Photo illustration by Juliana Jiménez Jaramillo. Bieber photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images. Beatles photo by Peter Skingley/AFP/Getty Images. 
 
 What do Justin Bieber and the Beatles have in common? Not much, you might think, other than the ability to inspire frenzied adoration in their young fans. But Bieber and the Fab Four share something else as well. Consider Bieber’s 2013 song “All Bad,” which many believe alludes to his relationship with Selena Gomez in the following verse: 
 
 Envy, envy 
 
 Same thing as jealousy 
 
 Jealous of you 
 
 That’s what they do 
 
 The stanza, you’ll note, ends with a couplet rhyming do and you. That turns out to be Bieber’s favorite pair of words to rhyme: In his still-young career, he’s used the pair in 12 different songs. It’s also the Beatles’ favorite rhyme—and the favorite rhyme of Prince, Whitney Houston, Adele, the Rolling Stones, Madonna, Elton John, Bob Dylan, and Kanye West. 
 
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 In fact, an analysis of every song on Billboard’s Year End Hot 100 between 1960 and 2013 suggests that the do/you rhyme might be the most popular in pop music history. Below is an interactive graph showing the most common 20 rhymes on the Billboard list over this time period, as well as their change in popularity over the years; half rhymes, such as enough/love, were counted, and each rhyme was only counted once per song, so as not to put too much weight on repetitive choruses: 
 
 Simple rhymes, as might be expected, are the most common: Words like be and me or to and you are both organic to the subject matter of most pop songs (love, relationships) and can be paired without grinding a tune to a halt. Only one pair of words in the top 100 most common rhymes is more than one syllable: forever/together. When we expand the search to include the top 200 rhymes, the only polysyllabic rhymes we add are away/today, better/together, and sorrow/tomorrow. 
 
 Almost half of the 20 most popular rhymes contain either me or you. It’s tempting to look at these results and conclude that pop lyricists aren’t all that inventive or ambitious when it comes to rhyming. But the centrality of me and you rhymes is hardly limited to pop. The most common rhyming pair in Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets is me/thee. (Shakespeare, of course, was lucky enough to live in a time when me and you rhymed with each other.) 
 
 There is no single rhyme that Queen used in more than five different songs. 
 
 Over time, certain rhyming pairs rise and fall in frequency in pop music. Though it is still used frequently, do/you appears to have peaked around 1998–99, when it was used in 15 percent of all Billboard Year-End Hot 100 songs, including hits like Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” and Britney Spears’ “…Baby One More Time.” In the 1960s, cry/goodbye was used roughly eight times more often then it is today, in such songs as Marty Robbins’ “Don’t Worry About Me” and Elvis Presley’s “Marie’s the Name.” 
 
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 I asked Walter Everett, a professor of music at the University of Michigan who has studied popular music, what he thought attracted artists to the do/you rhyme. His hypothesis is that its frequency has less to do with do and everything to do with you. He noted that when a singer uses melisma (singing different pitches on the same syllable), it can “work to create a strong perceived bond between singer and listener, especially in romantic songs.” Such an effect, he says, can be particularly pronounced when the melisma is applied to the word you at the end of a line or verse. He points to the Beatles’ appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show as evidence of “what the word you does to the female fans.” 
 
 Naturally, you rhymes appear most frequently in love songs. Looking at VH1’s list of top 100 love songs, which includes artists from Frank Sinatra to ’N Sync, reveals that 71 of these songs have at least one verse ending with you, and 15 contain the do/you rhyme. Less romantic songs are far less likely to contain either a you or a do/you. VH1’s ranking of top 100 dance songs and top 100 rock songs contain, respectively, nine and four songs with a do/you rhyme. The network’s ranking of the top 40 metal songs contains only one, Anthrax’s “Caught in a Mosh”: “Learn to give respect/ that others, give to you/ AAAAAAAAAAAH, the best you can do.” 
 
 While most artists draw from a common bank of rhymes and use the same rhymes frequently, there are some artists who appear to go out of the way to avoid common couplets or rhyming in general. Queen only used do/you as an end rhyme once in its 15 albums, and there is no single rhyme that Queen used in more than five different songs. By contrast, in seven albums and roughly 40 singles, there are seven rhymes (do/you, be/me, baby/me, go/know, enough/love, above/love, fear/here) that Justin Bieber has used in at least five songs. 
 
 Below is an interactive that allows you to pick an artist and reveal that artist’s favorite and most distinctive rhymes. Only artists whose all-time total record sales have surpassed 75 million or have had one of the 10 best-selling albums of the year within the past 10 years were included. Artists who otherwise fit the criteria for inclusion but didn’t have enough songs with lyrics were excluded. Sorry, Kenny G. 
 
 Here, too, a rhyme was only counted once per song. An artist’s most distinctive rhyme is the one used most frequently compared to the average across all acts (to qualify, a rhyme must appear in more than one song). For example, while the Beach Boys used the universally popular be/me rhyme in 15 songs, their songbook is unique for featuring four different songs with a hand/sand rhyme. Similarly, Lil’ Wayne specializes in me/money, Reba McEntire favors hand/man, and Madonna likes girl/world. ||||| This month marks 50 years since The Beatles made landfall in America. Had it not been for a very fortuitous convergence of events, however, Beatlemania might never have erupted. 
 
 After refusing to release previous Beatles hits such as “She Loves You” and “Please Please Me” (both went to number one in the UK) Capitol Records finally decided that “I Want To Hold Your Hand” might have a chance in the US. 
 
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 Beatles manager Brian Epstein had already booked the band for three consecutive weeks as headliners on Ed Sullivan’s Sunday night variety show, so when the new single went to number one in the U.S. at the end of January only days before the band were to appear on national television, the timing could not have been better. 
 
 Fifty years from now, the recounting of the ‘Beatlemania’ phenomenon will merely provide colorful context; it is primarily the music and the changes it provoked that will endure. 
 
 That February 9 broadcast turned out to be a historic moment in pop music culture and the Beatles went on to become one of the most successful acts -- commercially and critically -- in the history of popular music. 
 
 
 
 Fifty years later how important have the Beatles turned out to be? And 50 years from now will anybody care about the Fab Four? The answer depends. 
 
 In our era, the Beatles are beloved as both celebrities and as a dominant force in pop music history. However, 50 years from now, that will no longer be true, as celebrity does not fare well over time. 
 
 Years before the Beatles, Bing Crosby was one of the most influential figures in popular music. Not many people alive today could point out a picture of Bing Crosby, but they may certainly know of him because of his contributions to music. 
 
 Fortunately for all of us, the legacy of The Beatles will live with the music they made, not in the celebrity they have become. Like figures such as Stephen Foster, Scott Joplin, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, students of history will learn about the music first and need to have the celebrity explained. 
 
 The Beatles are important in music history because their music had a significant impact on how popular music styles changed and developed – an impact that can still be felt 50 years later. 
 
 The idea that rock musicians should write and perform their own music, for instance, or that they should attempt to say something interesting in the lyrics, or strive to develop new sounds, or strive to explore adventurous stylistic integrations with pop—all are now deeply woven into the fabric of rock culture. 
 
 Fifty years from now, the recounting of the ‘Beatlemania’ phenomenon will merely provide colorful context; it is primarily the music and the changes it provoked that will endure. 
 
 
 
 While the Beatles’ music may already belong to history, the celebrity of John, Paul, George and Ringo still belongs to us. Those who experienced the Beatles music when it was originally released have a special – and perhaps even paradoxically, intimate – bond with the band. 
 
 For us, the music is a communal celebration, drawn from our youth and reminding us of the kind of optimism that goes with that time of life—the exhilaration of emerging adulthood. 
 
 We imagine we know the Beatles and that maybe they know us. We invest part of who we are in those songs and in those young men. This is a connection that future generations can never have. 
 
 
 
 The Beatles belong to our lives; they mean so much to us now simply because they meant so much to us then. 
 
 Looking back 50 years, that’s what America gets to celebrate and relive all over again: the music that transformed a generation and became the soundtrack of our lives. “With love, from me to you,” indeed. 
 
 John Covach is the director of the Institute for Popular Music at the University of Rochester. He teaches a free online course entitled "The Music of the Beatles" and is the author of the book "What's that Sound? An Introduction to Rock and its History."
– Think the Beatles and Justin Bieber have nothing in common? Not so: They each used do/you more than any other rhyme, which isn't so odd considering that Madonna, Prince, Kanye West, Bob Dylan, and most other top-selling pop musicians between 1960 and 2013 favored it too, reports Slate. According to an in-depth analysis of rhymes in Billboard's Top 100 Songs for that period, simple rhymes with words like be, me, to, and you are the most common, and half of the top 20 rhymes include either you or me (before you cringe, Shakespeare favored it in his sonnets with me/thee). It's fascinating to click on Slate's graph and see how certain rhymes have risen and fallen in popularity. Do/you topped out in 1998-99 with songs like Aerosmith's "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" and Britney Spears' "...Baby One More Time," while cry/goodbye was more popular in the 1960s with Elvis Presley's "Marie's the Name" and Marty Robbins' "Don't Worry About Me." Occasionally an artist or group comes along (like Queen) that rarely re-uses a rhyme, while most (like Bieber) keep drawing on the most popular ones. The Beatles may be rhyme repeaters, but Fox News argues that they'll remain popular in 50 years because of their enormous effect on pop music styles.