I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone this before, but I’ve always been curious about the music I hear. Not the music I choose to listen to, but the kind of music I hear in grocery stores or even in movies because it’s apparently popular. Given what’s popular, I’m convinced that I’m the only person who actually pays attention to a song’s lyrics and judges the song by whether I agree with the message. Since many people seem to sing along with any song they find catchy, I’ve come to a theory that you can convince people to adopt any belief or viewpoint by simply writing a catchy song about it. Two examples of such songs that come to mind are “Let It Go” from the film Frozen and “Wake Me Up” by Avicii.
I remember the entire year of 2014, after Frozen came out, I couldn’t go anywhere in public without hearing someone singing or playing the song “Let It Go.” The song drove me crazy mainly because I had to hear it so many times from everyone around me, but it also made me wonder why everyone liked it so much. In the movie, “Let It Go” is Elsa’s expression of how she can do whatever she wants now that she’s alone, and how she’s come to like living alone. It was the anti-moral that drove the rest of the story, and the whole message of the song (at least the way I saw it) was supposed to be shot down by the message of the rest of the movie. Since people seem to remember the song better than the movie, has the “let it go” mindset resonated more with them than the movie as a whole?
“Wake Me Up” starts as a song about someone who’s too young to understand the world, and people telling him that “life will pass me by if I don’t open up my eyes.” Those song lyrics sounded okay, until he said “that’s fine by me.” Then the song goes on to be about wanting life to pass so the singer can skip ahead to old age and wisdom, and possibly even death! But the beat of that song was so cool that everyone had to listen to it. When I first heard it (well, when I first heard it enough times to know that it was popular), I was a little worried about what the people around me thought about their lives, since I’ve spent a lot of my life around young people. If they weren’t waiting for their lives to pass by them like in the song, why weren’t they as skeptical about the song as I was?
While I can’t know for sure whether anyone’s beliefs were influenced by what they listened to, I can say with a decent amount of confidence that the people I know (particularly the people that liked those songs) don’t want to isolate themselves and don’t plan to wait until it’s all over. In fact, I’ve heard numerous people say that they don’t even pay attention to the lyrics of the songs they listen to; they focus more on the beat. But since many people know the lyrics to their favorite songs at least well enough to sing along with them, I’ve come to wonder what subliminal messages they might be getting from music. I’ve also come to wonder what subliminal messages we could send to people with music (as long as it’s catchy enough).
Dan Hayduk, North Carolina
Student
I remember the entire year of 2014, after Frozen came out, I couldn’t go anywhere in public without hearing someone singing or playing the song “Let It Go.” The song drove me crazy mainly because I had to hear it so many times from everyone around me, but it also made me wonder why everyone liked it so much. In the movie, “Let It Go” is Elsa’s expression of how she can do whatever she wants now that she’s alone, and how she’s come to like living alone. It was the anti-moral that drove the rest of the story, and the whole message of the song (at least the way I saw it) was supposed to be shot down by the message of the rest of the movie. Since people seem to remember the song better than the movie, has the “let it go” mindset resonated more with them than the movie as a whole?
“Wake Me Up” starts as a song about someone who’s too young to understand the world, and people telling him that “life will pass me by if I don’t open up my eyes.” Those song lyrics sounded okay, until he said “that’s fine by me.” Then the song goes on to be about wanting life to pass so the singer can skip ahead to old age and wisdom, and possibly even death! But the beat of that song was so cool that everyone had to listen to it. When I first heard it (well, when I first heard it enough times to know that it was popular), I was a little worried about what the people around me thought about their lives, since I’ve spent a lot of my life around young people. If they weren’t waiting for their lives to pass by them like in the song, why weren’t they as skeptical about the song as I was?
While I can’t know for sure whether anyone’s beliefs were influenced by what they listened to, I can say with a decent amount of confidence that the people I know (particularly the people that liked those songs) don’t want to isolate themselves and don’t plan to wait until it’s all over. In fact, I’ve heard numerous people say that they don’t even pay attention to the lyrics of the songs they listen to; they focus more on the beat. But since many people know the lyrics to their favorite songs at least well enough to sing along with them, I’ve come to wonder what subliminal messages they might be getting from music. I’ve also come to wonder what subliminal messages we could send to people with music (as long as it’s catchy enough).
Dan Hayduk, North Carolina
Student