Howdy partners! If you’re having dark thoughts, you might want to try switching your radio station. And no we’re talking about the likes of The Smiths or Radiohead.
According to Steven Stack of Wayne State University and James Gundlach of Auburn University, winners of 2004’s Ig Nobel Prize for Medicine, there’s a direct correlation between suicide and country music.
Based on a study of 49 metropolitan areas in the United States, the pair surmised that all else being equal (by which they meant factors such as divorce, poverty, Southernness and gun availability), the more radio airtime that’s devoted to playing country classics like Tammy Wynette’s ‘Stand By Your Man’, Kenny Rogers’ ‘The Gambler’ and Willie Nelson’s ‘Always On My Mind’, the higher the local white suicide rate. Where country music is part of a city’s subculture rather than its mainstream culture, the effect is even more pronounced.
Here’s something that’ll banish the blues, not to mention those honky-tonk tunes… get the experts in to jumpstart your next R&D tax credit claim and the only song you’ll be listening to is Abba’s ‘Money, Money, Money’. Yes it’s always sunny in the rich man’s world. Aha-ahaaa.
