Semantic Communities and Boundary-Spanning Lyrics in K-pop: A Graph-Based Unsupervised Analysis

Abstract

We examine how lyric representation shapes computational similarity using four 384-dimensional multilingual MiniLM representations of 7,891 K-pop songs by 1,456 artists from charts spanning 2000 to October 2023. Whole-song truncated embeddings provide the strongest standardized separation between neighbouring and random song pairs (1.995), compared with 1.931 for chunked documents, although chunked representations show greater adjusted Rand agreement and line-based representations yield higher modularity. Using whole-song embeddings, we construct a weighted cosine nearest-neighbour graph ($k=30$). A representative Louvain partition identifies 21 operational communities, without a corresponding robust plateau in the Markov Stability analysis. AI-assisted examination of selected lyrics and terms suggests overlapping patterns of memory, separation, longing, self-reflection, attraction, and performance. Community membership is associated with character-script composition (Cram\'er's $V=0.294$; permutation $p=0.001$). High-participation songs exhibit broader cross-community connectivity, while participation has weak negative associations with embedding-relative novelty. These findings show how representation choices and textual characteristics influence the network organization of a cultural corpus, subject to limitations from truncation, graph construction, and the absence of independent human semantic validation.