Modern Day War Anthem

 Country music legend, Toby Keith, who just passed away on February 5th, 2024, wrote one of the most influential military songs.

Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue was written after the horrendous September 11th attacks. During this time many artists wrote ballads to express the somber attitude of the people of the United States of America. Hits like Into the Fire by Bruce Springsteen and Politik by Coldplay filled the radio stations. These songs encapsulate what happened and how people were coping with the awful incident. While Toby Keith went on to write Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue, he originally only intended to perform it for soldiers on his USO tour, following 9/11.

While performing for soldiers Keith was told by Supreme Allied Commander Gen. James L. Jones that this song needed to be recorded and shared with the people of the United States. 

This up-beat country/rock anthem serves as a battle song for many and attempts to express the anger felt by many Americans following the attacks on 9/11/2001. The current war anthem is considered one of Keith’s most controversial songs due to its “redneck patriotism” in his exact words. 

Song timestamps (0:45-4:00)

Music is used to convey messages and it is really telling of the times. In a time in which many songs express sorrow and remembrance Toby Keith states “and you’ll be sorry that you messed with the U.S of A ‘cause we’ll put a boot in your [explicative]1 - it's the American way”. This song and Keith’s legacy will forever live on as long as July 4th is still celebrated as a holiday. Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue will always be considered a patriotic anthem. It is used to move people and was able to build camaraderie in a time in which Americans were hurting. In 2002 it appeared as the hit single on Toby Keith's album, Unleashed for all to hear.

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Incongruence In Pumped Up Kicks

     In 2011, Foster the People released an upbeat catchy song called Pumped Up Kicks that quickly rose to the tops of the charts. It began playing on radios, in stores, and even became a popular song at events and school dances, becoming number three on Billboard's Hot 100 list at the time. Although this song was super popular from its happy and upbeat sound, the lyrics themselves really were not at all what you would think just from hearing the music. 

The song itself is actually about school shootings and the rise of mental illness in teenagers. The lead singer of the band came out and said that he wanted to “get inside the mind of a psychopathic teenager”. At one point the song temporarily stopped being played on U.S. radio stations due to the meaning and the events of the Sandy Hook school shooting, however it remained popular after that. I remember growing up being at middle school dances, this song would come on and everybody would dance and sing every lyric of the song at the top of their lungs without a single thought about what the lyrics they were singing were actually saying. 

The idea of making the song with a popular pop-style sound, I believe, allowed it to reach a significantly larger number of people than it would have if the sound matched the lyrics. This allows the important message that the song is trying to convey to be widespread. However, I wonder if the deep messages from this song really accomplished anything that it was trying to do if many people sang along without really thinking about what they were singing. Do you think that this song conveyed its message and raised awareness like it was hoping to? What effect do you think incongruent songs have on the message of the song? If the song is upbeat with a sad or deeper and darker meaning, do you feel those messages are portrayed well? Would it be more beneficial to try to convey the message with a congruent sound to go with the lyrics?

Eleanor Rigby

 The Beatles, one of the worlds most popular artists, constantly pushed boundaries of songwriting, arranging, and production of music. Their songs have been analyzed for several different reasons. Not only did they introduce novel chord progressions and complex harmonies, but their words captivated their audience because of their possible duel meaning.

The notoriety of their double meanings was so prevalent that it led to the formation of a class at Quarry Bank High School, solely dedicated to the true interpretation of Beatles songs. 

John Lennon famously wrote "I Am the Walrus" to give this class something to think about. (And later wrote "Glass Onion" as an answer key).

 One famous and often surprising example of dual meanings in Beatles music, is associated with the song "Blackbird." On it's surface, the song appears to focus on a bird needing to fly. That is the obvious meaning. What is being communicated rhetorically, is best said by Paul McCartney. He shared that the meaning of this song was to offer up words to Black women in America, words that "encourage you to keep trying, to keep your faith, there is hope.”

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to be free

Blackbird fly
Blackbird fly
Into the light of a dark, black night

Blackbird fly
Blackbird fly
Into the light of a dark, black night

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
You were only waiting for this moment to arise

This goes to show, that an audience connects not only with the overt, readily understood, lyrics of the song, but indeed also enjoys and resonates with their deeper meaning. 

Even though an audience might not understand or ever know the duplicitous meaning behind the lyrics, why is it important that an artist has rhetorical meaning? Does this add more value to the song? 

The Resurgence Of Pop Punk

 I've been a massive fan of pop-punk music since I was a kid. I credit that to my cousins; they always told me and my younger cousins what "good" music consisted of, and it always included Blink-182, Green Day, Fall Out Boy, Yellow Card, Jimmy Eat World, Paramore, The Offspring, I could go on, but you get the point.  

As I grew older, my music tastes evolved, and pop-punk sadly died out, but it was one of those genres I always came back to, regardless of what was going on in my life. However, there wasn't new pop-punk punk music for me to jam out to until a couple of years ago when the genre's resurgence occurred. 

In 2018, Colson Baker, better known as Machine Gun Kelly, or MGK for short, released his fourth studio album, Hotel Diablo. The album's last song, I Think I'm OKAY, was released before the album's release. The song featured Blink-182's drummer Travis Barker and singer YUNGBLUD. 

This song was different than the others on the album. Kelly has been primarily known for sticking to his hip-hop/rap genre; this song provided an early 2000s pop-punk vibe. The song quickly became a fan favorite and has racked up 478,859,519 streams since its release. If you were to Google, who brought back pop-punk? Kelly appears in the results and is primarily credited with Barker for helping revive the genre.

With the revival of pop-punk, fan favorites like Blink-182, Avril Lavigne, and Paramore have released new albums within the past few years. It also paved the way for newcomers like Olivia Rodrigo with her debut album SOUR; the album included her hit song Good 4 U, which Rolling Stone described the song as "A sociopath-bashing rager that could pass for Paramore, X-Ray Spex, the Buzzcocks, Fastbacks, or countless other beloved bands." 

Another artist also made her way into the pop-punk scene; WILLOW (Willow Smith) released Transparent Soul (the song title is all spaced out) and Gaslight featuring Travis Barker. Pop-punk is here to stay, for good; at least, that's my hope anyway. It entertains, cures me of my boredom, and gives me a good dose of nostalgia, all of which Adorno would frown upon. 

Do you think pop-punk is having a resurgence? Or would you classify pop-punk today as an entirely different genre? 

Where is the Love? A Rhetorical Analysis

According to Sellnow, there are differences between what is basically communicated and what is communicated rhetorically. Musical rhetoric “refers to persuasive arguments conveyed through music that reinforce or challenge a taken-for-granted belief or behavior” (Sellnow, 171). When I was in middle school, a popular song on the radio was Where is the Love performed by the Black-Eyed Peas and Justin Timberlake. This song was released in 2003 after the attack on the World Trade Center towers and has persuasive language that refers to the terrorist attacks and other current events at the time, such as the beginning of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

Some examples of themes in the lyrics include: 

Terrorism: “Overseas, yeah, they trying to stop terrorism.” 

Racism: “But if you only got love for your own race/ Then you're gonna leave space for others to discriminate/” 

Overseas wars: “Nations droppin' bombs/ Chemical gases filling lungs of little ones.” 

Capitalism: “Makin' wrong decisions, only visions of them dividends.” 

The war in Iraq: “A war is goin' on, but the reason's undercover/ The truth is kept secret, and swept under the rug.” 

The song is “socially grounded” because it contains themes specific to Americans and current events in 2003 that Americans were familiar with. It strikes a chord with Americans and young people who are feeling anxious about the future and current events. 

The song title itself suggests a rhetorical question in light of all these events and their impacts of hate and violence with the question, “where is the love?” The lyrics of the chorus of the song demonstrate Illusion of Life because the lyrics represent emotions. The lyrics themselves use emotional appeals by talking about people dying and children crying: 

"People killin', people dyin' 

Children hurtin', hear them cryin' 

Can you practice what you preach? A

nd would you turn the other cheek? 

Father, father, father, help us 

Send some guidance from above 

'Cause people got me, got me questioning 

Where is the love? 

The song covers a lot of different themes in a short four minutes and over and over again offers love as the solution. Is this effective?

Black Eyed Peas (2003). Where is the love? [Song]. On Elephunk [Album]. AM Records, Interscope             Records and will.i.am Music Group.

Magenta: How My Synesthesia Affects My Music Consumption

I don't like contemporary popular music. I don't listen to it or take that much interest in it. I don't know any currently popular artists besides Taylor Swift, I don't know who won what at the most recent Grammy's, and I don't know what the most popular song of the week is without looking it up. I tend to stick to more niche music from independent artists, songs from random creators on YouTube, remixes of well-known and obscure songs, and very often musical scores from video games and movies. Of course, for a class all about Popular Culture, not being up to date on current popular music might be a problem. Fortunately, the information I learned from Sellnow about how to do a rhetorical analysis of music, be it the virtual time/experience, the congruity of the lyrics to the music, or the intensity and release patterns within the music, are applicable to all music, not just popular music. But rather than analyzing an obscure piece of modern music or pulling out a classic 80s rock tune to analyze, I instead want to explain why I don't listen to contemporary pop music: my synesthesia.

Synesthesia is a neurological condition caused by some of my sensory neurons being cross wired. This results in me experiencing multiple sensory events from a single sensory or cognitive stimulus. Synesthesia varies between each synesthete, but in my case, it results in me seeing color when listening to music, as well as numbers and letters having specific colors that I involuntarily associated with them (for example, the letter E and number 4 are both green). What this means for music is that I don’t just hear music, I see music as well. I don’t just hear the virtual time and virtual experience, I also see a rippling kaleidoscope of colors. In terms of rhetorical analysis, this makes listening to music fascinating for me, especially when it comes to congruity. Because of my synesthesia, there’s an extra layer to the congruity or incongruity of a song. Sometimes the colors I see are congruent with the tone of the music or lyrics, other times they’re off color and incongruent with one another.

So, why don’t I like listening to contemporary pop music then? Well, the answer is simple: Magenta. The vast majority of contemporary songs that are popular feature magenta. Not a little magenta, an unhealthy dose of magenta. It’s everywhere. It’s so prevalent that magenta has become the only color that I genuinely hate. And the sad reality is that I know why it’s happening. Modern music suffers from artists becoming lacking in talent and creativity, and filling those gaps with technological advances or by copying what everyone else is doing. I’m not saying this is true for all modern music, and not even all contemporary pop music, but a large majority of contemporary pop music features similar instruments, similar beats and rhythms, similar lyrical subject matter, and a dose of autotune for the vocals and instruments to make it sound perfect. Most modern songs sound the same to me, so it’s only natural that they all look the same. That’s what the magenta represents. It’s lazy artifice designed to fill the holes where creativity should be.

Do you think modern music suffers from sounding the same? Or do you think that modern music is much more varied than what I’ve experienced? 

Power in America - Metallica's ...And Justice for All

Metallica's 1988 album, "...And Justice for All," stands as a critique of power dynamics. Through its relentless riffs juxtaposed by deep and thoughtful lyrics, the album paints a bleak picture of a world dominated by the consequences of unchecked authority and the quest for justice in an unjust society.

"Blackened" kicks off the album with a warning about the aftermath of environmental destruction and nuclear war. The song provides commentary on the cost of human greed and the pursuit of power, leading to a world where we’ve seen the "Death of Mother Earth, never a rebirth." This opening sets the tone for an album deeply concerned with the ramifications of power abused and the earth scorched in its wake.

The album's title track, "...And Justice for All," is an indictment of the failures of the US’s judicial system. Through over 9 minutes of complex arrangements and sharp lyrics, it criticizes a world where justice is a commodity, bought and sold, leaving truth and fairness irrelevant. "Apathy their steppingstone, so unfeeling," a lyric railing against the lack of integrity in the face of power.

"One," continues this exploration through the tragic tale of a soldier rendered limbless and senseless by war, trapped in his own body. The song's lyrics display the personal horrors of war, highlighting the disconnect between the power structures that orchestrate conflict and the individuals who must live with the aftermath. "Landmine has taken my sight, taken my speech, taken my hearing," the soldier wordlessly cries, embodying the ultimate price of political and military maneuvering.

In "The Shortest Straw," themes of persecution and the arbitrariness of power come to the fore. The song metaphorically addresses the witch hunts and the McCarthy era, but its message about being singled out and crushed under the weight of authority resonates across contexts, emphasizing the vulnerability of truth to power.

The enduring relevance of “…And Justice for All” speaks to the timelessness of its themes—war, environmental destruction, judicial corruption and persecution—all lenses through which the band explores the nature of power and its consequences. In doing so, Metallica transcends the confines of heavy metal, offering an album that is as much a political statement as it is a milestone in the landscape of music.