The Persuasion Behind The Playlist

Is music a break from real life? I've always thought of music as something I turned on while cleaning, driving, or trying to reset my mood after a long day(I am actually listening to spotify as I write this blog assignment), but this module pushed me to see that music is not just background entertainment. It is also a powerful form of communication that shapes how we feel, what we value, and even how we “rest.”

One idea that stood out to me comes from Sellnow, who explains that there is a difference between what a song communicates and what it communicates rhetorically. In other words, music is not only expressing emotion, it can persuade. A song can quietly invite us to adopt a mindset, accept a worldview, or identify with a certain kind of person. This works partly because of what Sellnow connects to Susanne Langer’s illusion of life idea. Music does not literally create emotions inside us, but it can represent emotion so convincingly that we feel like we are living inside it for a moment. Lyrics tell us one part of the message, but the sound, rhythm, and tone tell us how to interpret it emotionally.

Adorno takes an even more critical angle. He argues that popular music is highly standardized, meaning it tends to recycle familiar patterns while pretending to be new. That “barely different” feeling is not accidental. It creates pseudo-individualization, where listeners feel like they are choosing something unique, even though the options are built from the same formulas. Adorno connects this to leisure time. If work exhausts people, then entertainment that requires little effort becomes attractive. The problem is that this kind of easy, pre-digested music can train us to be distracted and passive, even in our free time. Leisure becomes less about freedom and more about recovery for returning to the same system.

At the same time, the module also shows that music can reflect real social conditions, not just reinforce them. David Hajdu’s idea of “music in the meltdown” suggests that cultural chaos and economic stress can shape sound itself, sometimes producing music that is rough, messy, or even intentionally unpleasant because it mirrors the world people are living in. Remix culture pushes back in another way. Instead of treating culture as something owned by corporations, it argues that culture grows by borrowing, sampling, and rebuilding the past.

So now when I listen, I am asking new questions. What is this song training me to feel? What is it normalizing? Is it giving me release without change, or is it helping me see something more clearly? Music still feels like a break, but I no longer think it is neutral. Everyone has an angle.