Essay, Research Paper: The Science Of Inspriring People Through Song

Only every once in a while does a band come out with music that truly inspires people. Some good examples of such bands are The Who and Rush, with recent additions such as Weezer and Oasis. In an industry filled with people who have lost all sense of what good music is and whose only goals are to make money and become popular, it has become hard for bands such as those mentioned above to be noticed. Lately there has been a serious lack of quality in the music that has come out. In the early 90’s bands such as Weezer and Oasis set a positive image of rock. Now, however with bands such as Korn, Limp Bizkit, and Slipknot musical quality has seriously deteriorated. It is my goal to re ignite the passion that once fueled bands such as Rush and Oasis. Only by making music that truly inspires people, using that music to make people think, and using that music to become successful I can achieve this goal.
Making music that truly inspires people is a difficult and arduous task for many reasons. The musical world today is full of solo pop artists, so called “boy bands”, and people who wouldn’t know what good music was if you dropped it on their head (yes I’m talking about all of the Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, and Puff Daddy’s out there). While these people are often referred, to as the “best musicians and bands of our time” they should not even get credit for their music. If they were real musicians and bands they would write all of their music themselves, everything from the lyrics to the actual music. Having someone else write your lyrics for you is the lowest that any musician can stoop. To write a truly inspirational and meaningful song it has to come from the heart. Songs today such as “Blue”, “All the Small Things”, and “Break Stuff” have such trite lyrics that anybody who hears them should be repulsed, however the masses continue to listen to them because they are “trendy.” If you want to hear good lyrics you should listen to anything by weezer, Zao, or Oasis. I hope to follow in the footsteps of one of my heroes Rivers Cuomo, the lead singer for Weezer, and write lyrics that make people feel good about themselves.
The next step to achieving my goal would be to use the music that I have labored over to make people think about what I am trying to say. This is probably the hardest of the three steps to obtaining my goal. People who are fanatics of “music” genres such as rap, techno, and pop are usually pretty selfish in the music they listen to in the fact that they usually don’t like to listen to music that actually takes talent to perform. In a conversation I had with a rap fanatic we began to argue about the amount of talent that rappers had as compared to rock bands (please notice I use the term “rock” loosely so as not to confuse you with the names of various genres). He was arguing with me that Sisqo, the singer of “The Thong Song”, has so much more talent than any rocker. What this guy doesn’t realize is that it probably didn’t take Sisqo to long to write the lyrics to “The Thong Song”, whereas a song that truly inspires could take days, even years to write. I can guarantee you that “The Thong Song” isn’t going to make anybody actually think. Meanwhile, the song “Justice Prevails” by Further Seems Forever (who my friends and I have given the nickname “the next Rush”) has already touched many people’s lives that I know, including mine. Ten years from now nobody will remember what was “popular” now because those artists won’t be around anymore, but I can guarantee you that Further Seems Forever will still be pumping out great songs. If I found out that just one of my songs actually made somebody say, “Wow, I can understand where this guy is coming from” I could die satisfied.
The final step towards the achievement of my goal is to use this music to become successful. If I can get people to listen to my music and like it then the success will follow. However, to get people to like my music I will have to appeal to the masses in some form. Whether I appeal to them with lyrics, music videos, or being known for playing great shows, is entirely up to me. It will have to be accomplished by one of those three choices. Hopefully I won’t sell/out like Blink 182. I don’t plan on being in the music business for the money, but let’s face it you have to make a living somehow. If I could choose any career to make all my profits from it would definitely be a music career.
In conclusion, all I want to do is touch at least one person’s life. I plan to do that by writing music that truly inspires people, using that music to make people think, and using the music to become successful. Having the feeling of knowing that you’ve inspired or touched someone’s life has got to be one of the best feelings in the world. Hopefully someday I will get to experience that feeling. If I could ask Rivers Cuomo just one question I would ask him what it felt like to know that you’ve inspired someone. He would probably tell me that it’s the best feeling and he hopes that I get to feel it someday. It’s like my old band director Charles Kuentz always used to say, “A song without good lyrics is like a body without a heart, it soon dies out.” That’s what will happen to all of these pop and rap songs that are out now, but the lyrics you can feel in your heart will be remembered forever.