From VSL comes this list of truly weird scientific studies. My favorite was this one, which "assesses the link between country music and metropolitan suicide rates":
Country music is hypothesized to nurture a suicidal mood through its concerns with problems common in the suicidal population, such as marital discord, alcohol abuse, and alienation from work. The results of a multiple regression analysis of 49 metropolitan areas show that the greater the airtime devoted to country music, the greater the white suicide rate. The effect is independent of divorce, southernness, poverty, and gun availability. The existence of a country music subculture is thought to reinforce the link between country music and suicide. Our model explains 51% of the variance in urban white suicide rates."
Feel free to hypothesize in the comments. I'm not sure I buy the sub-culture explanation. Personally, many of my favorite sad songs are old country tunes. (I think it has something to do with the steel guitar, which is a uniquely mournful instrument.) After a few Hank Williams' songs, I'm ready for some anti-depressants.
PS. Conner Oberst, of Bright Eyes, wrote about the connection between country music and suicide on his latest album, Cassadega. These lyrics are from the track "Classic Cars," which features the lovely voice of Gillian Welch, who has written many fine songs that also make me sad:
She was a real royal lady, true patron of the arts/ She said the best country singers die in the back of classic cars/ So if I ever got too hungry for a suitcase or guitar/ To think of them all alone in the dark
Comments
Ridiculous. Classic example of how science is not supposed to work. Correlation does not equal causation. Try using music listeners in general and suicide rates. Or rap music and people with last names that start with the later J. Ridiculous.
Posted by: Erik | December 5, 2007 1:24 PM
I love it. This is a great example of "science" that confirms my prejudices. I think people who kill themselves are losers, and I think that people who voluntarily listen to (or sing, or write, or produce) country music are losers too. It's only natural that the two should overlap.
But you'd think they would have the same findings with white girl emo singers like Jewel too- if you make yourself listen to whiny songs about sadness and loss and how cruel the world is, of course you're going to be sad all the time, and more likely to want to kill yourself.
Posted by: tekel | December 5, 2007 10:31 PM
Country music doesn't cause suicide. Get real. If anything, it prevents it. It laments the hardships we all go through in life and makes us feel better because we realize there are so many other people experiencing the same thing we are (divorce, breakups/makeups, death, financial hardships, joy, peace, understanding, togetherness, etc. etc.) Country music mirrors real life and how we all perceive it. If people are likely to commit suicide, perhaps they "want" to listen to sad country songs more often, because it expresses their mood.
Posted by: Caroline | December 5, 2007 10:54 PM
Certainly it is possible, as art and music have a huge influence on emotions, but this example is rather surprising. Generally sad art does not make someone depressed, rather it often makes people feel better, as they know they are not alone in those feelings. When pieces touch a deeper level, then this can change. A classic example is the legend of a suicide epidemic after the success of the Goethe novel "Sorrows of Young Werther". This is one of my favorite novels, but it is completely different than country music. In Werther suicide is looked at as a positive solution for an unhappy life. The suicide is not the tragedy in the novel, the loss of love and absence of a place in society is. So maybe I need to listen to country music more, as i didn?t realize that modern country music has that kind of depth.
Posted by: Matthew Putman | December 6, 2007 8:54 AM
Pah. Everyone knows that suicide is caused by the song Gloomy Sunday, which could hardly be considered country music.
(As a data point, I should note that I own two recordings of Gloomy Sunday, the classic Billie Holiday version and an instrumental version by infamous Satanist Anton LeVay, and I am, to date, still alive.)
Posted by: HP | December 6, 2007 9:19 AM
I wonder, how it would look if he looked at Blues instead of CM?
Does he include Bluegrass stations (if there are any) with Country? Most genre listings do, but the content tends to be different.
Posted by: Vnend | December 6, 2007 9:24 AM
Maybe sad white people with suicidal tendencies to begin with are drawn to country music (as well as to whisky, loose women and heartbreak) because it reinforces their worldview and experience, but this identification doesn't make them feel better and eschew suicide. In other words, maybe the relationship is not one of causality but rather one of affinity.
Posted by: peggy | December 6, 2007 12:58 PM
I knew it.
Posted by: Quietpaths | December 6, 2007 4:29 PM
Hm. If the authors' explanation holds up, then why didn't Johnny Darrell (and his immortal lyric "I guess I should get stoned/ and let the past paint pictures on my head/ Kill a fifth of Thunderbird and write myself a sad song/ Baby tell me why you been gone so long") ever make it big? Talk about someone who should be able to tap into the 'country subculture'!
Maybe everyone besides me who really dug him committed suicide?
Posted by: Brian | December 6, 2007 4:59 PM
Not all country music is about hard luck men; there is plenty of room for women singers as well. Take the plaintive, but souful and beautiful country music of Allison Kraus, and check out some of these lyrics,
'Same mistake that I made before
I'll be waking up
On the killing floor
I remember how
I made you laugh
Thought the next time round
Wouldn't be so bad'
Not exactly a pick-me up tune, but you have to admit, it sounds poignant, whatever it means. The next song features some happy banjo music, so it's not all downbeat. Sounds to me like someone who is trying to cope.
Posted by: Alan | December 6, 2007 5:32 PM
Well when considering the Blues, i especially think that it is unlikely that this research is good. I heard a historian, i think Stanley Crouch, say that there was a higher incidence of depression of slave owners than there was of slaves. He acredited this to the blues. Making music lifted them out of desperate misery. Of course this could be different in this situation, since those listening may not be involved inc reating music. Also the music may not be good enough to lift the spirit.
Posted by: Matthew Putman | December 6, 2007 7:24 PM
"Southernness"! LOL!
Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | December 6, 2007 8:01 PM
It wouldn't explain why the world's highest suicide rate is in China.
Posted by: Sandra | December 6, 2007 9:30 PM
In response to Sandra, have you ever listened to Chinese music? Just kidding.
However, your comment made me think about how we humans like to give out "suicide trophies" to nations, professions and now, apparently, listeners to various musical genres.
For instance, I've heard it said that dentists have the highest suicide rate. But I have also heard it said that my fellow translators have the highest suicide rate as a professional group (it has also been said we have the highest rate of alcoholism).
So I'm wondering where we get these statistics? Is there some generally accepted reliable source?
Posted by: peggy | December 6, 2007 9:37 PM
Eh...I'd need to see data for this. What are the methods used in this study? What sorts of interviews were conducted?
...And furthermore, correlation suddenly = causation? Since when?
Posted by: Maiira | December 6, 2007 9:37 PM
To be fair, country music does make me want to kill myself...
Posted by: jough | December 7, 2007 7:32 AM
Country Music, eh? What about the other kind of music? You know...Western.
Regardless of the fact that this study was a terribly gross abuse of someone's funding, I wonder what brand of Country music they studied. For instance, I could understand increased suicide rates being a product of minds saturated in Garth Brooks and Trace Atkins....ewww....and Cowboy Troy....dear holy mother of Mary, that sounds torturous. But I wouldn't officially qualify that as Country music when you compare it to Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and George Jones (among a host of other old-timers). Just remember kids — pedal steel and/or fiddle + 1-3-5 harmonies does not result in instant Country music.
I'd like to see the suicide rate for the people who do such ridiculous studies.
Posted by: sonya | December 7, 2007 10:30 AM
If there is any truth in this postulation it makes me feel sad for our Western Civilisation that some people are moved to such a depth of dispair as to lead to suicide based on such shallowness as found in country music. Sorry to say this but the music itself is rather void of any depth and meaning and the words are mostly corny and sentimental. Samuel Barber's Adagio from his string quartette, the second movement of Beethoven's 3rd symphony, the adagietto from Mahler's 5th symphony, to mention but a few pieces, are stirringly sad pieces but also life enhancing. But then I suppose it has to do with one's education and culture.
Posted by: Marthinus | December 7, 2007 5:29 PM
It's probably got more to do with the disappearance of the manufacturing sector than anything else.
Posted by: heimp | December 8, 2007 12:54 PM
Marthinus, way to go with the completely shallow generalization of an entire genre of music. I'm pretty sure my 13 year old niece could not have done a better job. She wouldn't have been as condescending about it, though.
I don't especially love country, but there are a lot of great songs in the genre, and a lot talent. Even that a non-country fan like me can appreciate. Patsy Cline? C'mon! Beethoven has nothing on her voice ;)
Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash? You don't have to like them, but just because they aren't Beethoven doesn't mean they didn't have talent or anything valuable to say.
Posted by: Leni | December 8, 2007 6:36 PM
Complete and utter rubbish. There are Country songs that might move you to tears, but suicide? Get real. And Marthinus, get your heard out of your rear end and get with the times. Classical music as you know it is dead, listen to some modern stuff like Russell Watson & Katherine Jenkins.
There's probably more people listen to Country than Classical, and no doubt more deaths attributed to listening to Classical, given the old style's stuffs tendency to bore you to death.
Posted by: David Nisbet | December 10, 2007 7:12 AM
I do not believe this study is completely correct. I committed suicide, but I had never listen to any country music in my life.
Posted by: Horatio Buckwalter | December 11, 2007 6:17 PM
The amount of time devoted to country music airplay in a local area is the result of market research..and if n% of your sample are suicidally depressed, some (assumed constant everywhere) fraction of them will add to the m% of the sample that likes country music anyway, and will respond so to surveyors. The amount of airplay country music gets in an area (above the baseline m%) is a sign that a city is unusually depressed (for whatever is making them depressed).
Posted by: Ebenezer T Willifiogger | January 21, 2008 2:19 AM
For discussion of the problems with this research see "Reassessing the link between country music and suicide":
http://www.millersville.edu/~schaffer/courses/f2003/soc101/articles/maguire-snipes-94.pdf
Posted by: Amanda | January 21, 2008 4:58 PM
Another fine case of "Don't believe everything you read."
Posted by: joe | January 23, 2008 1:54 AM