Rock icons Pink Floyd also scored 52 percent, closely followed by Slayer at 51 percent. The third highest percentage from the metal world came from Megadeth who earned a 45 percent score. Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Pantera and Motorhead also ranked inside the Top 20 of artists from lexical diversity.

But It’s Not All ‘Positive’

While having a broad lyrical vocabulary can be great for promoting intelligence, the tone of the message is something that the study delved into as well. Metal was found to have the most negative lyrical content, while pop was deemed to be the most positive.

Leading the way for the most negative lyrical content was Slayer. In fact, metal held down the top four spots and five of the top 10. Iron Maiden, Slipknot and System of a Down (in that order) finished second through fourth on the list, while Metallica came in at No. 8.

Not all heavy artists were negative though. Led Zeppelin placed fourth for the most positive artist, while Fleetwood Mac was tenth for providing positive lyrical content.

On a side note, while metal may be deemed by the study to be lyrically intelligent in most cases, it’s also viewed as a little bit of a threat. Metal was the second highest genre when it came to being banned by parents hoping to keep their kids from listening.

How Music Impacts Productivity

In general, there were very positive returns on how listening to music impacts your productivity. It was learned from the study that three in five people said that music helped their productivity, while 70 percent of respondents noted that it helped them focus.

READ MORE: Heavy Metal Actually Good for Fans’ Mental Health

The study also reveals that 70 percent of people who listened to music at work were likely to earn a promotion. Additionally, 18 percent were more likely to get a raise within the last two years.

Study Methodology

For this study, Prodigy compiled a list of today’s top Billboard artists plus popular artists from each decade. They then analyzed the lyrics of 10 songs by each artist to determine sentiment, most common words and lexical diversity.

They used NLTK’s VADER analysis tool for the sentiment analysis and Open AI API for the word frequency analysis.

They also surveyed 1,000 Americans to explore how music impacts work productivity and kids’ study habits.

Check out the full Prodigy Education Study.