Chris Kidd

How inappropriate is modern music? Church Relevance have highlighted some statistics, where researchers analaysed Billboard magazine’s top 279 most popular songs of 2005 to determine what percentage of songs referenced tobacco, alcohol, and drug use. Here are some highlights from their findings:

• 1 in 3 songs portray substance use (33.3%)

This includes:

• 4 in 5 rap songs (77%)
• 1 in 3 country songs (36%)
• 1 in 5 R&B/hip-hop songs (20%)
• 1 in 7 rock songs (14%)
• 1 in 10 pop songs (9%)

Only 1 in 25 songs have anti-use messages (4%)

The average teenager is exposed daily to approximately 84 references to explicit substance use in popular songs, although this exposure varies widely by musical genre. Although the study did not analyze the frequency of sex and violence in popular music, 46% of substance use references were associated with sex, and 29% were associated with violence.

It is worrying that the average teenager hears 588 messages a week about substance use compared to one message a week from the youth group. A youth leader better make his message count. [via Church Relevance]