Great scot! New research from more nutty ‘scientists’ in the US have set out to prove what I think most of us already know, that when it comes to music, sex sells. Next they’ll be telling us that the same applies no matter what you’re selling!
The study by psychology professor Dawn R. Hobbs has shown that “approximately 92 percent of the 174 songs that made it into the [Billboard] top 10 in 2009 contained reproductive messages.” Yep, reproductive messages. That’s what we’re calling it now.
According to The Atlantic Wire, all 174 top-selling songs were analysed using 18 ‘sexy’ categories including arousal, sexual prowess, genitalia, rejection, and male prowess.
So which genre come up trumps in the ‘reproductive’ department? R&B of course, which beat out every category except courtship, rejection, and parenting. Interestingly Country picked up the slack in each of those categories.
The study concluded “Further analyses showed that the bestselling songs in all three charts featured significantly more reproductive messages than those that failed to make it into the Top Ten”
The study also found that this is in no way a modern occurrence but is a trend in music dating back hundreds of years.
“While the frequency of some of the themes differ, these findings clearly show that the same reproductive categories derived from the content analysis of our initial sample of 2009 contemporary songs map surprisingly well onto the lyrics from opera and arts songs dating back hundreds of years.” It’s comforting to know that despite modern advances as a species our minds were always planted firmly in the gutter.
