[Dixielandjazz] Songs about Sex are hot sellers.

[Stephen G Barbone]

But of course, we all knew this. Pity is, they don't mention those  
sexy "jazz" songs. Is there a lesson  here? Perhaps that if we wish  
OKOM to remain a relevant music to young people, we need less  
"artistic" reprises of old tunes and more sexy reprises of those old  
tunes?

That's a tough sell via suspenders, straw hats and arm garters. <grin>

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband


This Just In: Study Shows Songs About Sex Are Hot Sellers


NY TIMES - OCTOBER 4, 2011, 9:21 AM - BY JAMES C. MCKINLEY JR

Psychologists sometimes have a way of proving what you always  
suspected was true. A recent study of popular song lyrics done at the  
State University of New York in Albany shows not only that messages  
about sexual relationships dominate the songs at the top of the  
charts, but also that songs about sex sell better than other songs.
Perhaps more surprising were the study’s findings on the gaps between  
genres. The authors of the study, Dawn R. Hobbs and Gordon G. Gallup  
Jr., found a large difference between the “reproductive messages”  
embedded in country music and those found in pop and R&B. Successful  
country songs tended to have messages — in descending order — about  
long-term commitment to marriage, parenting children, break-ups and  
oaths of fidelity.
On the other hand, the top three themes in songs on pop charts were,  
in order, the singer’s sex appeal, a person’s promiscuity and one- 
night stands. For R&B songs that made it to the top, the most frequent  
themes were, in order, the singer’s sex appeal, boasts about the  
singer’s wealth as it relates to finding a mate, and descriptions of  
erotic acts.
In other words, country songwriters tend to write about mature, adult  
relationships, while pop and R&B songwriters write more about hooking  
up with someone at the local nightclub.
The authors analyzed 174 songs that made it into the Top Ten 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 Ten songs going back in time for 60 years, in 10- 
year increments.
The nature of pop music has not changed much, the authors said. The  
number and kinds of messages relating to courtship and finding a mate  
remained stable in the country and pop genres, but in R&B there was a  
sharp rise in such messages over the last 20 years, the study found.
In general, hip-hop and R&B songwriters talk more about sex and sexual  
relationships. The country songs analyzed in 2009 had about 340  
references to sexual issues, or about 6 per song, while roughly the  
same number of top R & B songs had 973 references to those topics, or  
17 per song. (Pop songs were in the middle, with 513 reproductive  
messages, or 9 per song.)
What’s more, the authors found a direct correlation between the number  
of references to sex in a song and how well it did on the Billboard  
charts. The study was published in the most recent issue of the  
journal Evolutionary Psychology.