He Treats Your Little Girl Like a Real Man Should

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“He Treats Your Little Girl Like a Real Man Should”:

The Re-presentation of Conventional Love in Country Music1

George Peterson

Sociology 352

Dr. Lee Vigilant

12/13/10

Abstract:

This study contains an examination of the lyrical content of Billboard magazine’s top 30 country songs for the week of November 27, 2010, in an attempt to identify the dominant themes and narratives found therein. Research was conducted using a content analysis method with manual coding, arriving at 18 coded categories. Several themes and topics of social importance were found in the data with femininity, masculinity, gendered interaction, romance, and family being dominant. Ultimately, the data show that the most popular country music primarily contains the theme of romantic love, often framed in terms of conventional, heterosexual interaction. This finding evidences the theoretical notion that popular music can re-present and reinforce the realities of social life.

Introduction and Literature Review

In the United States, country music is the most popular form of music today (Buckley 1993).It has been argued that music constructs, reinforces or reflects culture and consequently society(Adorno 1973; Albrecht 1954).The lyrics found within country music are the genre’s “core vehicle” of expression because the songs generally have very basic harmonic and rhythmic formations (Van Sickel 2005). Because of its popularity, simplicity, and potential ability to shape culture and society, analysis of country music is fruitful area of sociological inquiry.

The notion thatcountry music reflects the rural, southern, conservative, and simple way of lifeis popular among Americans (Van Sickel 2005). However, country music has experienced a dramatic change in style and has become increasingly popular since its birth in the early 20th century. In a content analysis of the number one country songs from 1960 to 2000, Van Sickel found that on the whole,they contain no political or ideological messages (2005). After the September 112001 terrorist attacks, however, country music experienced a flare up of political discourse, primarily in the shape of pro-military patriotism pointed at supporting the Afghanistan and Iraq military operations (Boulton 2008). Given such findings, beyond the general lyrical analysis, this research also focuses on the issues of country “authenticity” and political or ideological rhetoric.

Working from Theodor Adorno’s contention that art functions to construct society, Steven Stack and Jim Gundlach researched the relationship of country music to suicide rates (1992). Stack and Gundlach found that in major metropolitan areas, increased airplay of country music correlates with increased suicide rates among white males, even when controlling for other variables. They argued that 51% of the variance in suicide rates is explainable by country music airplay. This study was replicated by scholars Jeffery B. Snipes and Edward R. Maguire, in which they found no significant relationship between radio play and suicide rates (1994). Stack and Gundlach responded with a criticism of their suicide rate construction methodology, to which Snipes and Maguire thereafter utilized their suggested methods and data, still finding no significant relationship between radio play and suicide rates after controlling for divorce, poverty, southern region, and gun availability (1995).

Objective, Data, and Methodology

The objective of this research is to identify, categorize, and analyze the lyrical content of today’s top 30 country songs. In doing so, the songs’ essential meanings and contentsare realized and discussed. Working from the assumption that the lyrics convey messages to construct or reinforce social behavior, the central question is: “What messages are re-presented to society in the lyrics?”

The data for this study is Billboard magazine’s Top 30 Country songs from the week of November 27, 2010 (Billboard). Billboard is considered to be the authoritative source for music charts. The top 30 country songs presented in this paper are based on popularity of radio airplay, as calculated by Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems (Billboard). Lyrics were accessed at Lyrics).

A cursory analysis served to identify each song’s essential content or dominant theme, and accordingly, each song was given a general theme. The results of this are presented in Table 1. Thereafter, it was decided that a manual, concept-driven coding procedure was necessary and most efficient because of the repetitiveness, narration, and occasional opaqueness found in the lyrics. The manual coding procedure worked by noting the any instance of a particular theme or important content of a song, such as marriage. The themes or relevant content found in the data was then tabulated. Themes and content that was observed only one or two times in the datasethave been removed from the tabulations because of their infrequency. The remaining 18 codes are 1) Gendered Interaction, 2) Masculinity, 3) Femininity, 4) Family, 5) Romantic Love, 6) Sex/Sexuality, 7) Christianity, 8) Working Class 9) Political/Ideological 10) Rural 11) Southern 12) Modernization 13) Wisdom, 14) Marriage, 15) Depression 16) Infidelity 17) Alcohol/Drug Use, 18) Morality. These themes are explicated as necessary in the results section of this paper.

The Political/Ideological category is the only category in which there were explicit normative political and ideological discourses. Thus, for example, while a song may contain a conventional gendered interaction, or themes of masculinity, it is this researcher’sunderstanding that such content does not qualify as having a normative ideological message. The only other category with a normative quality was that of Modernization. In this category, the lyrics implicated the complex, technological, and competitive contours of life in the 21st century and were discussed in terms of their value.

The dataset and methodology of this research have disadvantages. Although analyzing the most popular country songs is the correct method to understand the content represented to the majority of country music listeners, doing so has the potential to exclude less popular but still prominent content in country music. Another problem exists with the dataset. In the interest of scientific rigor, one might want to analyze the top 30 songs for several different weeks during a year, or, more thoroughly, over a number of years. While it appears that this study reached saturation with 30 cases, this study is a sort of “snapshot” of country music in the 21st century. In keeping with the line of inquiry that concerns the presence of the political discourse in country music, this dataset may not be sufficient to allow for confident results. However, given The Great Recession and its effects, the Tea Party Movement, historic health care legislation, Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, and Obama’s presidency, 2010 is a time of great social importance andone might reasonably expect some of these issues to arise in the dataset.Lastly, another methodological consideration is that of topic selection. For example, the category of “Depression” is included in this analysis; “Happiness” is not. This may reflect some researcher bias in the sense that the categories presented were deemed to have importance by the researcher. Ultimately, it is this researcher’s contention that any and all important recurrent themes are included in this analysis.

It should be noted that a secondary investigation was performed to discover the overall popularity of the artists found in the dataset. This was achieved by examining the “Billboard 200,” a chart that displays the most popular albums based on sales. The data for this Billboard chart is acquired by Nielsen SoundScan, a database that records album sales at 14,000 national stores, including both brick-and-mortar and online sales points (Billboard). Evidencing the overall popularity of country music, 21 of the 30 artists in the dataset also had albums in the Billboard 200.

Results

What was found to be the central, overriding theme or content in each song is presented in Table 1. Working from the assumption that the songs do not have multi-layered, complex meanings, this analytical framing is useful in elucidating the dominant content being represented. Additionally, since romantic love is found to be the most frequent theme, this table explicates the specific sub-topics of romantic love.

Romantic Love and Depression

Romantic Love and Depression are presented under the same heading because of their tendency to be causally related. At times romantic love was a secondary or supporting theme in depression narratives, and less frequently, at other times, depression was a supporting theme in romantic love narratives.

As shown in Table 2, the majority (77%) of songs carry the theme of romantic love. While some songs such as Sugarland’s “Stuck Like Glue” and Keith Urban’s “Put You In a Song” have essentially no meaningful content other than the expression of romantic love, the majority of songs containing this theme do.For example, Taylor Swift, in her song “Mine,” (2010) narrates in first-person of her and her partner’s emotional and economic troubles in their love formation:

You were in college working part time waitin’ tables
Left a small town, never looked back
I was a flight risk with a fear of fallin’
Wondering why we bother with love if it never lasts
I say "Can you believe it?"
As we’re lying on the couch

The moment I can see it.
Yes, yes, I can see it now
Do you remember, we were sitting there, by the water?
You put your arm around me for the first time
You made a rebel of a careless man’s careful daughter
You are the best thing that’s ever been mine
Flash forward and we’re taking on the world together
And there’s a drawer of my things at your place
You learn my secrets and you figure out why I’m guarded
You say we’ll never make my parents’ mistakes
But we got bills to pay
We got nothing figured out

Swift concludes with the prediction that their life together will have a good resolution:

Do you believe it?
Going to make it now
I can see it
I can see it now

In several songs, romantic love, whether past, present, or future, served as the causal foundation for the songs dominant theme—usually being the emotional or behavioral state of the singer—as exemplified in Joe Nichols’s (2010) “The Shape I’m In.” In Nichols’s song, it is clear that a love he once had is responsible for his current afflicted state:

I've got a number on a napkin
A pounding in my head
It takes everything I've got
To crawl out of bed
I lost a hell of a woman
Freedom coked me on the chin
But I'm doing alright
For the shape I'm in

In “Why Wait” (2010) by Rascal Flatts, the dominant theme is the contemplation of marriage, and romantic love is presented as the foundation:

What'aya say girl, we do somethin' crazy
Quit puttin' it off, you know what I'm sayin'
Ain't like it ain'tgunna happen, forever's a given
It's already written
Who we kiddin' baby, come on
The stars can't line up any straighter
Let's do it now and think about it later
Why wait another minute
For somethin' we should'a done yesterday?
I know a little church
With a preacher who could hook us up right away
Love don't need a reason
Baby I don't see how I could love you anymore than I do today
So why wait

Some songs included the theme of romantic love as a small but important part of the dominant theme. For example, in Justine Moore’s (2009) “How I Got To Be This Way,” when the singer recalls events that have shaped his life, romantic relationships and heartbreak were discussed:

I've broken a couple good girls hearts cause I said I loved emknowin' I couldn't

An I've given my heart to a woman who said she would stay when I knew she wouldn't
Hey I've done some pretty stupid things but hey
I'm a little bit harder and whole lot smarter

That's how I got to be this way

Depression was found in seven of the thirty cases. This depressed state was most often linked to the heartbreak that resulted after a romantic relationship.

I woke up again this morning
And wouldn't you know it... pouring rain
I went and burned a pot of coffee
And like that I poured it down the drain
'Cause I didn't know I needed you so
And letting you go was wrong
And baby I know you got your radio on
So this is my my bad, come back song
I know I said I wouldn't miss you
But now I'm saying I'm a fool
You're on the feel good side of leaving
And I'm the backside of a mule

(Darius Rucker 2010, “Come Back Song”)

I get so tired of living like this.
I don't have the time, neither do my friends,
To stay up at night, to pull me through,
And to find the things to keep my mind off of you.
So, now tell me, what do you want? What do you want? What do you want from me?
Did you call to say you've find someone and I'm a used- to- be.
You keep takin' me back, takin' me back where I've already been.
If you've moved on why does it feel like I'm losing you again?
Can't you see? So what do you want? What do you want from me?
(Jerrod Niemann 2010, “What Do You Want”)