I'm stuck in traffic, at what would normally be two minutes from my exit. So what am I thinking? About how creepy the world is. And what's causing me to think think this way? Current events, yes, but mostly RnB.
A while back, I combed through my mp3s and put together a 180 song folder of the best of Motown, Staxs/Volt, Chess, Atlantic, and Muscle Shoals. Whenever I'm working on songwriting, I put the folder on random play when I'm on the road. It's very awesome and educational usually. Today, though, it's a bit unnerving. I seem to keep hitting the most frightening lyrics. "Tainted Love" is, when done by the original female singer, so much more obviously about an abusive relationship. Then I hit "He Was Really Saying Something." Stalking. "Jimmy Mack?" Stalking again..but also about how weak-willed women are. And "Shake, Rattle & Roll" is just straight misogyny.
I realize it could be much worse; after all, Country music even has a standard sub-genre called "the murder ballad." But really, there's not a genre which comes off okay upon examination. Today's selection is just peculiarly focusing on how rotten it can be to be a female.
It's not like it's easy to be any non-dominant person...just ask Ahmed Mohamed. Yet that songwriters (and other artists) feel free to be so blatant and open about it? Frightening.
It definitely pushes me to ignore lyrics whenever I listen to huge swaths of music. It does, however make me feel better about my insistence to, when writing my own songs, to make sure I'm treating them with respect and trying to actually say something.
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