Study shows link between country music and suicide

[WEagle]

Strange but true: country music saps will to live

By Steve Connor, Science Editor
01 October 2004


A study showing the link between country music and suicide has taken one of the top prizes in this year's Ig-Nobel awards - the humorous alternative to the Nobel prizes.

Other winners include the inventor of the karaoke machine, the man who patented the "comb-over" for covering the head of bald men and a student who investigated the danger of eating food that has fallen on the floor. The 10 winners of the 2004 Ig-Nobel prizes - which celebrate the bizarre, weird, funny and improbable elements of genuine scientific inquiry - received their awards last night at a ceremony at Harvard University in Boston.

<snip>
The medicine prize was won by Steven Stack of Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, and James Gundlach of Auburn University in Alabama, who published an investigation into the effect of country music on suicide. The study found that country music, with its emphasis on marital discord, alcoholism and social alienation, can be linked with an increased suicide rate.

"The results of a multiple regression analysis of 49 metropolitan areas show that the greater the airtime devoted to country music, the greater the white suicide rate," the two researchers found.

<snip>

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=567654

[punpirate]

1. Guess herrings bring...

... whole new meaning to the phrase, "ah, you're talkin' outta yer ass."

:P

[Deja Q]

2. As I've said for years,

"country music induces suicide".

[sugarcookie]

3. "Whiskey Lullaby"

It is a pretty song and Rick Schroeder is in the video as the main character...but if you listen/watch the video it does seems to romanticize suicide. He dies, she dies, and their spirits end up together.


Example: 1st Chorus

He put that bottle to his head and pulled the trigger
And finally drank away her memory
Life is short but this time it was bigger
Than the strength he had to get up off his knees
We found him with his face down in the pillow
With a note that said I'll love her till I die
And when we buried him beneath the willow
The angels sang a whiskey lullaby

[G_j]

4. for a bunch of "macho" guys

male county singers sure like to whine.

I have worked in places where they have country music playing all day. I must admit having to listen to that does prompt suicidal thoughts!