Changing Courtship Patterns in the Popular Song

Abstract

A content analysis of popular lyrics drawn from song magazines and accepted ranking reveals a change in perspective on boy-girl relationship over the past eleven years. The new orientation prizes autonomy in personal relations and is most clearly portrayed in rock and roll lyrics. The career of the affairs is traced from its inception to its final dissolution. Proportionally fewer lyrics deal with boy-girl relationships today than in the mid-1950's. A wider range of concerns are evident and raise questions about the individual's relation to the social order. The questions may reflect the preocupations of a growing number of disaffected young people who constitute the audience for the new lyrics, or the emergence of more democratic controls in songwriting.