Are Drugs And Alcohol Too Prevalent In Music Lyrics?
"In Da Club" by 50 Cent. "Come Alive" by Foo Fighters. "Chop Me Up" by Justin Timberlake.
What do all these songs have in common? They all mention drugs or alcohol. In fact, according to researchers at University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, one-third of all songs refer to drug or alcohol use. In studying the top 279 songs on the Billboard charts in 2005, Dr. Brian Primack and his colleagues found that 33 percent referenced to alcohol and drug use. Only four songs explicitly had anti-use messages.
Broken down even further, 80 percent of rap songs studied referred to drugs or alcohol, as did 37 percent of country music lyrics, 20 percent of R&B/hip-hop lyrics, 14 percent of rock, and 9 percent of pop songs.
So what, you ask? "We're learning that media affects a lot of different health behaviors," Dr. Primack tells Reuters. "Tobacco in movies, for example, is now known to lead to smoking. We started realizing adolescents are exposed to two and a half hours a day of music. What's in the music?"
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