Gone country: An investigation of Billboard country songs of the year across social and economic conditions in the United States.

Abstract

Researchers have found that within the unfolding trends in pop culture, both pop music and the artists who perform pop songs vary predictably according to socioeconomic conditions. Popular songs are longer, slower, more lyrically meaningful, and in more somber sounding keys during difficult social and economic times. Furthermore, male and more mature-looking pop music performers are more successful during difficult economic times. In the current study, we assess the musical and lyrical properties along with the sex and age of the artists who recorded the 63 songs to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Annual Country Charts between 1946 and 2008. In contrast to findings on pop songs, country songs of the year are lyrically more positive, musically upbeat, and use more happy-sounding major chords during difficult socioeconomic times. While older country musicians are more popular in difficult socioeconomic times, unlike pop performers, the country artists of the year are more likely to be females when the social and economic environment is threatening. We hypothesize these differences exist because unlike the middle-class audiences who consume sadder popular songs because they match their affective mood in times of recession and social threat, the more marginalized working-class listeners of country music use happier sounding songs from comforting female figures, like the wives and mothers portrayed in country songs, as a catharsis in difficult socioeconomic times.

What Makes Popular Culture Popular? Product Features and Optimal Differentiation in Music

“…8 They have been used extensively in social science research on popular music (Alexander 1996; Anand and Peterson 2000; Bradlow and Fader 2001; Dowd 2004; Lena 2006; Lena and Pachucki 2013; Peterson and Berger 1975). They are also noted for their reliability as indicators of popular taste (e.g., Eastman and Pettijohn 2015).…”

Disconnected, Not Polarized: Four Decades of the Rural-urban Interface in Mainstream Country Music

“…Accordingly, both rural and urban places could have also been portrayed more positively to avoid alienating conservative or liberal listeners living across the interface during a period of increasing rural-urban political polarization. It is also conceivable that producers, writers, and artists from urban places are exercising more influence in the industry and/or that the lyrical content of chart toppers reflects changing audience tastes linked to shifting socioeconomic conditions that place a greater premium on songs with positive representations (see Eastman and Pettijohn 2015).…”

“…Following others who utilized the Billboard charts to systematically sample the most popular songs from various eras (Carey 1969; Eastman and Pettijohn 2015; Lopes 1992), the sample is comprised of every song that occupied the top position on Billboard magazine’s weekly country chart from 1983 to 1986, 1993 to 1996, 2003 to 2006, and 2013 to 2016. The middle four years of each decade were sampled to maximize our ability to identify any distinct shifts across these decades.…”

Sentiment analysis of popular-music references to automobiles, 1950s to 2010s

“…For music of the “Pop” genre, it is sadder, slower, and more comforting when the economy is experiencing hardship (Pettijohn and Sacco 2009 ). However, also during difficult economic periods, Country music has more positive lyrics than Pop, as well as being more musically upbeat and exhibiting the use of more happy-sounding major chords (Eastman and Pettijohn 2014 ).…”