There is no doubt that certain songs are so easily liked by the public because of their melody. However, certain songs strike us for their lyrics, either because they convey an important (for us) meaning, or for their captivating sound when sung. Since the year 1958, the Billboard magazine held the special section Hot 100, with a rank of the 100 most popular songs of the week. Exploiting this invaluable source regarding the musical taste of the past decades until our days, we perform an analysis over various aspects of popular songs lyrics, especially focusing on the question: what is the importance of lyrics, when classifying musical artists and genres? We find out that, as we expected, many artists are not immediately recognizable only by their lyrics; some of them, however, and especially if they belong to some specific genres (such as rap), stand out, opening to the possibility of further analysis over their styles and themes