Well, duh. According to the New York Times, a study of pop song lyrics showed not only that messages about sex not only go to the top of the charts, but also sell better. In a study by the State University of New York in Albany, they found that messages of procreation in country music and those found in pop and R&B are vastly different.
Country songs are about “long-term commitment to marriage, parenting children, break-ups and oaths of fidelity.” But the top three themes in songs on pop charts? “The singer's sex appeal, a person's promiscuity and one-night stands.” R&B song themes were about “the singer's sex appeal, boasts about the singer's wealth as it relates to finding a mate, and descriptions of erotic acts.” The study, published in Evolutionary Psychology, also 'found a direct correlation between the
number of references to sex in a song and how well it did on the
Billboard charts.”
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The authors analyzed 174 songs that made it into the Top 10 in 2009 and
found 92 percent of them had one or more themes from a long list of 19
categories of messages related to evolutionary biology, from
descriptions of genitalia to keeping tabs on a mate. They also looked at
lyrics for Top 10 songs going back in time for 60 years, in 10-year
increments.
Aaaand by the numbers:
- In country songs analyzed from 2009, there were 340
references to sexual issues (6 per song) - The same
number of top R&B songs had 973 references to those topics (17
per song) - Pop songs had 513 reproductive messages (9 per song)
