Today’s video is a DEEP DIVE into the world of country music, and I’m determined to figure out if the stereotypes people have about modern country songwriting are actually true. Is it REALLY all about beer and trucks and girls and blue jeans? Are all the lyrics REALLY the same? To find out, I maintained a spreadsheet of every country song that has reached the Top 30 of Billboard’s Country Airplay chart for the past six years (2014-2019) and then crunched a whole lot of data.
00:00 – Intro
02:20 – Building my ultimate country lyric spreadsheet
04:33 – Initial findings in country music from 2014-2016
06:16- The 5 most popular words in country music
10:16 – TRUCK stereotype testing
12:44 – GIRL stereotype testing
14:26 – JEANS stereotype testing
15:14 – BEER stereotype testing
16:21 – Writing my OWN basic country song
Country Lyrics Raw Data (viewable in Google Sheets): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lz-xpqufGggdPh4gUeIdYvtB2s8ePewn/view?usp=sharing
Dana’s Crunched Data Report: https://danagibbon.github.io/country-music-lyrics-grady/gibbon_report.html
Merch: http://gradywsmith.bigcartel.com
Why Country Music Was Awful in 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WySgNm8qH-I
This beat is killing country music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aT9iox7jH1g
Boyfriend Country is the New Bro Country: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQYpmNDV3gE
Find Grady:
Patreon: http://patreon.com/gradywsmith
Instagram: http://instagram.com/gradywsmith
TIkTok: http://tiktok.com/@gradywsmith
Subreddit: http://reddit.com/r/CountryMusicStuff
Facebook: http://facebook.com/gradysmithwriter
My Spotify playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5SBRhqxctG4awl4apGxaZm?si=rfPPDv4uSBOPTrM-uSFkSw
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This is, bar none, the hardest I have ever worked on a video, and I hope it's entertaining and that it helps drive forward the conversation about country music! Love all y'all little back road truckers. YEAH.
I was going to thumbs up and sub, but then you used the Office clip at the very end, you know, that original reaction that every YouTuber uses for a reaction that never should've been a trend. So for that you've earned a dislike and a Never Recommend Channel again
“A dirt road, a cold beer, a blue jeans, a red pickup…”
the problem is the fact it sells and most people are stupid
That dance at 6:10 makes me wanna punch the sht out of him
I made a country song bingo list. My grandfather listens to a lot of pop country, so I get exposed to it a lot. Lol
It's adorable how you guys talk about country music existing after 1990.
I explain what is wrong with today's country in this way. Country music before 2000 told stories of the human experience. Today, it's a marketing campaign to sell a specific lifestyle.
Modern country be like:
-ignore opioid/meth/alcoholism epidemic
-ignore the fact small towns have no women or young people because there’s zero culture or economic opportunity
-ignore and deny the actual beliefs of rural people
-include unrealistic diversity in their videos
-talk about sex in the most immature way possible
-glorify consumerism “muh big truck muh dip”
-“ahm nawt racist look at mah black friieeend”
My nephew wants to be a country rapper. A crapper. So I looked up popular country things and wound up here. He will never be a crapper (thank god) bu I atleast offered 5 words to be mindful of.
This was an outstanding amount of data analysis. I would love to see this same thing done for hip-hop, rock, and pop.
I love how the youtube aLgOrItHm is usually pretty good but it won't recommend the "Country Music was awful in 2013" vid you referenced and now I have to go manually search it. ?
also, you and I have vastly different approaches to how we manage our desktops (3:08) lmao
As It was once said, I don't listen to country music, but then again I don't live in a trailer and I don't sleep with my sister, so why would I.
Country Music is so Awful! How many more years of new pure crap songs with Blue Jeans, Bare feet, Beer and a Truck going to be done?????????
The industry kept lowering the bar and people kept buying the unsophisticated formula. It's the same song repackaged over and over.
I’m pretty sure this meets the requirements for receiving a P.HD
Romance languages affix "little" to nouns to make a new nouns. "Ini" in Italian, "ito" in Spanish and "inho" in Portuguese are three examples. So it's no dark horse surprise, it's how humans often reference stuff. Nonetheless, it's fantastic how Grady scientifically proves just how awful this music is.
Metal is King. God is Lord.
Listening to those "Country" songs gave me sort of a headache. Country has become trashy Pop music. Smh.
Whoa pardner, clean up yo damn desk top. That's a mess waiting to be a disaster! You know you can file things in alphabetical order like a file cabinet in real life, right? Just kidding on some this…well, not really after looking at it again at 3:08. Clean it up now or you will not go to anymore hill billy'n, goat roper'n, gittar strumm'n gather'n again! There is no excuse for this abomination!
Thank God you spelled YEAH. Now twits will know that yeah and yea are not the same snarfin' word!
Someone computer generated a very amusing mashup of current country songs. They put them all in the same key at the same tempo and mashed them into one song to show how unimaginative and interchangeable they are. It was all 30 and 40 year old men wanting to do the same girl in the same truck at the same time. It was that spinal tap moment that ended hair metal or the disco demolition a generation earlier. It reminds me of pop music in 1963, the year before the Beatles broke through. Ten of the top 100 songs of the year had the word twist in them. And there were any number of other lame dance craze songs, like Elvis and the infamous clam dance. This is how unimaginative music had become. And every other manufactured teen idol was named Frankie this or Bobby that. Just like these douchey country bros now, like cole, Blake, whatever. Ten years from now people will still be shaking their heads
Don’t sell yourself short, Grady. That song was a big improvement over 99% of the bro country check list songs on the radio. We don’t have dirt roads here in Pennsylvania. No we pave every square inch and then we don’t maintain it. Pennsylvania is the land of potholes
Wow, I'm glad I wrote a country song called "Yeah Girl Baby Love Little"! It's gonna be a huge hit!
"And girl, you know that you're the only girl for me, girl. Girl, you're the girl of my dreams, girl." – Eric Cartman
"Hey girl, this girl, that girl, girl". Every modern country song. Also Include muh truck, chevy (?), catfish, and more.
“The term white trash has gone too far. The proper term is country music star”
-stewie and brian
I’m grateful for many of the “B” sides of some of these artists – the ones that never see airplay. The less cliché of the lot. Can’t argued their success though.
I want this but for rap and hiphop; a genre that I both love and hate for similar reasons.
This is awesome! Thanks so much for scientifically explaining why I hate modern country so much. God I hate this crap and I'm forced to listen to it all the time. I'm constantly looking around wondering how other people don't realize every song sounds exactly the same. Basically the same tempo, same chord progression, same production, same lyrics…OMG, please make it stop!
And I think they actually have award shows for this trash?
If Macho Man Randy Savage was a singer “Yeah” would probably the most common word in all of music
Remember when country songs were about roads that take you home and bells that jingle jangle jingle?
Today’s country music has got some big balls even calling country music. Sooooo bad
And Country is still awful in 2022
I don’t always listen to country music but when i do…its gangstagrass
I looked up “If It Wasn’t For Trucks” and it had me in stitches. It’s the most stereotypical country song I’ve ever heard.
That's what happens when like 3 people write all the songs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY8SwIvxj8o