Study Shows That Country Music Has The “Smartest” Lyrics When Stacked Up Against Other Genres

Country music fans that feel superior for their taste in tunes have statistics to back them up. I’m always keeping an eye out for a study that confirms country music’s greatness. It’s not like I need a scientist to tell me that the genre stands above the rest, but it doesn’t hurt to know that actual studies have affirmed the following: –Country music fans are the happiest and typically have better mental health than fans of other music –Sad country […] The post Study Shows That Country Music Has The “Smartest” Lyrics When Stacked Up Against Other Genres first appeared on Whiskey Riff.

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Study Shows That Country Music Has The “Smartest” Lyrics When Stacked Up Against Other Genres

Country music fans that feel superior for their taste in tunes have statistics to back them up.

I’m always keeping an eye out for a study that confirms country music’s greatness. It’s not like I need a scientist to tell me that the genre stands above the rest, but it doesn’t hurt to know that actual studies have affirmed the following:

–Country music fans are the happiest and typically have better mental health than fans of other music

–Sad country songs are as prevalent as ever, and that’s bring joy to the masses

-Attending concerts twice a month can make you live longer

That last one isn’t reserved to country music concerts, but regardless, it’s a positive for those country fans that take pride in being frequent concert goers. And now, I’ve stumbled upon another study that supports the idea that country music is better than every other genre.

Though it’s from a ways back (2015 to be exact), I can’t imagine that the results would change all that much if the study was redone in the modern day. An organization called Seatsmart set out to discover which genre of music is the “smartest,” and analyst Andrew Powell-Morse used a metric called a “Readability Score” to determine which genre’s songs had the most meat on the bone, so to speak.

Seatsmart went to the Billboard charts and chose 225 songs that had spent more than three weeks charting. Of the 200-plus songs that were focused in on, four genres emerged: rock, pop, R&B/hip hop and country. Using the Flesch-Kincaid grade index to determine which genre’s lyrics scored the highest average U.S. reading level, Powell-Morse found that word length played an intricate role in a higher lyric intelligence score.

Analyst Andrew Powell-Morse stated:

“Country music is full of words like Hallelujah, cigarettes, hillbilly, and tackle box. Add to that long place names like Cincinnati, Louisville, Mississippi, and Louisiana, and Country has a serious advantage over the competition.”

And ultimately, country music was determined to be the smartest genre since the songs studied scored a 3.3 on average. Pop music and rock & roll came in with a 2.9, and the R&B/hip hop category brought up the rear with 2.6. The only problem? Those numbers equal grade-school-levels, meaning that even though country music scored the highest at 3.3… it still means that listeners only needed to read at a third-grade level to fully understand the content.

That being said, the analyst behind the study made sure to point out that the “Readabilty Study” was a tad limited in determining deeper meanings of the tracks.

“The study doesn’t touch on the meaning of a song, the metaphors, how the words connect with the artist’s personal story.”

Thus it was really just looking at the lyrics at a surface level.

And everyone knows that country music is often filled with tons of smart references and tasteful innuendos. So I doubt the results of the study would change dramatically if the tracks were dove into a bit deeper.

In conclusion, country music fans are still able to boast that their genre is the smartest. Could this study use an update? Absolutely… but only so we can continue to put country music up on a pedestal.The post Study Shows That Country Music Has The “Smartest” Lyrics When Stacked Up Against Other Genres first appeared on Whiskey Riff.