For the first time ever, the team at GreenBookofSongs.com® has released a study of the top categories of 2008. We looked at the top 100 hits for each of five popular radio formats - AAA (Adult Album Alternative), Alternative, Country, Top 40/CHR and Urban - to identify the main subjects  in popular music for the year, and the differences among radio formats. (Click here to see the full report on GreenBookofSongs.com®.)

Here are the Top 10 Subjects of 2008 across all five formats:

1.  Love: Choose Me
2.  Love: Making Love
3.  Love: Don’t Want To Break Up
4.  Love: Painful Break-up
5.  Money
6.  Love: Falling In Love
7.  Bars & Clubs
8.  Bragging & Swaggering
9.  Love: Devotion
10. Love: On The Ropes

Popular music is often about love, so it’s no surprise that love themes come out on top overall. The Green Book categorizes dozens of love themes — everything from ”Love: Advice” to “Love: Somebody Done Somebody Wrong” to “Love: Us Against The World” — but the ageless love themes still come out on top. 

We found significant distinctions among the formats. Compare the top five themes of each one:

AAA:  Love: Love On The Ropes, Losing & Loss, Love: Falling In Love, Motivation, Life
Alternative:  Death, Pain & Healing, Power & Control, Ego, Insults
Country:  God & Religion, Family & Friends, Love: Young Love, Love: Marry Me, Social Class: Rural
Top 40/CHR:  Love: Attracted To You, Love: Falling In Love, Dance, Love: Choose Me, Bars & Clubs
Urban:  Love: Making Love, Bragging & Swaggering, Bars & Clubs, Money, Love: Love & Money

The results may seem stereotypical,  but they hold up under scrutiny. Seven Country songs showed up in our category “Small Town Life”, but there was only one AAA song in that category, and there were no mentions in the Alternative, CHR/Top 40 or Urban charts. You can debate whether radio programming is leading listener taste or vice versa. Either way, the results of our study show real differences in the subjects being heard by each format’s audience.

When the 2009 charts are in, we’ll compare the two years to look for trends in the subject matter of these five popular formats. In the meantime, we’ll look more closely at the subjects of each genre in upcoming posts.

In honor of the upcoming income tax deadline, here are a few songs from our categories “Money” and “Politics:  Politics & Government”:

Death And Taxes TR Ritchie
I’m Payin’ Taxes, What Am I Buyin’ JB’s
Paycheck Man Randy Houser
Sales Tax On The Women New Lost City Ramblers
Strawman Lou Reed
Taxes On The Farmer Feeds Us All Ry Cooder
Taxman Beatles
Taxes, Taxes Hank Penny

Complaints about taxes seem to be ageless. In this list, we have songs from the Great Depression (”Sales Tax On The Women”), songs spurred by high tax rates in the second half of the 20th century (”Taxman”) and more recent complaints about working overtime just to pay Uncle Sam (”Paycheck Man”).  On the political side, there are concerns not only about paying taxes, but also what the government does with our money (”"I’m Payin’ Taxes, What Am I Buyin’”). Only TR Ritchie has a positive spin: His woman can count on his love as surely as she can count on death and taxes!

All of us at GreenBookofSongs.com® are pleased to announce this addition to our family: the Green Book Of Songs Blog. Whether you’re already or a subscriber or you’re new to the Green Book of Songs By Subject, we’ll have content you can use.

We’ll have  lists of songs about a wide variety of topics – for example, current events or holidays. We’ll also be talking about song topics generally — what’s being written about in popular music and how that’s changing over time.

For those of you not familiar with us, the Green Book of Songs By Subject is the world leader in classifying popular music by theme. We provide lists of songs about more than 2,000 topics and concepts — love, politics, nature, emotions, social problems…you name it, it’s in here! All genres and eras of popular music are included.

In book form for 30 years, the Green Book database is now also online as a subscription service. Click here to visit our website and find out more.

Check back frequently, sign up for automatic alerts, or follow us on Twitter at songsabout. We’ll let you know when a new list of songs is available.

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