‘Oh No Love,You’re Not Alone.’
Traditionally, most songs would be based around one form of love or another; love lost, love unrequited or love just plain gone wrong. However, things have moved on over the years and songs are now written about a huge variety of different subjects. We still have love songs, but they no longer take up the majority.
Music has a strong effect on us. It can make us feel motivated and it can make us sit and cry. Several songs have even been blamed for suicides and murders because of their lyrics. How much truth there is to this claim is a whole different subject, but we are undoubtedly affected by music to a very large degree.
So how about songs that can actually do good? I’m not talking about catchy Pop tracks on the radio to help the working week seem shorter; but tracks with a deeper message. If there is even the faintest possibility of music creating a destructive/self-destructive urge in its listeners, then surely there are songs which can have the opposite effect.
The Beatles, Donovan, Cat Stevens and many other singers used music to send out a message of peace. Just how successful they were is very much open to debate, but at least they gave it a go. Protest songs fed the spirits of the downtrodden whilst Live Aid fed the world. Whatever your opinion on just how much music affects us, you cannot deny that it is a very powerful medium.
There have also been a number of anti-suicide songs over the years. The most famous one would probably be ‘Everybody Hurts’ by REM. However, they were by no means the first band to come up with this therapeutic message. What about David Bowie’s ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide’, Neil Young’s ‘Don’t Let it Bring you Down’ or Peter Gabriel’s/Kate Bush’s ‘Don’t Give Up’?
Even singers like Muddy Waters, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Howling Wolf and Billie Holiday were singing about ‘the blues’ all those years ago. Depression has always been a very well-documented subject in the world of music and many singers have written their way out of it. And in doing so, they have given a ray of hope to those listeners who are sitting in a dark space smelling red diesel…
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