Blog # 2

When you think of music your first thoughts are usually poetry, sound and lyrics. Different music artists have different styles of how they write and make their music sound. What is it that attracts and turns us off from music? Some people say it is the way it sounds; others say it is the lyrics and how it just speaks to them. Whatever it may be music has a huge influence on people especially our generation. These days’ teenagers can’t go a day without listening to Lil Wayne or Drake. Certain music has certain influences on people. It depends what the lyrics talk about and how it relates to someone.

You can take a song for example, Friday Night by Katy Perry, and the lyrics talk about what goes on during the weekend; parties, drugs, alcohol, sex, etc. What makes the song so popular is the message that the song portrays, that it is acceptable to live every Friday night like Katy Perry sang about. Then there is another song like, Light up the Sky by The After’s, It talks about how God’s grace and Love is all you need to be happy. It takes your mind off of the wrong things and helps you meditate on things that are good.

Sometimes music producers/music artists use lyrics to get certain points across to their fans and the world. They take their feeling and opinions and turn them into lyrics. Sometimes artist use their lyrics to express how they feel about lyrics. This can be a bad and good thing. It can be bad because if people disagree with the artist, it could hurt his/her career. It could be a good thing because one artist’s opinion that is turned into lyrics has the ability to reach a wide general audience; it has the potential to raise awareness on certain issues which could bring people together to strive towards a collective goal.

Rock against Racism was a mass campaign against the sudden rise of extreme racism in urban Britain in the 1970’s. Although it did not put an end to racism it mobilized hundreds of thousands of people and was a leading factor in the decline of the National Front’s proportion of the vote in the 1979’s general election. This was used in a good way that helped promote the decline of racism.

These days you hear in a lot of hip/hop music about President Obama and even Michelle Obama. This is neither a good or bad thing, but more of an informative way of talking about politics through music. When you hear music that involves any kind of politics it is interesting to listen and hear how an artist takes his/her opinion and turns it into something that has a catchy tune and how it flows together for you to create your own opinion.

I think music helps us realize things from a different perspective.