this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.

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The lack of "real world complaints" and "anger" in popular music genres helps keep the masses docile (programming.dev)
submitted 11 months ago by ICastFist@programming.dev to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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Been thinking a bit about this, popular music (the ones that hit top 100 charts or whatever) never has lyrics that point out real problems or point to culprits and how they're fucking our shit, which is very easy to find in punk rock and some variations, as well as rap.

Of course, part of the problem are the record labels themselves, which often hold artists "hostage" in order to profit off them. Bigger ones will obviously prefer to avoid having such lyrics become popular.

Still, there seems to be absolute zero songs in certain genres that even come within 10 meters of talking/singing/teaching/bringing awareness about situations that affect a LOT of listeners, even from far away, and would be extremely helpful in spreading some knowledge.

Granted, doing so is easier said than done, a catchy tune that calls out big oil's many attempts to burn the world, or big pharma's frequent price gouging, aren't things "any idiot" can come up with. But that nobody outside "angry" genres seems to be doing it is what saddens me.

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[–] Norgur@kbin.social 49 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Dude, you are overthinking this. Like, you spent longer thinking about the alleged pacification of masses by agenda driven producers than said producers spent thinking about the songs in question.

There is no agenda and/or purpose behind this. You just made the mistake to assume your views on one of the most subjective topics possible (music) are fitting for music in general. That's not the case.

You might like a little rebellion, commentary, what have you in your music. You might like to express the issues that move you via music. Many others don't.

The charts are, what people are actually listening to, so don't mistake the charts for something that's only pushed by labels or something. It takes listeners and labels to push something into the charts.

That doesn't say that there are never songs of the critical variety in the charts or anything. It's just rarer.

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Fair points

you are overthinking this. (...) You just made the mistake to assume your views on one of the most subjective topics possible (music) are fitting for music in general. You might like a little rebellion, (...) others don’t.

Guess that's why it's a shower thought :P

Still, it's something that I (over)think about every now and then, probably for dumb or wrong reasons.

[–] galloog1@lemmy.world 6 points 11 months ago

"And all she wants to do is dance." Nobody ever remembers the rest of the lyrics.

There's a great podcast called Wind of Change on if the government is involved in music and specifically that song. I've never seen it and most government programs are highly documented and focused on Hollywood by giving them access to resources. The US Army is not going to let you borrow tanks if you are going to put them in a bad light. That's just dumb. This is actually one of my dream programs to become involved with on a personal level.

[–] KermitLeFrog@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

the charts are what people are actually listening to

But this statement by itself is incredibly disingenuous. Artists and record labels literally have to pay Spotify to get their songs to be played in the algorithm. Yes, it is technically what people are listening to but it's actually almost always which record company decided to break open their wallet the most for that particular song.