In Defense Of Music And Violence In Popular Music

In today’s society, music controls the way we live our lives. The influence that music has on society has broadened throughout the years and with social media being one of the world’s top priority, the fan base and spectrum for music in general has expanded significantly. Music is used to express feelings, moods, circumstances, experiences, knowledge, and so much more. With this being the case, the lyrics of any song can be interpreted differently by each and every listener. Many song lyrics give positive messages, promoting well-being, whiles others give negative messages, promoting violence, criminal behaviors, sexual contents, and disrespect towards others. With this being said, music reflects what the public demands, and in many cases the negative messages are often times what sells more than those music giving positive messages.

     Many people believe that music should be filtered because it provokes violence or sex within society. There may be some truth in this but for the most part it is merely myth. People who have any common sense or are not legally insane can understand fact from fiction and what not to imitate. Anyone who listens to Eminem and decides to go and kill their wife should have been locked up long before the actual crime. When people do things that resemble what an artist says in a song, it is usually by pure coincidence and all are negative incidents. Frank Zappa was quoted to have said “I wrote a song about dental floss but did anyone’s teeth get cleaner?”(Jackson 1).

There is no denying that over a multitude of years, music has inevitably found ways to challenge power and power structures around the world. Music has found a way to use not only lyrics, but also the gender of musicians and genres of music to oppose powerful entities. Throughout music 's long lived history, lyrics have been the most obvious example of musical oppositions to power. Music and songs have been created to protest wars, raise awareness to violence, express pride in one 's race and culture, and challenge political forums, only to name a few examples. For example, “We Didn’t Start the Fire” by Billy Joel was created to oppose United States involvement in the Vietnam War, along with raising awareness of both drug and race problems in America. Furthermore, lyrics are a way in which an artist or composer can specifically tailor a message to explicitly state their take on a given institution or outlet of power. On the other hand, lyrics have also been used in a coded fashion to indirectly attack structures of power rather than explicitly attacking structure of power, which has been proven useful in times of serious civil oppression. Lyrics tell a story, and historically singers and songwriters have used them in a multitude of ways to construct a variety of messages that have challenged societal norms and structures of power.

Music is important to everybody, we all have that one song that makes us happy or sad just from listening to one line in the song, but what if the song made you violent. Lyrics in music could be the reason for violent tendencies in people’s behavior. There have been studies shown that lyrics in some music promote violence and crimes started because of musical influence. Through all genres of music, if closely inspected, the lyrics show a hint of violence.

To enforce mortality music continues to be censored, race was a factor in music censorship. In the 1950’s there was a new genre of music created, . Many older people considered this new genre of music a threat to society. “This phenomenon prompted moral authorities to take action”(Hall para.5).

In her article “It’s Easy, but Wrong, to Blame the Music” Rosen writes from parent’s perspective but keeps teenagers and children in mind. She argues that Gansta rap music just reflect the violence, but do not create it. Just because an artist sings about violence, it does not mean that he or she encouraging listeners to perform it. Her key purpose is to make people aware of music instead of making people dislike music because of its bad content of lyrics. She present music as an opportunity for parents to understand their children well through the type of music they listen. She deny the complete censorship of music, because she understand that censorship of music does not prepare children for the real world. This article is interesting and

Censorship in music is a topic that has brought about much controversy over the past two decades. There have been many different arguments on the topic, however the question still lingers is should censorship still remain. Before you can form an opinion on this, you must hear both sides of the argument on this much-debated topic. Some people believe that music should be censored so all audiences can hear it without it containing any offensive lyrics. Others believe it should not be censored and musical artists should be able to speak, sing, rap, or rhyme freely without anyone censoring them. "Whether a person finds a work obscene depends largely on his or her moral or religious

The corruptness of music today seems to be linked to the crude language and aggression found particularly in hip-hop and rap music. Some rap artists use vulgar language in their lyrics that are easily adoptable by teens (Holden). Not only have certain lyrics influenced the way teens speak but also their actions. An article on Headliners.org stated that “lyrics in the music are too violent and are to blame for many problems.” The problems range anywhere from suicide and aggression towards women to underage drinking and drug use. Lyrics are not only to blame, but also what people see in artists’ music videos can affect what they do (Doaks). The urge to emulate these rap musicians has escalated quickly causing a spike in rebellious tendencies among teens.

I enjoy and love music very much. I feel that music artists should have the right to freely express their work and I feel that I should argue about the censorship attacks on these artists. I’m tired of listening to a good song on the radio with some of the words censored. It ruins the song and I can’t stand it. Some people think that rap is a bad influence and causes the young to behave badly. But I think all this censoring has something to do with racism because it is mostly black people singing the songs. The first website list the good side and bad side of rap censorship. I think half of this site is pretty good to use for my paper. The second website has a

“Censorship, like charity should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there,” is a quote by Clare Boothe Luce (Fitzhenry, 84). Some parents are against the censorship of music. They believe that they should raise their kids, not some politicians who believe one nasty word will change a whole child’s future.

Music is one of the most popular ways of expression and has been for generations. It makes us want to dance, inspires, soothes, relaxes, and sometimes tells us a story. Music is something the whole world shares and has brought together different kinds of people. However, there has been a question on whether some music has affected society negatively and crossed the line with some of its lyrics, content, and the persona of the artists. Certain music has been boycotted and even banned in the U.S. Pro-censorship supporters say that music is something that can deeply affect our society especially children who should not have to be subjected to things like violence, sex, drugs, or hate. However, being that music is a form of expression,

Most popular music today is driven by violence and sex. These musicians put out albums that glorify violence and promote causal sex. When the albums are being produced, the artist does not think of how it will affect the perspective merchant. When

In life, music affects everything many people look at all the different stories of teenagers committing violent acts and have begun to wonder can violent songs make teens violent? With all the violent acts that music glorifies as of recently many psychologists and parents alike have begun to wonder why certain types of music cause their children and teenagers to become so violent. Because of the questions that violent songs raise and why teenagers have started to gravitate towards violent songs more than ever before. Some factors that could be reasons as to why violent songs have such a powerful effect on teenagers could be that: teenagers learn violence from their surroundings, teenagers can have a history of violence, and violent songs give teens a place to vent their frustrations at,

Censorship is an issue that is consistently dealt with globally. It is the control or supervision of the information dispersed within a society. As children are growing up in the world of technology and as television is becoming a bigger influence in this world, children are being exposed to many visuals of inappropriate behaviour through a screen. Many of the biggest video games are violent games which give youth a sense of action and excitement but at the same time, it makes them more prone to aggression in the real world. Music provides a powerful form of expression in which some cases promotes a violent meaning and as youth listen to this, it can open their minds to the viewpoint of the artist. Violence shown in media influences young people

Media takes all forms of shapes, from video games to music it influences people daily because we are always surrounded by it. Music especially impacts individuals because in a lot of ways it can say what we want to say in times when we as individuals cannot say it. In those times we lean on music to help us understand the hardship we are going through, or as a mechanism to face our feelings or to block them out. Interpersonal violence which is defined as an individual using power over another in the form of violence whether that be emotional, physical, or sexual. With the many forms of interpersonal violence it’s apparent that it has been expressed in the form of music for quite a while, and sometimes not always in a preventative way. By