How We Score Songs About Dicks

We publish two rankings rather than one, because a countable metric and an editorial one do not belong in the same number. Raw word counting rewards chorus repetition and zeroes out euphemism: a song that says one explicit word thirty times would beat a song that is about nothing else for three minutes and never says it. Mixing the two produces a figure that looks rigorous and is not. Keeping them apart gives two honest rankings, and the gap between them is itself the interesting content.

Composite = 0.60 × topicality + 0.25 × reach + 0.15 × recognition, each on a 0–10 scale.

Topicality is editorial: is the song about a dick, or does it merely contain a line? A ten means there is nothing else the song could be about. Recognition is also editorial: would a normal person know this song? It is distinct from plays — Die Kassierer's Mein schöner Hodensack has a devoted following and low general recognition; Whistle is the opposite.

Reach is measured, not judged: log10 of the YouTube views of the video each song page plays, the most-viewed upload of the original recording, read every two weeks and normalised to 0–10 across the set. Spotify does not publish play counts, so it stays out of the number. Log scale is deliberate. On raw views, Anaconda, Lollipop and Sledgehammer would occupy the top of the list — songs people play for reasons unrelated to the premise — while Detachable Penis would sit near the bottom. Compressing the gap between five hundred million and five million lets reach inform the order without dominating it.

YouTube's terms let us keep a reading for 30 days at most. Without one, reach is unavailable and the composite is computed provisionally from topicality and recognition, re-weighted to sum to one (0.8 and 0.2). Every page says so where it applies. Nothing is estimated.

Ranked purely by the number of distinct explicit words a song uses for the organ, then by density as the tiebreaker. No editorial input.

An explicit reference is a word whose sense, in context, is the organ itself, in whatever language the song is sung: penis, dick, cock, wiener, ding-a-ling, bite, zizi, Schwanz, huevo and their relatives. Objects standing in for it (a record, a lemon, a trombone, a sledgehammer) do not count on this list at all. Distinct means distinct: a chorus repeated six times counts once, and so does a word the song uses forty times.

Repetition is stored and shown separately, because it is a real property of a song that should not be allowed to silently multiply the score. Density is distinct words divided by running time in minutes, because a sixty-second Monty Python interlude and a six-minute Led Zeppelin jam are not comparable on totals.

Every song page shows an innuendo count. It is editorial and it is never summed into either leaderboard, because innuendo has no natural unit — is Sledgehammer one sustained innuendo or twelve? Any number we chose would be defensible and none would be a measurement. So it is labelled as opinion wherever it appears and kept out of the arithmetic.

A song is on the list when the phallic reference is the hook: the chorus, the title, or a whole sustained verse, literal or double entendre. A single line inside a song about something else does not qualify, however famous the song. The reference has to be to the male organ, its size, an erection, the testicles or an act performed on it; songs about sex in general or about female anatomy are out.

There is a recognition floor too: a national chart entry, a certification, a canonical place in its genre's history, or sustained viral reach. At most two songs per artist, and one page per composition, with cover versions inside it. That is how Big Ten Inch Record became one page with Bull Moose Jackson's 1952 original first.

Every song carries one of two labels. Documented means the artist, the writer, Songfacts, Wikipedia or a major publication states the phallic meaning, and the song page names the source. Interpreted means the reading is ours: the page quotes the line, gives the reading, and states the denial where there is one, so you can hear the gap. Billy Squier says The Stroke is about the music business; the page says so.

The label is never an input to either ranking. It is there so you know what kind of claim you are reading.

We do not host lyrics — not verses, not stanzas, not choruses. A quoted fragment on a song page is a few words used to make a specific point, and every page links out to an official lyrics source where one exists. Word counts are our own derived data, which is fine to publish; reproduction is not.

Cover art, artist photos and video stills are shown for identification and commentary, each with its source and owner printed under it, and a rights holder who writes to support@ratewithai.co gets an image removed. Listening happens on Spotify and YouTube, through their own players and links.

We do not pad the list. Seventy-five songs qualify under the rules above, in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese, and each one gets a page with at least 170 words of original explainer. A song that only mentions the subject in passing does not get one, however much it is searched for.

The point of publishing the weights is that you can. If Big Ten Inch Record should be a nine on topicality rather than a ten, or The Stroke should be a three, the numbers are on the song page and the formula is here. We would rather have that argument in the open, on these pages, than have the rankings look like they came from nowhere.