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My Culture
My Songs
Writing my own songs provides an outlet for emotion, opinion and story-telling. I take inspiration for my lyrics from different places; things I’ve experienced, stories I’ve heard, emotions I’ve felt… anything I can write about. As a producer of these songs I have the power to share my opinions and views. My ideologies may be challenged by listeners and my preferred reading for the songs may be interpreted differently by different listeners, however this means consumers of my music can interpret the songs so that they appeal to them and their consumer needs. Although I feel it is important for them to get my opinions hear, my main reason for writing the songs are to fulfil my own need of expressing my views – it is up to the consumer to interpret the song in their own way.
Each of my songs has an underlying message. This is because as a producer I want my songs to have cultural capital amongst serious music consumers who value depth within songs and who consume the song at many levels, not just face value. My songs are sincere and I am revealing a lot about my identity in my lyrics. By sharing my opinions about the culture I live in I am leaving myself open to criticism. I must there for adopt my persona of a confident and outspoken individual in order to give my voice value and put myself in a position of power.
Below are the lyrics to three of my songs; ‘Rules and Regulations’, ‘Miss Individual’ and ‘I Hope I’m Right’. These songs each represent how I feel about an aspect of my culture. ‘Rules and Regulations’ is about how I feel about the freedom I have within my culture. It is a song about how I want to break free of the ideological path society present young people with. It is about how I instead want to explore by myself and do what I want to do, not what I'm expected to do. The line “I don’t need rules and regulations to live my life the way I want to” sums up the song as I am challenging the stereotypical ideologies and am suggesting that we don’t have to follow life by the rules if that’s not what we want to do. Although this song is written from a first person view, I intend it to provoke the reader to think about what they want from life and whether or not they follow the rules and not their minds.
‘Miss Individual’ challenges the values of youth culture. The lyrics are about a fictional character who is used the represent the youth sub-culture ‘indie-kids’, who gain cultural elitism within their group by appearing to be individual. My song challenges these tribes and their values and suggesting that this need to be individual is in fact contradicted in the fact that the tribe as a whole create their own fashion and idiolect, meaning that there is nothing individual about each person within the tribe. As this song ultimately criticises a large sub-culture of youth culture, there is a risk that I am alienating a large potential target audience for my music. However, if the people within these tribes thrive to be individual, these lyrics may appeal to them without them even being aware that it is them that I am negatively targeting in my lyrics.
‘I Hope I’m Right’ is a look at modern society. It is a look at the negative and melancholy truths of life in the suburbs. This contrasts to some of my pop-ier songs which provides escapism and instead is a thought-provoking song which questions the morals of the society we live in. There is a glimmer of hope at the end of the song where the stereotype of a teenage boy is challenged which shows that I do not label people buy their stereotypes which gives me as a producer more cultural capital.
Rules and Regulations
Miss Individual
I Hope I'm Right
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