Wait! Huh? Who wrote this study, Ernest Tubbs and Minnie Pearl?

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They can't be talking about the country music I grew up with. You know, where the guy loses his job, his wife, his house and the dog.

This new study finds the lyric's for the number one songs, of all genres, over the last ten years are on par with a third grade reading level.

Andrew Powell Morse, who specializes in data, studied over 200 songs that hit the top 3 on the Billboard charts over the past decade, and concluded that a second grader with above average reading skills would have little difficulty comprehending the lyrics of these chart toppers.

The data also showed the genre of Country music is the "smartest" lyrically. The average grade level of country's is 3.3. By comparison, Rock and Pop are tied at a grade level of 2.9.

By way of explanation on Brietbart.com:

"Powell-Morse says country music’s lyrics are more advanced than other genres because they contain a lot of longer, harder-to-pronounce words like “cigarettes” and “hillbillies.” But country music also generally contains fewer words than rap and pop songs, giving it another distinct advantage."

Oh, I get it now. Country music is the smartest genre because of the hard to pronounce words, rather than it's subject matter. Good to know, as I was having trouble reconciling that the "smoking my cigs, while driving my tractor and drinkin' beer" themes of many of the hit country tunes had any correlation to the term "smart".

 

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