Am I Listening to a DiePod?

Significant other has been giving me a hard time lately that the songs on my iPod are emo trash filled with angst that makes it sound like I’m a goth teen who is about two inches away from taking my own life. I agree with this to an extent, but, thanks to a good amount of free time, wanted to scientifically discern whether the music I like is truly as sad as she believes. With this on our plate and my return to school on the horizon, it’s time to go straight into academic journal speak – let’s roll!

Introduction
The music that a person enjoys is often cited as a telltale signal of the kind of person they are, whether their penchant be for heavy metal, easy listening, country music or pop. One type of music that has become quite popular among 12- to 18-year-olds who dislike the rules and structure of their current living situations is called emo. While emo is not necessarily short for anything, the main consideration that leads something to be deemed emo is overt emotionality, often beyond a level that is normal or healthy. To “be emo” or “like emo music” can be considered a putdown, especially when leveled at 26-year-olds. While emo applies to many things, its main connotation is to music.
The goal of this study is not to analyze whether the music collection of J. Gautreaux is emo. The subject admits that at least to some degree it is. The goal is to find whether said collection is so extremely emo that it would lead the subject or any other listener to at least engender thoughts of suicide. This thesis, put forth mainly by Kathryn Gautreaux nee Krouse, is that spending any significant length of time listening to Gautreaux’s music, such as on a long car ride, would force the listener to ponder ending his or her life. Gautreaux denies that this is the case. This academic study aims to statistically analyze the collection in an effort to gauge which person is right.

Literature Review
There is very little literature presently about this topic. There are serious articles about rock music and whether it has led young listeners to commit suicide, but this is a fun endeavor, and we don’t really want to go there.

Methods and Data
The data was analyzed using a simple five-point scale. The music program iTunes allows users to rate songs on a scale from one to five stars. This scale was used as a way to rate the songs on how much they led a listener to want to kill him or herself.

The Wrist Slit Rating System:
1) Japanese television: Super happy magic fun time!
2) Pretty good … pretty pretty preeeeettty good: Pleasantly optimistic
3) Stuck in the middle with you: could easily go either way
4) Cleveland Cavaliers basketball: sad, depressing, painful
5) Goodbye cruel world: razor blades, nooses, guns and a bottle of Jack Daniels

The author (Editor’s Note: That’s Jeffrey, but don’t tell anyone, kay?) went through a total of 652 songs and provided every one with a rating. As is clear to anyone familiar with the Bell Curve, many of the songs ended up with a three. The aim was to stay largely in the center with twos, threes and fours, and only provide a one or five to songs that clearly deserved it. To prove the point, all songs who received those scores will be listed – some with accompanying rationale.
Once every song had a score, they were placed in order by ranking and counted. These counts yielded the final results.
Readers can feel free to disagree with the ratings, and the author admits that in some cases he may be misreading a song that is actually sad or vice versa. The focus mainly in creating the ratings was on lyrical content. A song can sound happy and be the opposite lyrically and vice versa, so while the tune obviously plays a role in how people digest music, the author did his best to divorce himself from that and consider mainly the lyrics. And, last caveat, the author normally has no clue what many of the bands in his collection (such as Tapes ‘n Tapes, Wilco and others) are singing about.

Analysis and Results
The average score when all 652 ratings were tabulated was 3.3. Obviously, this shows that taken as a whole, the entire catalog of Gautreaux’s music leans more toward angst than sunshine. But it is our belief that Gautreaux nee Krouse would have expected the average to be much closer to four. The totals broke down like this:

1: 14 songs
2:137 songs
3: 195 songs
4: 271 songs
5: 35 songs

The songs that earned a rating of one were these:
Rock this bitch – Ben Folds
The Luckiest – Ben Folds
The Infanta – The Decemberists
Happy – Jenny Lewis. Anything else would have been difficult just based on the title.
Happy (reprise) – Jenny Lewis
I Am Somebody – Jurassic 5
Quality Control – Jurassic 5
Twin Cinema – The New Pornographers
Sing Me Spanish Techno – The New Pornographers
Dance All Night – Ryan Adams
Life is Beautiful – Ryan Adams
Just Drums – Tapes ‘n Tapes
Maps – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Crazy About You – Whiskeytown

Highlights among the songs receiving a two:
Bright Eyes – Bowl of Oranges. The only Bright Eyes track to receive a rating higher than a three.
Hands Down – Dashboard Confessional. The happiest rating for this band. While this song is clearly very upbeat, the author couldn’t give it a one because of a technical term he dubbed “pussiness.”
Hiro’s Song – Ben Folds. The author wanted to give it a one because it’s actually about a middle-age Japanese guy having a super fun magic affair with a teenager, but, of course, it ends badly and cannot be higher than a two.

Highlights among the songs receiving a three:
Take It Or Leave It – The Strokes. The author found this song to fully encapsulate the idea of being right in the middle and receive a rank of three. Clearly, it could have gone the other way.

Highlights among the songs receiving a four:
Faithless Street – Whiskeytown. The author procured this song from eMusic off of a compilation album called “No Depression: This is What It Sounds Like Volume 1.” But actually listening to the song leads one to consider the title in error, and thus it receives a four. (Editor’s Note: The author knows, or at least found out during his research, that No Depression is an alt-country magazine that put the compilation together, but he nonetheless found it humorous and wanted to include the anecdote, actual facts be damned!).
All the songs in the collection by Wilco. The author just put them here because it was never clear in any of the songs what was being evoked or what was going on. But overall, the themes seemed to be dark.

The songs that earned a rating of five were these:
If You Can’t Leave It Be Might As Well Make It Bleed – Dashboard Confessional
Several Ways to Die Trying – Dashboard Confessional
Neon Bible –Arcade Fire
Ocean of Noise – Arcade Fire
(Antichrist Television Blues) – Arcade Fire
Silver Street – Ben Folds live album
One Down – Ben Folds live album
Fred Jones Part 2 – Ben Folds live album
Fred Jones Part 2 – Ben Folds album version
Brick – Ben Folds live album
Brick – Ben Folds Five album version
Boxing – Ben Folds Five
Late – Ben Folds. A song to remember Elliot Smith, who committed suicide.
Reinvent the Wheel – Bright Eyes. Also believed to be a song to remember Smith.
Gold Mine Gutted – Bright Eyes
Four Winds – Bright Eyes
Lua – Bright Eyes
Lua – Bright Eyes, off the Keith and Shaleah wedding CD. Gautreaux had this song twice, and thus, both had to be counted.
Landlocked Blues – Bright Eyes
Waste of Paint – Bright Eyes
Amy in the White Coat – Bright Eyes
Devils and Dust – Bruce Springsteen
At Conception - Cursive
So-So Gigolo - Cursive
Into the Fold - Cursive
Bloody Murderer - Cursive
What Sarah Said – Death Cab for Cutie.
A Cautionary Song – The Decemberists
Remember His Name – Jurassic 5
Sylvia Plath – Ryan Adams. The biggest slam dunk among a lot of slam dunks.
The End – Ryan Adams
Set Yourself on Fire – Stars. It actually calls for suicide, and thus must be included, regardless of content.
Romulus – Sufjan Stevens
You’ll Have Time – William Shatner
Star Witness – Neko Case

Discussion and Conclusion
There is a plethora of death, murder, crime and despair among that last list receiving a five. And while critics like Gautreaux nee Krouse would point to this to prove their overall opinion, Gautreaux points to the overall rating of 3.3 to show that the good and bad are marginally equal. Three-tenths is a small percentage (only 1/16th) on a five-point scale.
While this study question likely cannot be answered definitely – subjectivity plays too large a role to say for certain whether one person’s music makes the average listener want to swallow a cyanide pill – this analysis finds that while darkness outweighs light, listening to Gautreaux’s iPod would not make a person want to take his or her own life. Thus, calling his iPod a DiePod is neither accurate or correct.