Chicken Strips

 I went grocery shopping this week. Frozen chicken breast strips are a staple on my list these days.

They didn’t have my usual brand, so I grabbed a new one. The packaging looked convincing enough, and it was on sale. And after dinner, I understood why.

Turns out, you can’t always trust packaging—or price—to tell you what you’re actually buying.

And if packaging can ruin dinner, imagine what else it’s capable of.

This week, my thoughts turned to music—specifically what Sellnow describes as incongruent music. She explains that incongruity occurs when the emotional tone of the music contradicts the meaning of the lyrics. Cheerful, upbeat music paired with disturbing or controversial messages. Or tragic lyrics set to energizing, release-driven musical patterns. When that happens, meaning shifts. The message isn’t simply heard—it’s repackaged.

Incongruent music doesn’t just entertain; it persuades. According to Sellnow, these mismatches can broaden audience appeal, soften resistance, and gradually normalize ideas that might otherwise feel unsettling or inappropriate. The music does the emotional work first, making the lyrics feel less severe, less urgent, or less serious than they actually are.

In other words, the packaging tries to make the product more palatable.

I remember a friend showing me a song in high school that deeply troubled me. It sounded playful and catchy. It even featured a child’s voice. But the lyrics described brutal ways to take one’s own life. The contrast was jarring—and intentional. The brightness of the music masked the darkness of the message, allowing something deeply disturbing to slip into everyday listening.

That’s dangerous, disguised rhetoric—even when it doesn’t feel dangerous.

Other songs operate with more subtlety. Whistle by Flo Rida relies on what Sellnow calls strategic ambiguity. Very little is stated directly. Instead, listeners are invited to supply meaning themselves. This process—lyrical ascription—allows audiences to interpret the song using cultural knowledge and shared assumptions. The song never has to say anything explicit. Listeners do that work for it.

Even All About That Bass packages its message in confidence and empowerment, yet it still reinforces narrow ideas about bodies, worth, and comparison. It’s catchy. It’s fun. It carries a message and we’re responsible for how we consume it.

That’s the power of incongruent music. We hum along before we’ve decided whether we actually agree with what’s being said.

I’m not arguing that we can’t enjoy music. But awareness matters. Because just like my chicken strips, something can look good, sound good, and still not be something I want to consume.

And once you notice the packaging, you can’t unhear it.

So how do we sharpen our filters? How do we slow down enough to notice when packaging is persuading us—and choose more intentionally what we let shape us?