An Exploratory Analysis of Self, Other, and Computational Measures of Creativity in Song Lyric Writing

The present study offers an exploratory analysis of the creative processes and products at the heart of song lyric writing. Drawing on insights from creative metacognition research and work that integrates individual and collective aspects of creativity, we focus on instances where individuals generate artistic outcomes both for themselves and for others. Sixty-three participants (35 musical experts and 28 novices) were invited to complete a series of questionnaires and craft new lyrics for two distinct musical excerpts. They were instructed to write for either themselves (envisioning they would sing the final product) or for another individual (considering someone else would perform). The creativity of the lyrics was assessed using three complementary approaches: (i) self-ratings by participants, (ii) qualitative evaluations by six expert raters, and (iii) algorithmic analysis through distributional semantic modeling. Although we did not find significant differences in creativity between lyrics created for oneself and lyrics created for others, our analysis revealed that participants’ behaviors and states are more predictive of self-assessment and computational ratings of creativity than expert ratings. Furthermore, we identified a robust correlation between expert ratings and computational evaluations of the lyrics’ creativity.