Music is emotionally powerful, we all know that. Music stirs the hearts and minds of men and women alike, okay, that's all fine and good.
But back in the day, when they were still writing truly powerful and complex works that evoked real emotion, stuff like Beethoven and Mozart that is, they didn't have lyrics. Some did, but even if they did they played not nearly as big a role as lyrics in today's music do. The focus was on the music and the music was excellent. That's what there was. Composers had inspiration for each piece, sure, and they shared it with the public. But for the most part people back then and even today, when they listen to classical music, good music, they create their own emotional reaction. They create their own deep and powerful emotions from the music. It's like reading a story with no pictures, when you have to imagine for yourself many things that aren't explained.
Nowadays we have re-packaged beats with hooks and lyrics using less than eight different words. Now we have lyrics being the complete and total essence of a piece of "music". There are no instrumental versions of pop music, are there? Pop artists have inspiration for writing songs, nothing different there, though 99% of the time it's either about being or falling in love, sex, or breaking up. They take that inspiration though, and they, or should I say their producers, turn it into words rather than music. They turn it into words, which are more or less fixed in their meaning and definite. Music has many rules, yes, but music in it's purest form does not have one way to be thought about or reacted to. Words, lyrics, are more or less all thought about the same way, more so than an arrangement of notes anyway, and so if you have a song which focus is on the lyrics, with minimal complexity in the music itself, people will think about and react to said piece of music much in the same way. When you listen to a Kesha song, there's no turning to the guy next to you and asking them what they thought about it. "It's about a white bitch gettin drunk and probably havin sex..." would likely be his response. There's no essence, no soul.
Music today is not very good, yet people still contest that it makes them philosophers, and "says everything I can't" or "describes perfectly how I feel". I find this to be, well, bullshit. If you have a song, say, and it's about breaking up, say you are just coming out of a relationship and you're listening to this song. Say in the song the lyrics tell of a generic break-up scenario, blah blah blah...Romeo and Juliet...teardrops on my guitar..shit like that. You want to relate to this song. You want this song to empathize with you and serve as a pathway for these volatile emotions to exit though. But, the song isn't accurate. It's too specific to someone else's idea of a breakup. It's sad, yes. It's reflective, yes. It may be a bit hateful, yes. But it doesn't serve the purpose of music, to reflect and enjoy your newfound enlightenment. It just is; it's comprehended and that's it. It's a generic approximation of something that happens to people, most often love stories or breakups. Pop music produces music that people have to conform to. There is no "this what I think this song is saying" or "I felt that the artist's intent was..." People are taking fixed music and applying it to their lives and then saying "oh this artist gets me so well" or "oh my gosh so says I feel right now". No. The song doesn't say it, you say you say/feel it, and then you say it again to everyone.
Fuck pop music.
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