A few years ago my friend Dan and I discovered the 9 categories of country music. These subject areas and themes are the ones most frequently appearing in the best country music songs, crafted and defined to be broad enough to apply across the spectrum of country music and specific enough to capture the important topics covered in a particular song. Our theory was that, at least as a rule of thumb, the more categories a song hits the better the song. This certainly isn’t a hard and fast rule – Wagon Wheel, one of the unquestioned contenders for qualitatively best country song doesn’t stack up particularly impressively on our quantitative metric. It’s certainly true that by focusing lyrically on even just a couple of these categories a country song can be great. Nevertheless, our theory is that there’s at least a very strong correlation between the number of categories a song hits and how good that song is.

In no particular order the 9 categories are:

1. Love
2. Hard Times
3. Raisin’ Hell
4. Nostalgia
5. Musical Aspirations and Inspirations
6. God/ religion
7. The South
8. America
9. Modes of Transportation

I can’t recall hearing a country song that did not hit at least a couple of these categories, and probably the average is around 3.5 categories. Of course, one of the key issues in analyzing country songs for the number of categories represented is how strict or loose a construction to put on each of the categories. I hope to explore each of these categories in depth in future posts and what I mean by the level of construction will become more clear. But just to give a bit of color on each of the categories by way of example, consider the following lyrics from the lone song that our analysis has uncovered as hitting 8 of the categories, Kenny Chesney’s I Go Back:

1. I go back to a two-toned short bed Chevy/ drivin’ my first love out to the levy (Love)
2. And I go back to the loss of a real good friend/ and the sixteen summers I shared with him (Hard Times)
3. And I go back to the feel of a fifty yard line/ A blanket, a girl, some raspberry wine (Raisin’ Hell)
4. After graduation and drinkin’ goodbye to friends (Nostalgia)
5. “Jack and Diane” painted a picture of my life and my dreams (Musical Aspirations and Inspirations)
6. So I go back to a pew, preacher and a choir/ singin’ ‘bout God, brimstone and fire (God/ religion)
7. I go back to the smell of an old gym floor/ and the taste of salt on the Carolina shore (The South)
8. Not represented (America)
9. I go back to a two-toned short bed Chevy/ drivin’ my first love out to the levy (Modes of Transportation)