REASSESSING THE LINK BETWEEN COUNTRY-MUSIC AND SUICIDE

In their article assessing the link between country music airtime and metropolitan suicide rates, Stack and Gundlach (1992) found that the g reater the airtime devoted to country music, the greater the white sui cide rate. Employing ordinary least squares regression, they controlle d for the effects of divorce, southernness, poverty, and gun availabil ity. Their model accounts for 51% of the variance in urban white suici de rates. The authors interpret their findings as evidence that countr y music may ''nurture a suicidal mood'' (215), though they acknowledge that their model does not explain black suicide rates. In an attempt to replicate their suicide model for whites, we used the same data and methods. Our results indicate that country music - both bivariately a nd multivariately - has a negative, though insignificant effect on whi te urban suicide rates.