these eyes, these hands, this body

two visual artists have analyzed 10,000+ songs to discover which parts of the body are mentioned most often, according to this post on the wired blog. fernanda viégas and martin wattenberg broke down the data by genre and created a graphic of the results called listen, showed in part below. (following the link above will take you to the work in full, which also allows for greater, um, dissection of the results.)



turns out the eyes have it, though hands are a close second. hip hop mentions the body most frequently - 23.64 per cent of all hip hop songs surveyed refer to an ass, as distinct from butt (2.77%), booty (2.31%), asshole (0.88%) and anus (0.18%), giving what sir mixalot calls our back an impressive grand total of 29.78 per cent - while gospel mentions it least often. the folk music results, by the bye, have ass tied with, among others, both ankle & foot (1.09%) and behind such swoon-inducing anatomical luminaries as toes and knees. again, you can find the results of your favorite genre here.

velvet underground - pale blue eyes

the great lake swimmers - hands in the dirty ground