Because April is Alcohol Awareness Month, we pulled some songs about recovery from our category Addiction: Recovery.

• Accidents Can Happen Sixx A.M.
• Cry Cry (Till The Sun Shines) Martina McBride
• God Of Wine Third Eye Blind
• Little Rock Collin Raye
• Sober Pink
• That’s Why I’m Here Kenny Chesney
• Welcome Back Mase
• Wine Into Water T. Graham Brown

Just as Country music is famous for its songs about drinking, bars and honky-tonks, the genre is not afraid to tackle the subject of recovery head-on. In fact, while Rock, Hip Hop and Alternative are represented in the sample list above, Country music predominates with over half of the 47 songs in our full Addictions: Recovery category. Rock and Alternative edge out Country in the companion category Addictions: General.

The Green Book deals with substance use in other categories as well — Alcohol, Drugs: Cocaine, Drugs: General and Drugs: Marijuana. These include both songs that glorify drinking and drugs and those with anti-drug messages. The two Addiction categories are reserved for songs that specifically address addictive behavior.

We also track particular brands of alcohol in Products & Brands: Specific. Coincidentally, in our study of the top subjects in popular music for 2008, the most frequently mentioned product was Patron tequila, a favorite in Hip Hop songs.

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.