A Generation of Meaningless Music
September 1, 2017
A couple of months ago, Katy Perry released a new song called “Bon Appetit”. When I first listened to it, I thought I was hearing the lyrics wrong. Upon further investigation, however, I discovered that what I had thought was a mistake was actually correct. After listening to a few of the other new songs out there, I found that the majority are filled with sexual references. Is that all that music is now? Music used to carry meaning. Musicians actually tried to write lyrics that people could relate to. In this day and age, you can repeat a few words, add an overused beat, and call it a hit song.
Perry’s new song is not the worst I have heard. A rapper named Belly recently released a song titled “P.O.P” which contains a vulgar message behind the lyrics. Inappropriate lyrics are not the only issue. Justin Timberlake’s “Can’t Stop the Feeling” is a song filled with empty words.
A massive amount of extraordinary bands and artists have come before this generation like The Cure, Depeche Mode, Journey, Metallica, Iron Maiden, Pink Floyd, and Van Halen, to name a few. This list could go on, but I imagine you get the gist of it. All of those words will be washed away by today’s music. Our children and our grandchildren will never know the songs or faces that shaped the way average people dressed and acted throughout the past decades.
If this trend in music continues, people will not only be listening to empty words, but they will be speaking them too. The words will blend together and nothing will be memorable. Nothing will matter. The world will be a place where individuality is a rarity.
Plato was quoted hundreds and hundreds of years ago saying “Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything”. I cannot even begin to fathom what he would have to say about the music we view as normal in today’s society.
Nuk Nuk • Jul 21, 2021 at 9:02 pm
When it comes to music preference, I personally prefer the meaningful songs.
First of all, how do we extract all of the meaning behind the song? What if the music does not contain lyrics? I believe meaning can be delivered through many aspects of the song. It could be tempo, time signature, melody, chord progression, and lyric is just one of them. In some particular contexts, we’re the one who interpret meaning of a song, not the song writer.
Talking about lyrics, I do aware that today’s music mostly poorly written and contains repetitive and over saturated words and meaningless hooks. Especially western pop music, they tend to repeat a phrase or even a chorus and don’t even change any single word on each chorus. Even worse, some of them contains only 2 or 3 words or even something that’s not even considered a word like “rawr” “eh” “oh” “ooh” and the other similar sounds within the entire chorus. Not all but they’re too many and people like them. Yes, people like them because of some reason. I’ll talk about it later.
Another aspect why today music seems lack of meaning is because they tend to use overly used beat like “boots cat boots cat”, we hear this in almost every modern pop music. Same tempo, same beat. It’s simply the easiest beat and the most basic one. It left nothing, just a beat while neglecting the fact that certain beat with certain tempo could develop powerful meaning of a song.
Also, melody is another aspect that can shape the meaning of a song. Melody is currently dying. Most of the song nowadays uses only 3 or even 2 notes through the most part of the song. Something we call supersonic, which is the second note of a key. It’s surprisingly the most safe note to combine with any other notes in theory. Due to its adaptability, music producers use this a lot. It’s even overly used and sadly they only combined with 1 or 2 other notes. Where is low and high notes? They’re gone. And this is why most of today’s song are dry compared to the golden age of cinema.
Chord progression is another vital thing in music. We’ve probably heard I–V–vi–IV too many times. An overly used chord progression, too simple, produces songs that sounds dry and meaningless. We used to hear amazing chords and chord progression from older songs like some of the name you mentioned above. Billy Strayhorn in his piece Lush Life has very unique progression. Db Cb7 Dbmaj7 Cb7 Dbmaj7 Cb7 Dbmaj7 Ebm7 Fbmaj7 Gbm7 Abm7 D9 Db6 D9 Db6. This rich chords really effective to deliver meaning combined with lyrics and other meta musical things.
I’m not saying that simple chord progression is bad. And song without melody is bad. They are aspects that can be used to maximize the meaning produced within the song. We can just use one of them to create wonderful and meaningful songs. Simple beat, typical chord structure, less melody, but emphasizing on lyrics could be a good idea to make a meaningful song. And of course it’s harder than you can imagine.
But yes, people nowadays like those dry and meaningless songs. I agree with the title of this article. A Generation of Meaningless Music suits well to the current generation but I’m not saying that it’s a negative thing. I would rather use the word “contextual”.
People changes throughout generations. Older gen lived in a context where music are meaningful. Probably at that time, live is not as dynamic as today. They probably live in a meaningless world, and that’s why they create and listen to meaningful songs to fill the emptiness they experienced.
Now everything changed, technology has grown so fast that we can grasp many things we couldn’t in the past. Meanings are available within the touch of our finger on a square buttonless device. And it’s hectic and fast paced. And probably we’re tired of this. This is probably people in the current generation look for something simple, easy to listen, and probably meaningless songs just for pure entertainment.
But don’t worry, there are still indie artists out there that against the typical pop wave.
Carrie Swindle • Feb 19, 2020 at 1:37 pm
I love today’s music. The mindlessness and vapid empty messages are soothing to my ear. I mean really who wants to listen to something that will just make you feel bad about yourself or the world I’m willingly ignorant and proud of it.
What good did all that old music do anyway, I mean the Hippies thought they knew it all and had a better way but look at how that turned out, yeah sure All You Need Is Love, what a joke! I rather be just another “Tard” knowing nothing and not worrying about who’s running the country as long as I can buy the stuff I want and get my hair and nails done that’s all that really matters. I know I’ll be fine I don’t need my music to tell me how to live or what to think or do. I mean look at Ivanka Trump she’s rich and beautiful and is married to a multimillionaire do you think she cares about what music is on the radio? No she doesn’t.
Emma Begley • Nov 7, 2017 at 2:26 pm
This issue should not go unnoticed, thank you for bringing to light the devastating fall of music over the years! Musical geniuses like Pink Floyd, The Doors, Alice Cooper, etc etc etc have been left behind in their generation, while our generation has created a new era of music with redundant meaning. One should hold a spiritual connection to the music they listen to, and it is simply impossible to do that with the music being produced today.
Fatimah Dibas • Nov 7, 2017 at 11:13 am
I agree with you. Music used to deliver really inspiring, meaningful messages, but now all I hear in music are sexual references and failed relationships.