And the Most Common Word in Iron Maiden’s Lyrics is… (Hint: It’s Not “Time” or “Death”)

Seemingly inspired by the highly scientific, irrefutable study published in June which analyzed Metallica’s entire body of work and produced a chart of James Hetfield’s most commonly uttered lyrics, some Reddit whippersnapper (who else would you expect?) has done the same for Iron Maiden’s 16 studio albums.

And the results are also not quite what you’d expect, although admittedly Bruce Dickinson’s lyrical palette isn’t quite as anecdotally predictable as Hetfield’s.

My guesses for most-used Maiden lyrics would’ve been “time,” “death,” “life” and “die.” But it’s the considerably more pedestrian “know” that gets the top nod, beating out “now” (#2) and “time” (#3) by considerable margins.

Here’s the chart:

A note at the bottom of the chart indicates that the 50 most common words in the English language were excluded, which makes sense: we don’t want “the,” “a,” “in,” “on,” etc. mucking things up. Repeated song parts were also only counted once (meaning “die,” which is repeated eight times in each chorus of “Die With Your Boots On,” only counts once for that whole song).

Still, “know?” Blegh. Disappointing!

But speaking of knowing things… Iron Maiden appear to be readying new music for release in July. Get ready!