commonunity

sex, love and evolution: making hits on the ‘billboard’ charts.

Now that it’s December, “best-of-2011” lists for books, movies, and music are beginning to appear. If new research by evolutionary psychologists Dawn Hobbs and Gordon Gallup is on the right track, the songs selected as favorites of the year will be thick with lyrics about courtship, fidelity, mating, and parenting.

Or to put it plainly, about sex and reproduction.

That’s because, Hobbs and Gallup believe, the human psyche evolved to pay keener attention to “embedded reproductive messages” than to messages about other subjects.

Hobbs and Gallup analyzed lyrics for 174 songs that made it into the top 10 on the Billboard charts for pop, country and R&B during the year 2009. First, 18 themes related to reproduction were identified, using a sample set of songs. These themes ranged from “genitalia” (exemplar: Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back”) to “long-term mating strategies” (exemplar: Irving Berlin’s “Cheek to Cheek”). Then, using the defined themes, the 2009 songs were coded.

A few differences were found across the three genres — commitment and rejection popped up more in country music, for instance. Overall, 92 percent of the songs carried reproductive messages, with an average of 8.76 per song.

The key finding emerged once further analysis was done: the bestselling songs in all three genres included significantly more reproductive messages than those that did not make it into the top 10.

read on, posted on npr