Casual Fridays: What were they singing?

The results are in for last week's Casual Fridays study, and the findings are ... uncertain. The task was to try to parse out the lyrics of two songs. The first came from the American TV show "So You Think You Can Dance." If you didn't get a chance to participate in the study, you can listen to it now:

This show is one of our family's guilty pleasures, but even though we watched the show every week, we still can't agree on the lyrics. Jim, Nora, and I think it's repeating the name of the show: "So you think you can dance." Greta insists that the male voice is singing "Shoo bee doo bee doo dance." We put the question up to our readers, and though we received 148 responses, these results were inconclusive as well: most thought the lyrics were something entirely different. 28 percent agreed with Greta, while just 18 percent agreed with me and the kids. However, when considering only people who had watched the show several times, the results reverse, with 67 percent agreeing with me and the kids, 27 percent agreeing with Greta, and the remainder still insisting on something else entirely. People familiar with the show are significantly more likely to believe the lyrics are "So you think you can dance."

So, is it just familiarity with the song that leads to a better understanding of the lyrics? We also asked readers about another confusing lyric, this one from the Talking Heads song, "Burning Down the House":

Though I've listened to Talking Heads music for years, I've never been able to make heads or tails of this. I always thought Byrne was singing "So make sure and sweep me off my feet." But according to this site, the actual lyrics are "Some things sure can sweep me off my feet."

Fifty-nine percent of our readers got the answer right. The percentage rose to 85 when listeners said they "worship" the Talking Heads -- a significant difference. Again, if you're more familiar with the song, you're more likely to get the lyrics right.

But is this the only factor? The ability to stream, or separate relevant language from irrelevant background noise, is known to decrease with age (babies also have difficulty streaming; see this post for more). We asked two questions to try to see if streaming ability was related to ability to parse lyrics. First, we asked respondents their age: if older participants were poorer at the task, then perhaps streaming ability was the reason. Second, we asked respondents if they were able to understand conversations in different settings: a quiet coffee shop, a restaurant, a noisy party, a rock concert.

Unfortunately, after controlling for familiarity, none of these responses had anything to do with whether respondents could accurately parse the lyrics.

One other interesting result from this week's study: there were several absolutely hilarious responses to the "other" choice. I'll post an update with the best of the bunch later this weekend.

Don't forget to come back next week for the next Casual Fridays study.