"Music saves my soul" - Really??
Is it just me, or are the lyrics of popular songs going from bad to cringe-worthy to just plain ridiculous? I remember the good old days when Backstreet Boys sang songs like ‘I’ll never break your heart’ and ‘As long as you love me...’
Back when the line ‘Am I sexual?’ from their song ‘Everybody’ in the 1997 Backstreet’s Back album was considered shockingly forward and taboo.
Back when the Spice Girls were insanely popular and everyone wanted to be Baby Spice because she was the cutest and the prettiest. They released a movie, ‘Spice World,’ which I was strictly forbidden to view because it was apparently ‘not good’ for 10-year-old me.
Back when music videos were relatively chaste, with boy bands performing cheesy dance moves and girls prancing around all covered up except for their midriffs.
Back when I was only allowed to listen to Christian music, or music made by Christians. If the artist mentioned God in their ‘thank yous,’ or if they had a clean-cut image and appropriate lyrics, I would be given the green light to buy their CDs and put up their posters on my wall.
My collection consisted of Backstreet Boys, Celine Dion, ‘Nsync, Jennifer Lopez, Boyzone, A1, The Moffatts, Aaron Carter, S Club 7, Atomic Kitten, M2M, B*Witched, Christina Aguilera, Mandy Moore, Westlife, 98 Degrees, etc. Pretty wholesome stuff.
Old school Backstreet Boys.
Fast forward to 2010, when radio stations are filled with songs by 50 Cent, Lady Gaga, Eminem, Britney Spears, Black Eyed Peas, and so forth.
All they ever seem to care about are the
5 most important things in life (according to them):
Money, drugs, violence, sex, and, as T. I. so accurately words it, doing ‘whatever you like.’
Songs like ‘Tik tok’ by Ke$ha, ‘3’ by Britney Spears, and ‘Bad Romance’ by Lady Gaga top the Billboard charts week after week, showing how society has become a slave to the values and morals music preaches. ‘Tik tok’ is all about partying and having fun, ‘3’ is about the pleasures of having a threesome, and ‘Bad Romance’ is just completely inappropriate.
Lady Gaga donning an outlandishly bizarre outfit, as usual.
So why are these songs ridiculously popular? I admit I like them too, despite their awful lyrics; these songs have such catchy beats and melodies that we just find ourselves humming along, even though we know the lyrics aren’t edifying. Sometimes I find myself singing a song that’s stuck in my head, then I realize what I’m actually singing, and I stop, because I’m ashamed to be thinking those thoughts. All popular songs ever talk about nowadays are drinking, partying, hooking up, making truckloads of money, and repeating the process.
It makes me think – if I’m unavoidably affected by all this, what about all the kids and teenagers who are exposed to this crap at such a young age? No wonder society is deteriorating; the younger generations are introduced to all this worldly stuff early in their life, and they become used to it and start thinking it’s okay to drink until you pass out; it’s okay to have sex before marriage; it’s okay to change everything about yourself to conform with society’s impossible standards of beauty.
Music has always been one of my passions, and it’s saddening to think how such a universal and powerful tool is now being used to disintegrate traditional values and morals. Music is incredibly influential; I think it just needs to be used in the right way. But who knows what that is anymore.
Looking back, I miss the good old days when everything was simple and squeaky clean. The music scene was filled with bubbly teeny-boppers, the music they created was upbeat and the lyrics harmless, and they were pretty decent role models. I’m glad my parents imposed such strict rules on me, because it’s so true that what we allow our eyes to see and our ears to hear can genuinely affect our perspectives, well-being, and attitudes.
Now we’ve become so accustomed to trashy music videos, terrible and inappropriate lyrics, and artists wrecking their personal lives that we can’t even discern right from wrong anymore. This is the type of music children nowadays are exposed to, and this is the type of music our kids will listen to.
Can we just stand by and watch this happen? But what can we do?
I have no idea; I’m still struggling with my guilt over being yet another mindless supporter of the music.
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