Popular Culture Influence On Pop Culture

Since the inception of music, popular culture has been influenced significantly. From blues and jazz, to swing and heavy metal – all generations have benefitted from this unique form of self-expression. In a sense, music has allowed kids to rebel, adults to remember and everyone to connect over melodies and song typically relative to an era and its respective events.

Song lyrics typically reflect a moment in time; could be a moment which has passed, or a hope for the future. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young come to mind when they sang about the Ohio shootings. The ‘50’s offered love songs and ballads, the‘60’s began referencing a lot of significant cultural changes and became more expressive vocally and the ‘70’s brought us a combination of both.

This will definitely age me, but I can appreciate a Gordon Lightfoot song to Buddy Holly, anything Elvis, all the way to the ‘90’s. I can adapt to almost any style in between and ever since. However, I’m unable to connect with anything from 2015. With two teenagers in the house, I’ve certainly tried and have even taken the time to listen to the popular stations in an effort to find something to connect with. The country stations sing about ‘tequila making her clothes fall off’ and ‘next time he’ll think before he cheats’, local stations air music from ‘kids’ who rattle off names of clothing labels as lyrics, whose names I recognize from the negative news coverage they receive more often than not and none of them offer any words of inspiration. I used to love a good concert. To witness music I appreciate that actually sounded better live than in the recorded version was a special treat. Now, the smell of cotton candy being pumped through the vents at major venues to the audience (Katy Perry) and mass quantities of overpriced merchandise being pushed at tour stops, has created a very distracting and difficult to navigate environment for any concert