Happy Music, Angry Music

Take one look at my iTunes library and you'll see how "all over the map" my mind truly is. Along with the 75% of R&B songs present, there are also random entries like Frank Sinatra's "High Hopes."



Why, you may ask, would I include a corny song about an ant and a ram along with the likes of Mary J. Blige and Erykah Badu? Because it's happy music and I like happy music. I once committed to memory the entire soundtracks of "The Sound of Music" and "The Wizard of Oz." I was in my twenties in both cases.

I probably like happy music because I grew up on it. "Holiday" and "Exposed to Love" were staples on my radio and were just two of the many cheerful, perky songs that nourished my young ears. "Exposed to Love," for one, has been a serious earworm of late, captivating me--still--with those intricate rhythms; that synthetic harp running throughout the song; those cheerfully ambitious synthetic horns framing the chorus; and all the other synthesized instruments, each with their own melodies, brought together harmoniously in a way that only Freestyle could make work. Only the most hard-hearted individual couldn't be moved by such revelry.

Contrast all that with a modern-day song, like this:



Hard indeed. Angry is more like it. Self-described as "resilient," Rihanna informs us that while we're getting our cry on, she's getting her fly on. (If that ain't poetry, I don't know what is!) It's likely that this "hard" image could be compensating for her unintended association with domestic violence victimhood. As she states in the song, "I can't just let you run up on me like that, all on my like that. Yeah." Yeah, this angry music could definitely be complementing the "tough exterior" she's been trying to project lately.

However, this isn't the first dark-sounding song Rihanna has made. Take, for instance, her most popular song, "Umbrella." Sure it starts off fairly light with minimal instrumentation and a strong beat. But then all of a sudden the lightness gets superimposed by a "doomsday-ish" sound at various points throughout the song. Kid Cudi's "Day "N" Nite" and Beyonce's "Single Ladies" has a similar intermittent "doomsday-ish" effect except the latter song has cyborg-like beats. Jay-Z doesn't even hold back in his song "Run This Town," where he lays on copious "For Whom the Bells Tolls" overtones throughout the entire song.

So this brings me back to the point about my "all over the map" mind because, I love these songs too! Most of them are in my iPod right alongside, Madonna, Expose, and the Chairman of the Board. Does it say something about me that I like such contrasting sounds? Was I raised on the happy, peppy stuff and gradually spoon-fed increasingly darker and more brooding sounds so that I now can groove to doomsday-ish cyborg music? What if I grew up during the past decade instead of the 80's? Would I be intently studying Lady Gaga's moves in "Bad Romance" like these children or would I run away screaming for dear life and throwing holy water at the screen like I do now? (That video creeps me out in the worst way!) Would I find 80's music as corny and quaint as I find this song? How much will popular music evolve and will I reach a point where I can no longer listen? Will others? Why or why not?

These are some of the many questions I have about pop culture's influence on people and what it means for the future. At the end of the day though, these are all just catchy songs, so on a more personal note, I wonder why certain songs appeal to me more than others. The latter question I will revisit from time to time as I try to understand what makes the inner world of my mind tick. In doing so, I hope to somehow gain a better understanding of the outer world. Will it make all of my problems go "kerplop"? Hardly. But it may help me better steer my way through an increasingly puzzling world.