Love is a many-splendored thing and breaking up is hard to do, but always, always, there’s a message in the music. As music is but an artistic form of expression, it reflects some aspect of the human experience.
A departure from musically expressing some romantic love (or ‘un-love’ as with a breakup song), message songs center more around love for one’s fellow man or for some societal cause. Like a romantic love song, the music in message songs can be sweet and wistful, or, like a breakup song, can musically show anger and dissatisfaction over some world issue. Message songs often fall into certain categories.
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- Protest (I Won’t Stand for This Any Longer—and You Shouldn’t, Either!). Most prominent in the 1960s and 1970s, during a period of constant unrest on multiple fronts (civil rights, Vietnam, women’s lib, etc.), these songs attempt to make listeners aware of some societal wrongdoing. Protest songs carry their message with either fast-paced, angry energy or subtler, softer, more-folksy rhythms. Either way, it’s the stirring lyrics intended to evoke action. Classic examples come from two ‘Bob’s’: Bob Marley’s “Get Up, Stand Up” and Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are a-Changin’.”
- Status-of-Society (Take a Look at Our World Today). Less in-your-face than a protest song, state-of-society songs convey their message with lyrics simply-stated or with lyrical storytelling of analogy and/or metaphor on a more cryptic level. These songs implore you to take your figurative ‘blinders’ off—even if you don’t take action (as with a protest song)—and recognize life is not a bowl of cherries/Cheerios. Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy Mercy Me (the Ecology)” is prime example.
- Charitable Cause (Your Help is Needed). Pretty self-explanatory, charitable cause songs send the message of a not-for-profit need for listeners to lend their support (primarily monetarily) to relieving some pressing detrimental issue. Examples here are USA for Africa’s “We Are the World” and Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind.”
- Spirituality-based (Get with God). Also self-explanatory. Whatever your persuasion (or non-persuasion), spirituality-based songs offer hope and inspiration with the message that mankind doesn’t have your back, material possessions won’t get you through, but faith in the Omnipotent One is the source for true happiness.
My fiction series has a message song or two from at least one of the categories I described, but many of the songs are more along the lines of a ‘personal’ message more so than a ‘grand’ message. My characters are intending the specific song title or certain lyrics within a song to convey a feeling.
In Like Sweet Buttermilk (book one), musical influence in this work comes from references to gospel music as well as characters applying non-message songs with a situational-message in mind. With a love-story grounding a marriage in flux, the messages are numerous.
Obscure Boundaries (book two) has music combining state-of-our-world with spiritual overtones as the Winthrop children bond over memories of their mother. There are also several ‘get-with-God’ songs—but clearly, for some, the message isn’t heeded (whatever that may mean on an individual level).
The beginning of Broken Benevolence (book three) references a protest song, and from there, the music choices are much more situationally-influenced. And with the varied situations surrounding the trauma, deceit, love, betrayal, laughter, and hope in the story, it’s no wonder the soundtrack in this work is … huge.
From falling in love, to breaking up, to answering a higher-calling, there’s always a message in the music—just ask the O’Jays.
Up next: more on the specific music experience in my book series.
Until then … Read on.
