The King of Pop? Or The King of Protest?

Billie Jean. Beat It. Smooth Criminal. Jam. Scream. Those songs are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to a massive catalog of hits that have spanned generations. Whatever your opinions are on Michael Jackson, for me, it is hard to deny he is truly the King of Pop. In looking at him from an academic perspective, he is a solid example of what Sellnow has laid out. Sellnow "emphasizes that songs communicate generally and rhetorically." Few have done it as well as MJ in my opinion. I could easily have chosen any of his upbeat, iconic hits to review, but I intentionally chose the following to look at through an academic lens because of their strong messaging and elements. 

They Don't Care About Us

Released in 1996, this song was seen as controversial because of its lyrics and focus. To be honest, I didn't have much appreciation or any understanding of its influence when I was a child and it was released. Looking at it through the lens of an adult, it is a marriage of the illusion of life theory. His message is strong and clear, highlighting the grievances he has as an artist and on behalf of his fans when it comes to racism, class, and how the governments around the world protect themselves first. 

Skinhead, dead head

Everybody gone bad

Situation, aggravation

Everybody, allegation

In the suit, on the news

Everybody, dog food

Bang-bang, shot dead

Everybody's gone mad

All I wanna say is that they don't really care about us

Those lyrics set to the catchy upbeat, march style approach become an anthem. Michael has such a high pitched, melodic voice but in this song, you feel his anger. The "us" is representative of everyone who feels underepresented or margionalized. I love how even as one of the biggest pop stars on the planet at the time, Michael includes himself as part of the "us" and it works. Some could see it as a tactic to be seen but for him, it comes across as relatable. He is showing how the system as a whole is broken and singing about how pitting people against each other is the goal of "them/they" as those trying to control the narrative and hold others down to remain in power. 

Earth Song

This is one of the most heartbreaking songs (and music videos for that matter) I have ever seen and heard. This is a cry out for help for the earth. It is a sort of love letter but Michael humanizes earth as someone with feelings that is dying at the hands of people. Different from his chant where he puts himself on the side of the people, here, he is a witness to the destruction caused by people and that he too, is responsible in some way. There is so much grief centered on this song for environmental destruction, animal cruelty, and war to name a few themes that all lead to a loss of innocence and dreams.  

What have we done to the world?

Look what we've done

What about all the peace

That you pledge your only son?

What about flowering fields?

Is there a time?

What about all the dreams

That you said was yours and mine?

Did you ever stop to notice

This crying Earth, these weeping shores?

Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah

Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh

I used to dream

I used to glance beyond the stars

Now I don't know where we are

Although I know we've drifted far

I included more lyrics to this song intentionally because to me, it's interesting the strong visual imagery that is created by these lyrics. I chose not to include the actual music video because it is very graphic but, I encourage everyone to watch it because it is a visual masterpiece. Even the ah's and ooh's are almost a wailing cry of pain that is apparent in his vocal delivery to further emphasize the message. It's important to note there are also some intensity patterns in the song to really show the strength of destruction. The song encompasses paralinguistic messages through his vocals and an entire release of sadness and grief. There is a rhetorical component he has crafted to help the listener really think about their daily habits and how it contributes to the earth we have. As humans, we progress in all areas including technology and advancements but at what cost?

Final Question:

If to Sellnow's point that "music pervades our lives and the reasons we have for listening to music may vary for different individuals based on purpose," what does listening to a song like this show about our morals? Is it more impactful because it comes from a star like Michael or are the lyrics and music strong enough to stand on its own in either of these songs if it were any other artist?

The true power of musicians and the responsibility of talent, by Derek Linzy

Queen at "Live Aid"

 "How in the hell do they do that?" How can anyone possibly take a few strands of string and wood and have so much influence on how people react? This the ultimate power that music creatives possess. The even scarier part is that the creation of music seems to have the same affect on everyone—it makes us react—that is the sauce and why musicians are respected and revered all in the same breath.

Music as Rhetoric

The appreciation of music is perhaps one of the most misunderstood aspects of its existence. We can truly fall in love with a song without having any deep theoretical understanding of how it was created, the key, the time signature or even cover the full breadth of the instrumentation used—however, we can still benefit from its existence—even more so we begin to embrace the "Illusion of Life" in which we began to symbolize life experiences through music.

How do musicians conjure this magic on a constant basis to influence, change, transport and excite people in many ways that we can do not do ourselves? In some way shape of form sometimes the process is very random, but in most cases there is a foundation or formula that helps to achieve desired results. One of the key elements according Snellnow's perspective, music as rhetoric is a strong catalyst to how arrangements are composed in order make the listener react in some way, shape or form. Simply put, the use of intensity and release is one of the most important factors.

Prince performing "Computer Blue" from the movie "Purple Rain"

I had the pleasure or producing and recording arguably one of the most prolific musicians of our time, Prince, at his studio Paisley Park Studios in 2013. I got to witness up-close how the process of one of the most celebrated and decorated recording artists of our time created and recorded music. One thing that stood out the most was his understanding of congruity; or using a combination of both comical lyrics, political awareness, and heartfelt ballads, could reach the heart and soul of each listener. He simply makes us react.

Knowing that musicians have the ability to evoke change and feeling within our culture, do you feel that all musicians have a social responsibility regarding the works that they create and promote?

Feeling the song before knowing the words

     Music has a way of reaching us before we even realize what it’s doing. We don’t need to fully understand the lyrics, the artist’s intention, or even like the genre for a song to affect us. Often, we feel music before we ever think about it. This is what makes music such a powerful force in pop culture.

    In Music, Culture, and the Human Brain, David Hajdu explains that music reflects the emotional and social conditions of the time. He suggests that music often mirrors the stress and instability people are experiencing, especially during difficult cultural moments. Hajdu writes that music helps express “the stresses involved in living that defy linear, discursive expression.” In other words, some feelings are too complex to explain with words alone, and music fills that gap.

    This helps explain why messy, repetitive, or emotionally raw music can feel comforting rather than annoying. Even if a song sounds chaotic, our brains respond to rhythm, tone, and emotion before we analyze meaning. That’s why sad songs can feel validating when we’re already sad, or why we replay the same song during a specific phase of life. Music can give shape to emotions we may not fully understand yet.

    Sellnow expands on this idea by explaining how music persuades us emotionally. She points out that when messages are “couched in music, listeners do not ordinarily anticipate persuasion.” Because we don’t expect music to influence us, we often absorb its emotional message without questioning it. We’re not listening to be convinced, we’re listening to feel something.

    A while back, my friend and I were sitting in the car and she played Alex Warrens song “One More I Love You”. I had never heard it before but before I even knew what this song was about I was crying so hard. My friend apologized and said she had no idea I was going to react this way. She thought it was just a good song, emotional sure, but not in the way it had affected me. It wasn’t until I got brave enough to listen to this song again that I realized he was talking about losing his dad, which hit pretty close to home for me. Somehow my brain was comprehending what was happening in the song before I fully consciously understood it. 

  (Incase anyone else needs a good cry) 

    This emotional connection is especially visible in modern pop culture. Songs trend on TikTok not because of lyrical depth, but because of how they feel in 15 seconds. Breakup songs, “sad girl” music, and lo-fi playlists all thrive because they match emotional states people already have. The music feels relatable before it feels meaningful.

    Ultimately, music doesn’t need to be complex or poetic to matter. It works because it connects to the brain emotionally first. As Hajdu and Sellnow suggest, music helps us process feelings that are hard to explain, making it one of the most powerful forms of pop culture communication today.

Why Music Gets Rougher When Times Get Hard

Have you ever noticed that during stressful or uncertain periods, a lot of popular music starts to sound louder, messier, or more chaotic? Songs feel less polished, vocals sound strained, and production can seem intentionally rough. This shift isn't random, it can tell us something important about society and how we process emotion through pop culture. 

Music doesn't just entertain; it reflects the emotional climate of the culture that produces it. When people experience economic stress, instability, or social anxiety, those feelings don't stay outside of art, they show up in it. Music can act like a cultural barometer, measuring the emotional "weather" of a society. Rougher sounds, distortion, and more aggressive styles can express tension, uncertainty, or frustration that many people may already feel in their daily lives. 
But music doesn't only reflect feelings, it also helps create them. As Deanna Sellnow explains, music communicates meaning not just through lyrics, but through elements like tempo, rhythm, pitch, harmony, and vocal style. Fast tempos can create urgency. Dissonant sounds feel unsetting. A strained vocal can signal anger or pain. Even if we don't consciously analyze these elements, we still respond emotionally. 

A clear example is Billie Eilish's "Happier Than Ever". When she cries out "You made me hate this city" the sudden increase in volume and raw vocal intensity hits so hard that many listeners feel a rush of anger and heartbreak at the same moment. The emotional impact comes not only from words, but from the shift in sound, showing how music itself carries meaning. 

At the same time, popular music often uses familiar structures that make these emotional experiences easy to access. Even songs that sound chaotic or intense can still follow patterns that feel recognizable. This means music can both express powerful emotions and still function within the broader system of popular culture. 

All of this suggests that when music sounds harsher, it may be because life feels harsher. Songs become spaces where collective stress, anger, or confusion can be heard and shared. Instead of asking weather this kind of music is "good" or "bad", we might ask what it reveals about the moment we're living in. But when you listen to music that feels emotionally intense or chaotic, does it help you release stress, or does it make those feelings stronger? What might they say about how music shapes - not just reflects- our emotional lives? 

Rap Music and Mashup Culture: Rewriting Sound and Power

 

Rap music, which has a long history of sampling, remixing, and reinterpretation, has been notably influenced by mashup culture. Hip-hop artists have been blending beats, hooks, and cultural references to create original sounds long before digital mashups gained popularity on platforms like YouTube and TikTok. Mashups extend that legacy into the digital age, showing how rap functions as a dynamic, ever-evolving cultural form. Collision Course, which merges Linkin Park's "Medora" and Jay-Z's "The Black Album," is a prime example. Tracks like “Numb/Encore” demonstrate how mashups defy genre, racial, and audience boundaries by combining rock and rap. Yet, by proving that hip-hop can coexist with mainstream rock while maintaining its cultural authenticity, the project challenged industry norms.

The popular mashup of Kendrick Lamar's Humble is another notable example. The song was well-suited to matchups across genres, from pop vocals over Kendrick Lamar's Instrumentation for dance music, thanks to its aggressive delivery and simple groove. These remixes often alter the original song's meaning, transforming it into something about ego and power, satire, and sarcasm, or even a reflection on Celebrity. Mashups serve as both entertainment and a kind of cultural criticism in this way.

 With popular mashups like Kodak Black's “Super Gremlin,” which blends drill beats, and mashups that mix Play Board Party's vocal style with surprising pop instrumentals, TikTok has more recently led the way in rap mashup culture. Mashup artistry is also shown by producers such as DJ Earworm and Girl Talk, who combine dozens of well-known songs, including rap classics, into seamless performances that evoke a shared cultural memory rather than personal ownership. Rap mashups also raise issues of authorship and power. Rapp originated as a creative response to limited resources through sampling, but today, as a mashup artist, he often faces copyright challenges that favor corporate labels over independent creators. Marxist concerns focus on ownership, labor, and cultural production, in which creativity exists but profit remains concentrated at the top, as shown here. 

Rap mashup culture emphasizes the genre's content, which emphasizes that music is intended to be shared, altered, and reimagined. Mashups preserve the vibrancy of hip-hop. while reminding listeners that cultural flourishes emerge through collaboration rather than isolation, fusing well-known sounds into novel forms. 

 

Music as Meaning: How Songs Communicate Beyond Sound

One of the more intriguing concepts from this week's readings is the distinction Sellnow makes between what music communicates and what it might be said to communicate rhetorically. On the surface, there is a song, with either lyrics and/or music, and a story is told, emotions are expressed, or ideas are presented. However, rhetorical communication is different. It invites an audience to hold certain beliefs or values or to adopt a particular viewpoint. Thus, beyond the layers of expressive communication, a song can be persuasive. Sellnow's illusion of life theory suggests how this works. In this case, the theory states, lyrics and music work in tandem to convey an aural and emotional construct or dualism. The lyrics are said to represent the meaning of the lyrics verbally, while the music represents how the lyrics are interpreted. The music, in this case, can elevate or tone down the emotional impact of the lyrics, thereby changing the meaning and the interpretation of the lyrics and influencing the overall message. It is for this reason that lyrics can seem so different (or have different interpretations) when set with different music.

Another critical point made by Sellnow is that music lacks the ability to create feelings; rather, music reflects emotions that listeners already have. A song about war, for instance, is not inherently sad or angry. Rather, it reflects emotions that listeners have about war. Without listeners' feelings about war, the song would not really mean anything. Music also employs the use of intensity and release patterns to shape emotional experience. Intensity patterns, for instance, are designed to agitate or elevate emotion. On the other hand, release patterns allow listeners to purge or calm those emotions. These patterns function hand in hand alongside paralinguistic cues, which are nonverbal elements like pitch, tempo, rhythm, and volume that communicate meaning without using words.M usic also works, according to Sellnow, in virtual time and virtual experience. Songs can also manipulate, for instance, time through speed and pitch, and they allow listeners to experience events in other ways. For example, Eric Clapton's song “Tears in Heaven” gives listeners the opportunity to feel and experience the emotions of grief without having to live through that event.

The concepts here relate to congruent and incongruent music. Congruent music has lyrics and music that work together, while incongruent music has lyrics and music that work against each other. Also, ascription of lyrics and music, where borrowed sounds and stories come from other cultures. This relates to Bermingham and the Remix Manifesto, where the focus is that culture is built from copying, transforming, and recombining from what is already there. Also, with the ‘democratization’ of the culture-producing technology, the emphasis is placed on the conflict between the strict copyright laws and the creative flow that needs to occur. Adorno’s critique of popular music is the opposite of this. He says popular music is too standardized and lacks originality, while ‘serious’ music (i.e. classical) adds something original to the world. This critique is relevant and important, but it underestimates the rhetorical power of popular music.

Is it possible for a pop song that is completely standardized to still communicate meaningfully? Does standardization limit persuasive power?

Music in Film

 Have you stopped to listen to the score that is being played during a scene in a film? Have you ever wondered how much music affects your understanding of a film or television show? Have you ever stopped to think that the emotions you feel when watching a scene have less to do with the story and performances and more with the choice of music? The psychological effects that music plays in a film have been well documented. 

    The purpose of music, or a musical score, is not simply to fill the gaps of silence with noise, or make a film more enjoyable, but its true purpose is to enhance the story. Music is just one element within a film that works with other elements to create a compelling story. So, how does music enhance the story? Let's discuss what music is doing in a film. 

“the men who make movies…know how much the score to ‘warm up' know how much the score helps to 'warm up' the action of the picture, to heighten the emotional impact…They know that a good melody will move an audience when the words or the acting don’t succeed.” 

    Music helps enhance the story by creating an atmosphere.  If an environment is meant to feel inviting, the music will reflect that. If an environment is meant to be a strange and eerie world or a scary environment, the music will also reflect that. In some cases, the music correlates so well with the sound design that the sound design can sometimes be mistaken for the musical score. In this case, the composer must be extra cautious to make sure the score works with what is already there, instead of competing with it.  

"I did it for clarity of storytelling. I mean it's a very complex story, Lord of the Rings. By using the motifs, it was a way to give clarity to objects, places, cultures, to moments in the story. And it was a way to express differences in the culture." - Howard Shore

    Music helps enhance a story by introducing a character. If you pay attention to a film or sometimes a well-established television show, you will notice that when certain characters come on screen, they are introduced by a familiar motif. Because the audience becomes accustomed to hearing a particular motif when seeing a particular character, the motif begins to represent the character. Howard Shore, the composer to The Lord of the Rings trilogy, understands the connection between characters and music. Near the end of The Two Towers, Sméagol distances himself from Frodo and Samwise. Sméagol is struggling with Gollum while trying to figure out how to escape the hobbits. As he plots his escape, he mentions "her/she" who can help him. Up until this point, music has been playing, recalling various motifs. But with "her/she," there is silence. The audience does not know who "her/she" is. And because "her/she" has not been introduced, there is no motif to play. This both enhances the eeriness of the scene and the depth of the storytelling. 

    Music enhances the story by connecting parts of the story or recalling different sections of the story. Once again, an example can be drawn from The Two Towers. Near the end of the film, Frodo and Samwise are walking together, and they begin to reminisce about their home, the Shire. As they talk about their home, the Shire motif is played. This has a powerful effect on the audience, who, in a flash of a moment, feel the aura of the Shire.  

    Music enhances the story by guiding emotions. This is probably the most powerful effect of music in film and television. Simply by changing the music in a scene, you can alter the audience's perception of what is happening on screen. You can change a horror scene with people dying into a comedy by playing comical music. Or, you can take something relatively benign, like a kid riding a big wheel down a hotel hallway, and turn it into a tense moment of horror by simply playing eerie dissonant music. 

    Music has many more philosophical and psychological effects on an audience, and much more can be written about it. But ultimately, what is happening is that the music is enhancing the story. As an editor by trade, there is a simple rule when using music: music changes with the idea. This is a simple rule, but one that is very difficult to implement. What it simply means is that as the thought or idea changes on screen, the music should change to match it. Music and thought work together in film.