“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 Effect of Country Music on Suicide”.
Dang. Giving “It’s a Blue, Blue, Blue Nashville Christmas” to all my friends this year may have been a bad idea.
11 responses so far ↓
Ken // December 10, 2007 at 12:28 pm |
This may be old and corny, but here goes, I’ve heard that if you play country music backwards, your pick-up truck starts again, your dog rises from the dead and your wife returns.
WFMeyer // December 10, 2007 at 4:25 pm |
It’s almost as if it’s made that way by design as a way to thin the heard.
prospectus // December 10, 2007 at 5:18 pm |
I wonder which it is. Do they do the deed because they’ve heard so much country music, or do people of a certain melancholy bent gravitate to country music? Either seems plausible. I must admit though, my resistance to country music isn’t what it once was. It’s becoming less horrifying to me, which is an unsettling thing to realise.
Jeff // December 10, 2007 at 5:47 pm |
I know I wanted to kill myself after watching that Travis Tritt video you suggested, Meg!
http://meggardiner.wordpress.com/2007/03/17/flipside-music-not-to-write-by/
I have a hard time imagining that the effect is not divorce/relationship/loneliness related, however. If I’m right, #2 on that “bizarre” list “Human-robot marriages will be legal by 2050″ should eventually take care of the problem.
Music and Suicide « Prospect Street // December 10, 2007 at 10:52 pm |
[...] 10, 2007 by prospectus Meg Gardiner brings up the question of country music and a statistical connection to suicide. I’d heard of [...]
thymebandit // December 11, 2007 at 1:28 am |
S. Stack and J. Gundlach have been busy people. “The heavy metal subculture and suicide.” Also, “Blues fans and suicide acceptability,” in the Terry Pratchettesque entitled journal, “Death Studies.”
I have a feeling (without having read the papers) that someone’s idea of causation might be awry.
Just because things happen together (music and suicide) it doesn’t necessarily mean that one causes the other.
Just a thought.
Meg // December 11, 2007 at 2:07 pm |
“Death Studies?” And they focused on music, did they? I suspect that somebody’s parents forced them to take violin lessons when they were little boys.
Jeff, that video is stupendous, isn’t it? I can’t decide what actually puts it over the top – the touching inter-racial friendship, the paralyzed veteran flinging himself from his wheelchair in a desperate attempt to rescue his fatally injured pregnant wife, or the fact that she dies on that big-ass bass fishing boat, right next to the Evinrude engine.
Jeff // December 11, 2007 at 2:55 pm |
You really have to wonder what the team was saying to each other after in the screening room after they were finished… “Think anyone will notice? Nah.”
Jeff // December 11, 2007 at 3:26 pm |
thymebandit: causality is a slippery thing to nail down. My wife, for example, thinks my laziness is the cause for my not taking out the trash. I contend it’s my fascination for blog reading. Meg Gardiner is therefore the real cause for the trash collecting in our garage.
thymebandit // December 12, 2007 at 12:32 am |
Jeff, I couldn’t have put it better myself. Impeccable logic. That Gardiner woman has a lot to answer for, the blighter.
chandler // February 25, 2008 at 3:11 pm |
this is pretty dumb i have always listined to country music and its not always about divorce and all that bad stuff it does have stuff like that but it is mostly about just being southern and life in the south most people wouldnt understrand inless you grow up listining to it but i wonder how much the suicide rate is for all that death metal and all that screamy crap