This style represents the poetic of rural lives. During this period, big waves of migration from the country side towards the capital forced the rural people to get apart from their original life style, and this population found themselves represented in Sertanejo songs. Since this form would sang a lifestyle seen as antiquated and old-fashioned, it was strongly rejected in the capitals (Machado & Gutemberg, 2010). The rejection fortified the style, and, in the ‘80s, many Duplas Sertanejas, or Sertanejo Duos, like Chitãozinho and Chororó, Zezé de Camargo and Luciano, and Leandro and Leonardo, released national hits and consolidated the Sertanejo in the Brazilian musical scenario with songs about love and cheating. Opposed to Bossa Nova and MPB, which have found a stable status in Brazilian culture, Sertanejo is still growing, and, in the last decade, became one of the main commercial music in the country. However, despite its success, Sertenajo is still seen as a lower musical style.
Data collection
The music web portal Letras.mus.br is the source of this corpus. As advertised in the portal, “Letras.mus.br is the most visited lyrics website in Brazil. It 's been online since 2003 and today has more than 2 million lyrics from all styles of music, news, awards, plugins and more.” The portal also offers Top 1000s for different musical styles, including the three styles analyzed in this study. The song lists considered for this paper were available online on November 1st 2015, and they may vary in time since these lists change based on the search and access to each song.