Poppin’Party and SILENT SIREN are two all-female Japanese bands that play similar styles of music. Poppin’Party is one of the bands that is part of the BanG Dream! franchise established by Bushiroad. Spanning multiple forms of media, the band consists of anime characters whose voice actresses also perform their own instruments in live shows. SILENT SIREN was established in 2010 by a group of amateur female models. They have released many albums and have also performed in various live shows.

These two bands will perform in the band battle event “NO GIRL NO CRY” in Japan on May 18th and 19th. In celebration of this event, I looked at the lyrics of Poppin’Party’s and SILENT SIREN’s songs to identify the themes and sentiments between the two bands. This was done using a methodology established in my last blog post. Additional analyses were also conducted to glean more insights from the songs of both bands.

Exploratory Data Analysis of lyrics

## # A tibble: 2 x 3
##   band         num_songs num_words
##   <chr>            <int>     <dbl>
## 1 Poppin'Party        30      3255
## 2 Silent Siren        38      3659

SILENT SIREN released many songs over their nearly ten years of existence. Luckily, I was able to find enough English translations of their songs to match the number of English translations of Poppin’Party songs. This enabled comparable text and sentiment analyses to be conducted between the two bands.

Both bands had a word that appeared two to three times more frequently in the lyrics compared to other words. For Poppin’Party, that word was “dream” which appeared two times more frequently than other words. For SILENT SIREN’S, the word “love” appeared three times more frequently than other words. These observations may underline the predominant themes of each band’s songs which will be explained later in the blog post.

Commonality cloud: which words are common across both bands’ lyrics?

A commonality cloud visualises the frequency of words that appear in the lyrics of both bands. The size of each word in a commonality cloud is based on how frequently the word appears in both groups of lyrics. Note that a word that appears very frequently in both groups of songs will be bigger in the commonality cloud than a word that appears frequently in one group of songs but not the other.

According to the commonality cloud, both Poppin’Party’s and SILENT SIREN’s songs have words that were associated with feelings and experiences. In particular, love was a common word found in the lyrics of both bands’ songs. Other words relating to experiences that appeared in both groups of songs included “time”, “world” and “summer”.

Comparison cloud: which words are more frequent in one band’s songs over the other?

In contrast to a commonality cloud, a comparison cloud plots words based on whether the word appears more frequently in the lyrics of a band’s songs compared to the other. A difference is taken between the word frequencies of both groups of lyrics. Following this, the word is plotted to one side of the comparison cloud and the size is varied based on the magnitude of the difference. A comparison cloud allows us to identify words and potential themes that are prevalent in a band’s songs over another group of songs.

From the comparison cloud, “dream” appeared more frequently in Poppin’Party’s songs compared to SILENT SIREN’s songs. Also in Poppin’Party’s side of the comparison cloud are words that are related to experiences and the future such as “song”, “future” and “tomorrow”. The appearance of these words in the comparison cloud indicates that Poppin’Party’s songs tend to touch on achieving goals for the future and creating experiences while doing so.

In contrast, SILENT SIREN’s songs tend to touch on romance. “Love” is a word that appeared frequently in SILENT SIREN’s songs, moreso than Poppin’Party’s songs. In SILENT SIREN’s side are words that are also associated with romance such as “sweet”, “darling” and “kiss”. The appearance of these words in SILENT SIREN’s songs indicates that their songs tend to deal with love and romance and how people react to them.

Bing sentiment analysis of the bands’ songs

I conducted a “bing” sentiment analysis of the songs to measure the proportion of positive and negative words of each band’s lyrics. Overall, Poppin’Party’s songs had a higher proportion of positive-associated words compared to SILENT SIREN’s songs.

Half of the negative- and positive-associated words are similar across Poppin’Party’s and SILENT SIREN’s songs. For Poppin’Party’s songs, most of the negative-associated words are linked to sensations relating to negative emotions such as “throb”, “shake” and “painful”. They also have positive-associated words that describe a person’s internal strengths such as “courage”, “strong” and “gentle”. SILENT SIREN’s songs tend to have negative-associated words linked to loneliness such as “cry”, “lonely” and “ambiguous”. They also have positive-associated words that describe sensations such as “happy”, sparkle” and “flutter”. These words might appear more frequently in SILENT SIREN’s songs due to their focus on romance.

NRC sentiment analysis of the bands’ songs

I conducted an NRC sentiment analysis to measure the proportion of words belonging to specific emotions. The proportion of words in six of the eight emotions are similar between the two bands. However, SILENT SIREN’s songs had a lower proportion of words associated with anticipation and a higher proportion of words belonging to fear compared to Poppin’Party’s songs.

Some of the most frequent words associated with each emotion such as “feeling” and “smile” were similar across both bands. There were some unique words in each band; however, that may represent the overall themes of their songs. For Poppin’Party, “sing” is a word that appears across many emotions, namely anticipation, joy, sadness and trust. These emotions can be found in some of their songs which touch on many themes, particularly the idea of playing together as a band.

In contrast, SILENT SIREN’s songs can be split into two broad areas. The words “sweet” and “kiss” can be found in many positive emotions such as anticipation, joy, surprise and trust. These words relate to the romantic theme of their songs. Another area touched on in SILENT SIREN’s songs could be the feeling of loneliness when losing friends or breaking up. This can be seen in the words “lonely” in anger and disgust, “disappear” and “escape” in fear and “leave” and “cry” in sadness.

Conclusion

Conducting text and sentiment analyses of the songs has uncovered some interesting insights about both bands. Poppin’Party’s songs tend to talk about setting and achieving future goals while creating memories and experiences. Their songs tend to be quite positive but they also touch on a variety of sensations and emotions as evidenced in their songs. On the other hand, SILENT SIREN’s songs tend to talk about romance and the various emotions elicited, both positive (in the case of joy) and negative (in the case of loneliness). It is surprising; then, that the similar music styles of both bands can cover up the different topics touched on by both bands. Based on these results, it will be interesting to see how these two bands will clash when they meet in the band battle this weekend.

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the following people who have translated the Poppin’Party and SILENT SIREN songs from Japanese to English:

• Arislation
• BlaZofgold
• Eureka
• Gessami
• Kei
• Kikkikokki
• Komichi
• LuciaHunter
• Maki
• ManekiKoneko
• MijukuNine
• Misa
• NellieFeathers
• Ohyododesu
• Starlogakemi
• Thaerin
• Tsushimayohane
• UnBound
• Youraim

I may have missed other people who have translated songs for this analysis, but I thank you all the same.