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Dumb Rock Song Messages
14 years ago
I love rock and roll. But wow, many of the traditional rock song themes sure have some messed up messages in them...
1. "Being a teen is the best time you will ever have in your life and it's all downhill from there."
Many classic rock songs tend to emphasize one's adolescent years as being the best one can get out of life. Even when I was a kid myself, I found this a very strange message. Aside from the fact that adolescence is far from a big party for many people, even those of us who did have a fairly good time generally had a lot more to look forward to beyond the boundaries of high school. Personally, I have since school lived in or explored about ten countries, and had plenty of adventures. To be honest, I barely even remember school at this point. Yet so many rock songs are very intent on telling me that being a kid is the ultimate experience in life and that everything sorta sucks after that. It seems to be one of the basic rock and roll themes.
Now, I know what some of you may be thinking - that I'm taking nostalgia songs too seriously and exaggerating their qualities. But if you listen closely to the lyrics, Bryan Adams is quite specific about those being the best years of his life (by implication, everything afterwards must have been less good), an Bob Seger tells us in multiple songs that his life has turned to shit since he was a kid. I'm not sure why rock songs seem to want to encourage us to slit our wrists as soon as we turn 20, but it's an unmistakable theme, and it's dumb.
2. "Being a rebel is the way to be, don't study in school, conform to conventions or live responsibly, cause all that noise is just The Man getting you down."
Discouraging kids from bettering themselves is one of the other strange messages that pop artists love feeding to gullible youngsters, despite the fact that the artists themselves have been conforming to the music industry and societal expectations of it for years. I recall coming across one of these songs while clicking through old 90's tunes on YouTube, and seeing someone wryly observe in the comments section that "People who actually live in the anarchic way this song describes...don't listen to music like this."
The contradictions aside though, these songs, which often quite specifically mock the idea of learning, furthering your education, or generally bettering your situation in society at all, only make perfect sense as a life plan for kids who, like the artists singing them, went on to become millionaire pop band members. For the rest of us, such a philosophy does not usually lead to much besides destitution.
However, such songs in the nonconformity sub-genre of pop music do confuse the issue by actually having a lot of arguably good messages in them. It is in fact valuable to not always perfectly conform, to have different and independent ideas, and to find one's own way. Indeed, our nation would not even exist to begin with without radicals in its history. But these songs don't seem to stop at that general message and go on to outright mock learning, working and other things of value. Some of the singers go so far as to sneer at their colleagues in school who went on to good colleges, as if this is their revenge in song against kids who did better than them early in life. There is something nasty and misleading in such subtexts in many versions of this type of song.
3. "Love will solve all, and love is all you need."
No it won't , and no it isn't. Love does not solve anything all by itself.
And in closing, I want you kids to get off my lawn. Thank you.
Rave
1. "Being a teen is the best time you will ever have in your life and it's all downhill from there."
Many classic rock songs tend to emphasize one's adolescent years as being the best one can get out of life. Even when I was a kid myself, I found this a very strange message. Aside from the fact that adolescence is far from a big party for many people, even those of us who did have a fairly good time generally had a lot more to look forward to beyond the boundaries of high school. Personally, I have since school lived in or explored about ten countries, and had plenty of adventures. To be honest, I barely even remember school at this point. Yet so many rock songs are very intent on telling me that being a kid is the ultimate experience in life and that everything sorta sucks after that. It seems to be one of the basic rock and roll themes.
Now, I know what some of you may be thinking - that I'm taking nostalgia songs too seriously and exaggerating their qualities. But if you listen closely to the lyrics, Bryan Adams is quite specific about those being the best years of his life (by implication, everything afterwards must have been less good), an Bob Seger tells us in multiple songs that his life has turned to shit since he was a kid. I'm not sure why rock songs seem to want to encourage us to slit our wrists as soon as we turn 20, but it's an unmistakable theme, and it's dumb.
2. "Being a rebel is the way to be, don't study in school, conform to conventions or live responsibly, cause all that noise is just The Man getting you down."
Discouraging kids from bettering themselves is one of the other strange messages that pop artists love feeding to gullible youngsters, despite the fact that the artists themselves have been conforming to the music industry and societal expectations of it for years. I recall coming across one of these songs while clicking through old 90's tunes on YouTube, and seeing someone wryly observe in the comments section that "People who actually live in the anarchic way this song describes...don't listen to music like this."
The contradictions aside though, these songs, which often quite specifically mock the idea of learning, furthering your education, or generally bettering your situation in society at all, only make perfect sense as a life plan for kids who, like the artists singing them, went on to become millionaire pop band members. For the rest of us, such a philosophy does not usually lead to much besides destitution.
However, such songs in the nonconformity sub-genre of pop music do confuse the issue by actually having a lot of arguably good messages in them. It is in fact valuable to not always perfectly conform, to have different and independent ideas, and to find one's own way. Indeed, our nation would not even exist to begin with without radicals in its history. But these songs don't seem to stop at that general message and go on to outright mock learning, working and other things of value. Some of the singers go so far as to sneer at their colleagues in school who went on to good colleges, as if this is their revenge in song against kids who did better than them early in life. There is something nasty and misleading in such subtexts in many versions of this type of song.
3. "Love will solve all, and love is all you need."
No it won't , and no it isn't. Love does not solve anything all by itself.
And in closing, I want you kids to get off my lawn. Thank you.
Rave
Many fall for it simply because it reinforces their preexisting prejudices owing to their limited experience and personal achievement.
I tend to prefer more abstract lyrics, personally.