The underlying message behind the lyrics

Like any other person my age, I love a song with a good beat and one that I can dance to. You may catch me singing along to a Nicki Minaj song at a party or the latest dance song by LMFAO. It’s normal and there’s nothing wrong with dancing to a good beat. However, what I’ve grown to realize is that too much of our judgment of a song is based off of its beat, and not the actual content of the song. 

It was only a few weeks ago that I really listened to the hit song “Pumped Up Kicks” by Foster The People and realized that the song is actually about a student who is planning on bringing a gun to his school. Take the lyrics of the first verse for instance:

“Yeah, he found a six shooter gun. In his dad’s closet hidden with a box of fun things, and I don’t even know what. But he’s coming for you, yeah he’s coming for you.”

The eerie lyrics are then followed by the famous chorus:

 “All the other kids with the pumped up kicks you better run better run, faster than my gun.”

I was totally oblivious to what was actually being portrayed in the song. Just about a week ago, I was having dinner with my friends in Dobbins and “Sex on Fire” by the Kings of Leon started playing over the loud speakers. While they were having a great time singing, I told them that the song is actually rumored to be about having STDs. Hence the term “your sex is on fire” which can be related to the burning of a….well, you can draw your own conclusion from there. 

A couple of weeks ago, popular female rapper, Nicki Minaj, released her newest music video for the creatively titled song, “Stupid Hoe.” In the video, Minaj can be seen sitting in a car that probably costs more than I will ever make in my life. She’s seen in a yellow cage in a leather get up in one frame and gyrating along to the beat in another frame. This video has been viewed on Youtube almost 8 million times. My question is how do us young people decide how a song is good or bad? How do we decide whether it is worth downloading or just listening to once online and then forgetting about it later?

I’ve noticed that a lot of people nowadays judge a song off of the beat and whether or not they can dance along to it or not. One of the comments on the new Minaj video stated that the person loved the song because it’s “catchy”. I wonder if people realize that anything can be catchy, it takes a real artist to make a song that is catchy and also has quality content at the same time. We tend to be blinded by the exterior of things such as an artist’s image or what they’re wearing in the video or what kind of beat the song has instead of actually listening to words. Everyone loves music, so why are we so deaf to things such as what an artist is conveying through their song?

I think more young people should be more judgmental of what the singer or rapper is saying in their lyrics. Instead of writing a Nicki Minaj song off as a great song because it has a “good beat”, let’s listen more to what she’s saying. I’ll dance to a Minaj song at a party, but never will I think a rapper that sounds like she’s saying nursery rhymes is actually made of good lyrical content.