Country music may have a reputation as a dumbed-down brand of music meant for backwoods rural folk, but according to a new study released this week the genre actually boasts the smartest lyrics of any major American genre over the past 10 years. According to the analysis, country had a “readability score” well above pop, rock, R&B and hip-hop, though that wasn’t saying much. Country’s average reading level came in at just above third grade.
The study didn’t take into account metaphors, tone or potentially playful lyricism, and instead based its findings on word count, word length and the number of syllables contained in each word. Country had a leg-up on rival genres thanks to longer words like “tacklebox” and “Louisiana”, according to author Andrew Powell-Morse, though he also argued that country’s intelligence was in decline over the past 10 years. Among the genre’s biggest stars, Carrie Underwood’s lyrics were deemed the smartest at a grade level of 3.72 and Florida Georgia Line’s deemed the dumbest, with just a 2.93 reading level. As it turns out, lines like “This is how we roll/We rollin’ into town” aren’t considered especially smart.
The study’s conclusion that country lyrics are getting dumber is well-timed given the release of Luke Bryan’s thuddingly dim new single Kick the Dust Up, which will undoubtedly become the A-lister’s latest No 1 track. (They all do. He has been the genre’s biggest star for two years running.) It is almost a carbon-copy of Bryan’s divisive That’s My Kind of Night, which Zac Brown unceremoniously called “the worst song I’ve ever heard” in a radio interview, claiming that songs like it made him “ashamed to be even in the same format”.
Brown probably won’t get himself into hot water a second time in a row with Bryan’s new single, but he sure could. Kick the Dust Up follows the same derivative party-in-a-cornfield formula that so many other country songs have trodden in the past decade, despite outcry against the glut of dime-a-dozen tailgate tunes. Really, that’s no surprise given that it’s the brainchild of Dallas Davidson, Ashley Gorley and Chris DeStefano – the exact same writers behind That’s My Kind of Night. Country’s biggest male stars are nothing if not unadventurous once they find a sound that sells. That’s why Kenny Chesney went full-on beach bum after reaching mega-fame with his No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems album, and why Toby Keith went full-on patriot in the wake of Courtesy of the Red White and Blue.
There is so little to say about Kick the Dust Up because it’s hardly a song. It’s just a collection of trite phrases about back roads and alcohol that data researchers have determined country consumers are used to hearing on the radio and are thus amenable to hearing again.
It is the aural equivalent of Taco Bell’s new biscuit taco: a repackaged version of the bland breakfast sandwich from McDonald’s/Burger King/Hardees/Dunkin’ Donuts, but this time in the shape of a taco and with a soggy hash brown thrown into the middle to take up space that substantive ingredients might otherwise inhabit. The refrain of the song is literally as follows: “Kick the dust up/Back it on up/Fill your cup up/Let’s tear it up up/Kick the dust up.” That’s 20 words – six are “up”, none of which are longer than four letters, and none of which are longer than one syllable.
The only vaguely interesting piece of the entire song is the post-chorus guitar riff, which evokes a Middle Eastern flavor not unlike the one found in DJ Snake’s Get Low from Furious 7, a movie that looks like an elegiac meditation on humanity compared to the unsubtle idiocy of this flaming car wreck.
Kick the Dust Up is representative of a systemic issue plaguing country music, which is that so many of the biggest singles are written by the same handful of writers. Why are there so many party songs that sound just like That’s My Kind of Night and Kick the Dust Up? Because half of them are written by Dallas Davidson and Co! The number of hitmakers has shrunken into a tiny, label-approved pool. According to a report by the Tennesseean earlier this year, Nashville has lost a whopping 80% of its songwriters since 2000, and that lack of variety is (unsurprisingly) leading to a lack of lyrical variety as well.
Country may be the most intelligent genre for now, but with songs like Kick the Dust Up permeating airwaves, it’s looking dumber and dumber by the moment.
