Most songs talk about romance and/or sex because it's EASY: Discuss.

So there was a time when I was pure and innocent and all those love songs about breakups and phone calls and cheating and all the massive ups and downs of love were foreign to me. Then I grew up and found out that most of those damn songs talk about real-life situations that people around me live all the time. And, you know what? I've been thinking it's remarkably easy to write songs about this shit. Because you only need one of the typical traumatic or heightening emotions one feels in such circumstances, and then write some nicely-flowing lyrics that vaguely refer to it, and you immediately get a flowing, moving, swaying, passionate song. It requires no wit whatsoever. It barely requires any previous knowledge by the listener. Style, metaphors, poetry? What are you saying?

On one hand, that's awesome for applicability. In two seasons of Glee one can have accumulated enough love songs for practically any possible situation they can find themselves in, whether to Serenade Your Lover with or get some Duet Bonding done.

On the other hand it sucks for any deeper enjoyment. Past all the screaming and the crying and the cat wailing (which after a while starts feeling as stale as all those "cat wailing" Flamenco and Oriental songs everyone complains about) and the cheap emotionality, it just gets boring and weak. I'm not asking for MC Hawking nerdy stuff, but can't we get into anything, you know, deep and insightful and stuff?

Go read some Elizabethan poetry and songs, that stuff is deep. And by deep, I mean it only looks that way due to how they spoke. It's just more of the same as today.

Tell me, if I'm not supposed to write songs about love, what else am I supposed to get passionate over?

Listening to the radio tends to annoy me for this reason. If they're not songs about sex, or "Yay, it's so much fun to get drunk and dance!", they're about love. And having never experenced it, I kind of feel left out listening to them.

That's one reason I like musical theatre.

Your job? Food? Sports? Competition? The shit always leaving a trace in the lavatory? The feeling when you spend money? College and the fear of exams? Layoffs in your company? Work at the factory? Growing old? Sexual frustration? The inhibition of violence? Peer pressure at school, high-school, college, the workplace? Secret kinks and perversions? The progressive, inevitable corruption of your morality as you grow old and are tested once and again and once and again you find out that you are unable to live up to your own standards? Some delicious food or another? Politics? Wars? Your deepest fears? Working out? Dancing, in and of itself? The passing of the seasons? (It's an old one but I've seen at least one French rapper who used it with panache and found something beautiful and delightful in every season). Your dreams and ambitions for the future? Brotherly conflict? Humanity's endless potential to strive and conquer? The love and affection of dogs? The disdainful, flirty behaviour of cats? The sensation when it's the end of the month and you've been living on rice for a week and your fridge is empty?

There is so much more to life than freaking dancing, drinking, courting, dating, and having sex for fuck's sake!

There's also vengeance, but that needs anachronistic settings and is more of an escapist fantasy. But it's good too!

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edited 12th Mar '11 6:44:13 PM by Ardiente

I want to hear more songs about quiet satisfaction with life.

^If I tried to do that, I would almost certainly accidentally deconstruct or subvert it.

I want to hear more songs about nuclear physics.

In before They Might Be Giants.

Pop Songs often deal with universal themes (love, happiness, sadness, partying, etc.) because they want to be—get this—popular. And those things are popular because a lot of people can relate.

But there are plenty of other things that are even more universal. Like... parenthood. Or siblings. There are some songs out there that deal with the parent-child bond.

Most pop music caters to a demographic that doesn't include parents.

That's why most of the songs about parenthood you'll find fall into the "adult contemporary" supergenre, rather than regular pop music. Which is generally aimed at tweens, teens, and young adults.

All those tweens will have parents, though.

And what about friends?

Bad phrasing there.

But yeah. Who pays attention to the lyrics anyway? When was the last time you heard the lyrics to Greensleeves? They could be singing in Sumerian for all it matters.

@Pdown: I only know a French guy who does these

Indecipherable Lyrics also suck. I hate it when a song starts popular because of its content but then it reaches the critical mass where the radios bombard you with it and people start liking it out of familiarity without bothering to listen. Like all those couples who got married to "Every Breath You Take" by Sting and The Police. Brrr

edited 12th Mar '11 8:24:30 PM by Ardiente

Loni: I am not saying that the reasoning is particularly good, but that is what they ("they" being "a fair portion of pop record company CEO's") believe, or at least what industry trends would seem to indicate they believe.

The internet is fucking their shit up. Thanks to it people have the opportunity to discover non-mainstream bands that cater to their specific, individual tastes better. Those bands don't work for those labels, because those labels didn't see the potential in them.

And a song doesn't have to be relatable to be popular, otherwise one would assume those who sang Folk Songs met with fairies quite often, and everyone was a king or prince on a quest for love or power or justice.

Ha! That's a good one.

The internet has done nothing to harm the popularity of the mainstream. Yes, a lot of people could find out about any given indie band, and many do, but how many? Not enough to bring down The Man, bro. Not nearly enough.

Folk songs are also not nearly as popular as pop songs. And if you actually look, a lot of folk songs are allegories, or even overtly about those same universal themes.

edited 12th Mar '11 8:42:06 PM by SpainSun

I ain't talking about bringing down the man. The man isn't completely stupid. The man adapts. Exhibit A: the discovery of Justin Bieber. Exhibit B:Darren Criss, a.k.a. Harry freaking Potter, being hired for Glee.

edited 12th Mar '11 8:48:57 PM by Ardiente

It used to be that I had my alarm clock/radio set to a particular country music station because they were the only ones who reported on school closures with any semblance of regularity. Now that I'm not in high school, I've changed it, mostly because all the country music they play falls into one of three categories:

1) "Lovey love love sex love," as pointed out in the OP 2) "God is awesome, and there's nothing I love more than going around and shoving my religion in people's faces" 3) "I'm just a humble country boy, working in my tractor from sunrise to sunset and coming home to smack my wife around if she doesn't have dinner ready, and I just don't understand all y'alls crazy city ways."

Also because one of the people there was a complete dickwad and would often say things on the air like "the Bible is very clear on the fact that women shouldn't be allowed to propose to men" and "my daughter is living with her boyfriend instead of marrying him, that slut!" and "any man who knows how to cook is an is a complete pussy. Cooking is what women are for!"

Jaw Drop

I thought those people were strawmen and didn't really exist?!

They do, just only on certain country stations who try Pandering to the Fanbase.

The sort of person who loves that? My mom. Unfortunately.

edited 12th Mar '11 8:54:36 PM by SpainSun

Dude, I live in Seattle, which is pretty much Liberal Hippy Central. I had no idea that there was a base like that to be pandered to here, but apparently they're a pretty popular station...

Every town with a large Liberal community tends to have a Conservative community of about a half the size and twice the "we're being OPPRESSED"-ness.

Monty Python joke coming in...

If songs really affected what people do, more people would be falling in love.