A new study has found that fans of TOOL, Metallica, Avenged Sevenfold, Nirvana and Five Finger Death Punch have the best self-image among metalheads.
In new data collected by WithinHealth, the researchers found that people who listen to those artists have a statistically higher chance of feeling good about their bodies than fans of other metal bands.
The study was conducted using Spotify data to see which songs users added to playlists with body image themes. Through their data, they found that rock is the most listened-to genre by people with a good self-image (64 percent of users), while metal is generally a genre that's listened to much less by people who feel good about themselves (23 percent of users).
That said, of all the metal artists who turned up in this data pool, TOOL, Metallica, Avenged Sevenfold, Nirvana (not really metal, but fair enough) and Five Finger Death Punch have songs that are most likely to end up in body-positive playlists.
"For this study, we utilized the Spotify API to identify songs and artists in thousands of body image related playlists," the authors wrote. "We compiled a total of 2,544 playlists that were found when searching: 'confidence,' 'feel good,' 'body positivity,' 'body image,' 'feeling ugly,' and 'bad body image.'
"The first three searches were grouped as positive body image playlists, and the last three were negative. In total, these playlists contained 165,559 songs. We also surveyed 1,009 respondents to explore how music impacts their body image."
Read the fully study report here.
