Everyone has heard all the jokes that country music is just about trucks, beers, girls, and cut off blue jeans. But what do the lyrics of the genre actually tell us about the real subject matter of modern mainstream country music?
Well, I tried to find out!
You see, I had a data-marketing job at an advertising agency about 6 years ago, and I absolutely sucked at it. But I did take one thing away form that job — I learned how to use excel and crunch data. So I thought, why not apply my skills to country music?
So for the past 6 years, I’ve maintained a spreadsheet of every single country lyric of every country song that reached the Top 30 on country radio, and I found out a lot!
First off, the most common words aren’t that exciting: I, You, The, And, That, and A/An each appear in over 80% of all country songs. So let’s take those basic words out of the equation. After doing that, THESE are modern country music’s most common lyrics:
1. Yeah
2. Girl
3. Baby
4. Love
5. Little
Surprised? I was and I wasn’t. On the one hand, YEAH, those words sure do sound common! On the other hand, though, it’s easy to fixate on image-based words like “jeans” and forget how many filler words are actually in all music.
If you’re interested in some of my other findings, check out this comprehensive video below!
Hey I bought a shirt from you a couple of days ago and it just arrived, but it is a little too small. Do you have a return/exchange system to get a bigger size? Love your videos and hope you’re having a great day!
Loved your video. I’m working on a compilation similar, but more involved with feelings and emotions recurrent in Country music. BTW, my favorite is George Strait.