I’ll keep this quick: This interactive visualization about lyrics from the musical Hamilton is off the chain. The genius behind it, Shirley Wu, explains her dive into language and quantification thus:
When I started digging through the lyrics, I was curious about two things: the relationships between the main characters, and the recurring phrases associated with those characters.
So I went through every single line in Hamilton (twice 😱 ) and recorded who sang each line, as well as who that line may have been directed towards. I’ve noted every phrase that was sung more than once across more than one song, and grouped them into broad themes*. You can find my lovingly (obsessively) curated data here.
To explore the data, I created a visual tool to filter the lines by any combination of characters, conversations, and themes. The insights were amazing, and I’m excited to share with you both the visual tool and my analysis of Hamilton with it.
The result is interactive, fascinating, and fun as funk. Check it out for yourself.