From 16.4 to 7.2 seconds before the first lyric: the same week's 100 chart songs in 2006, 2016 and 2026

The No. 1 song on the Bugs weekly chart for the first week of October ten years ago was SHINee's '1 of 1'. The first lyric arrives 4.7 seconds after the song starts. This year's No. 1, for the second week of October, is 'Tic Tac Toe' by ONEW of SHINee with ZICO. It opens on 'Hugs and kisses like' in just 0.35 seconds. We took the 100 songs on the same-week charts from twenty years ago, ten years ago and this year, and measured the moment the first lyric arrives in each song. The median fell from 16.4 seconds to 12.0 and then to 7.2.

The three years side by side

Chart week	Songs	Median	Average	Within 5 sec	20 sec or more	Checked by audio
2006.10.6–10.12	94	16.4 sec	16.5 sec	16 songs	33 songs	56 songs
2016.10.3–10.9	100	12.0 sec	12.4 sec	21 songs	16 songs	64 songs
2026.10.5–10.11	100	7.2 sec	8.7 sec	33 songs	7 songs	20 songs

The median is the value of the song standing in the middle when the songs are lined up from the earliest first lyric to the latest. Unlike the average, it isn't pulled along by the few songs that make you wait more than 30 seconds.

Songs that start singing within 5 seconds

The number of songs whose first lyric comes within 5 seconds grew from 16 to 21 to 33. Narrow it to within 1 second and it is 4, 11 and 19. On this year's chart, NMIXX's 'Blue Valentine' sings 'You'll always be my blue valentine' at 0.15 seconds, and Choi Yu Ree's 'When I stop thinking' starts its first line at 0.75 seconds. Ten years ago, SHINee's 'Prism' came in early with '그 어떤 글' ("any kind of writing") at 0.6 seconds, and twenty years ago MC MONG's 'Aiseukeurim (아이스크림, meaning "ice cream")' did the same with 'A-yo' at 1 second.

Songs that make you wait over 30 seconds

At the other end, songs that take more than 30 seconds to reach the first lyric went from 7 to 2 to 2. The chart twenty years ago had plenty of songs that play the accompaniment for a long while before the singing begins, such as Yoon Do Hyun's 'Geunyeoui Useumsori Ppun (그녀의 웃음소리 뿐)' (39.8 seconds) and Lee Seung Gi's 'Please' (35.7 seconds). Ten years ago the latest was M.C the MAX's 'You You And You' at 41.2 seconds. This year's latest is LIM Hyunjung's 'Sarangeun Bombicheoreom... Ibyeoreun Gyeoulbicheoreom' ('Love Is Like Spring Rain... Parting Is Like Winter Rain'), where '묻지않을께 네가 떠나는 이유' ("I won't ask why you're leaving") arrives at 38.1 seconds.

Ballads shrank less

Looking only at songs that Bugs' track information classifies as 'ballad', the median is 17.6, 13.2 and 11.1 seconds. Songs that are not ballads fell further, to 15.2, 11.4 and 6.9 seconds. The gap between the two groups is 2.4, 1.8 and 4.2 seconds. Ballads on this year's chart number 24, fewer than the 36 twenty years ago.

This year's chart also has 52 songs that were released more than a year earlier. Comparing only songs less than a year old, the median is 17.3, 12.1 and 6.9 seconds, the same trend. The 52 songs older than a year on this year's chart came in at 8.7 seconds.

How we measured

The first-lyric time is the time stamped on the first line of the Bugs synced lyrics (the feature where the lyrics scroll along as a song plays). We skipped lines that hold only a symbol, like '♪ ~', and lines that give the song title, album or artist name. Voices written in brackets, like '(Ooh, ooh)' or '(1,2,3,4)', and spoken intros were counted as lyrics. For the 2006 chart, 94 of the 96 songs still on Bugs have synced lyrics.

We checked the synced lyrics against the sound. For 161 songs where we found an official upload of the same length on YouTube, we used two programs that separate the voice from the rest of the track and measured the moment the voice switches on. For 133 songs, a voice was present at the synced-lyrics time, and we refined the time to the moment the voice comes in, within a 3-second window. For 7 songs, the synced lyrics were 1 to 12 seconds early or the first line was not a lyric, so we replaced the time with the one measured from the sound. For 19 songs where the voice was barely picked up and 1 song where the times did not match, we left the synced-lyrics time as it was.

There are limits. Few songs on this year's chart have an official upload we could find, so only 20 songs were checked by audio. Counting only those, the median is 16.8, 12.8 and 6.6 seconds. Some synced lyrics are stamped in whole seconds, so it is best not to read much into differences under 1 second. We compared one week from each of three years, so this data cannot tell what happened in the years between.

When Data Story No. 1 compared the same three weeks, songs under three minutes went from 3 to 31. Songs got shorter, and the first lyric moved forward.