A close reading
Thriller
by Michael JacksonThriller (1982)
473 words · 205 distinct · 91 lines · 5:57
The first word waits 0:59.
The lead
×5
one line comes back
“thriller night”
The text
91 lines
Read from the stored text. Another transcription would change the count a little; the shape would hold.
I. The hook
One line keeps coming back.
“thriller night”
times, word for word
It lands at lines 11, 15, 28, 49 and 58. 14% of the lines repeat one already sung, and 12% belong to lines sung three times or more.
The title is sung 29 times.
II. The clock
The first word waits 0:59.
- Words a minute
- 80
- First word
- 0:59
- Longest silence
- 12 s
- from 1:44
- Busiest 15 seconds
- 42
- words
III. The vocabulary
Most-used words
20 words- 01thriller29
- 02night13
- 03tonight8
- 04thrill7
- 05babe7
- 06gonna6
- 07i'm5
- 08close4
- 09you're4
- 10cause4
- 11no4
- 12killer4
- 13see3
- 14try3
- 15eyes3
- 16from3
- 17life3
- 18inside3
- 19there's3
- 20ever3
Stopwords set aside. The bar beneath each word is its share of the most-used.
Variety
205 distinct words in 473
IV. In the catalogue
The 43rd longest of 217 songs Michael Jackson has recorded.
Every mark is one of Michael Jackson’s 217 songs, placed by its figure. The rule is the catalogue’s median; the oxblood mark is this song.
Read the whole catalogue →