NLP Analysis of Environmental Themes in Phish Lyrics Across Concert Locations and Years (2024)

Abstract: This study delves into the application of advanced AI and natural language processing techniques (NLP), to analyze the lyrics of Phish, a renowned American jam band. Focusing on environmental themes within their extensive repertoire, this paper aims to uncover latent topics pertaining to environmental discourse, by using the topic modeling and environmental classifier. Through meticulous preprocessing, modeling, and interpretation, our findings shed light on the multifaceted portrayal of environmental issues in Phish’s lyrics. In this study, our primary contribution lies in lyrical analysis, as well as visualization and interpretation of the topics their lyrics cover, over the forty plus years the band has existed. Our lyrical visualizations aim to facilitate an understanding of how Phish selects the timing and location for their live performances in relation to the themes present in their music.

## introduction as the planet plunges headlong into 1.5 degree celsius warming, public support for protecting the biosphere and altering our relationship with the non-human world is critical. to this end, art and music can play a significant role in raising public awareness. we contend that phish is an important band leading this charge in the united states. phish, a jam band renowned for their psychedelic rock performances, has connected with their fans over the years through their distinctive approach to improvisation. phish is an iconic act in the "jam band" genre of music that has its roots in bebop, bluegrass and rock. jam bands have several critical characteristics: (1) they allow live recording and sharing of their concerts by fans, (2) they engage in extensive improvisation during live concerts and (3) concert setlists that vary from show to show. consequently, a jam band never plays the same show twice. phish is one of the most significant bands in america despite having almost no radio airplay or music industry awards over their 41-year history. nonetheless, in 2023 they were the 10th highest grossing rock music touring act in america: selling 597,000 tickets across 41 shows with a total gross of @xmath03.5 million for people suffering due to the extensive flooding experienced by residents of new york and vermont @xcite . donations are still being taken for this project as of the writing of this essay. in this research, we analyze the album titles, song titles and lyrics of phish to consider their support for environmental protection and preservation. we believe that phish rhetorically advocates for environmental protection in a range of ways that are both obvious and subtle. to test this theory, we use nlp techniques. we explored the application of topic modeling and machine learning technique, to dissect and interpret the environmental discourse embedded within phish's lyrical compositions. our research study tries to focus on the environmental topics of phish, as well as to understand the popularity of these themes over time and location. to our knowledge, this study marks the first application of ai and nlp techniques for processing this lyrical information. our objective is to offer comprehensive statistical insights into the presence of environmental themes in phish's live performances, considering the dates and locations of their concerts. our research is based on the utilization of nlp algorithms made feasible through data compiled from the phish.net foot_1 lyrics collection created by the laborious work of dr. ellis goddard, associate professor of sociology at california state university, northridge. ## state of the art several studies have explored phish's relationship with their community and culture, covering topics such as public participation, copyright law, engagement, gender and racial diversity among fans, cultural practices of fans and music therapies (carlson, 2020), @xcite , @xcite , @xcite , and @xcite . additionally, ongoing research was gathered and discussed at the phish studies conference, in 2019 and 2024 @xcite , organized by oregon state university. our study focuses on phish lyrics and song titles and includes both original phish songs as well as cover songs written and performed by other bands. phish regularly performs cover songs and the decision to include them is based on the fact that covers are a choice by the band. consequently, they represent the musical and lyrical interests of the band as they perform unique songs by other artists. since lyrical texts consist of a sequence of words, multiple nlp methods could be applied to it. how-ever, nlp methods are not always as effective for lyrics due to the differing nature of lyrics compared to traditional texts. these challenges have several reasons, such as creativity, ambiguity, variability, and emotional depth in texts. the text of lyrics often contains non-standard language, creative expressions, slang, and poetic devices. this makes it harder for nlp models, which are usually trained on more formal, standardized text, to interpret the meaning accurately. the presence of ambiguity, figurative language and metaphors are bold in lyrics, making it difficult for nlp models to accurately process the intended meaning. lack of context and using very short sentences in lyrics are another leading factors in correct language processing and interpretation of emotional nuances. several studies explore themes in songs, often using lda, a probabilistic topic modeling method @xcite . more recent work utilizes the bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (bert), a pre-trained deep learning model by google that generates word or sentence embeddings, capturing contextual and semantic meaning. specific bert models, such as musicbert, are tailored for nlp tasks involving both text and music @xcite . ## methodology in this research, we employ the topic modeling technique for lyrical information analysis. the goal is to identify clusters of words that frequently co-occur, aiming to represent topics related to the environment within the text and visualize them. for this purpose, we utilize topic modeling to classify phish album titles, song titles, and lyrics as either "environmental" or "non-environmental." data classified as "environmental" was subjected to further analysis, including mapping the time and location of live performances. the steps undertaken in this study consists of web scraping and preprocessing, topic modeling, environmental classification, evaluation and visualizing. we utilized bertopic, which captures nuanced semantic relationships between words and documents, leading to more accurate and interoperable topic clusters. ## conclusion the analysis of phish's lyrics using advanced natural language processing techniques reveals a strong and consistent presence of environmental themes in the band's music. by leveraging topic modeling, we identified clusters of lyrics focused on elements such as water, planets, and living things, demonstrating phish's engagement with environmental discourse over time and across various locations. our findings indicate that a significant percentage of phish's lyrical content relates to environmental topics, highlighting the band's commitment to raising awareness through their music. this study provides a novel contribution to both musicology and environmental studies by using ai-driven techniques to quantify and visualize the influence of environmental themes in live performances. moreover, the alignment between the band's concert locations and thematic content suggests that phish figure 2: trends of environmental themes in phish live performances over years strategically incorporates environmental advocacy into their performances, further solidifying their role as a cultural force for environmental awareness. future research could expand this framework to explore other thematic elements in their lyrics or apply similar methods to other artists and genres. the adaptability and scalability of these nlp techniques make them valuable tools for any study aimed at understanding the intersection of art, culture, and societal issues. as demonstrated in the phish case study, the use of topic modeling, classification, and visualization can uncover latent themes in artistic works, providing insights into how artists communicate with their audiences and contribute to broader cultural movements.