Music Review

Abstract
This paper will examine music and social issues. Suicide rates have increased among teenagers, young adults and an epidemic in our military with the prolonged wars. Songs that are composed about suicide and the loss of someone whom has committed suicide has also increased in recent decades.
Key words: suicide, music, social problems, demographics and lyrics.
MUSIC REVIEW
Music is easily accessed today through various media outlets and devices. Music is in automobiles, smartphones, personal audio devices and online. With all these personal devices it has become more common today for people to listen to their choice of music when shopping, traveling on public transportation, working out or virtually any other task at any given time of the day. Music can be an outlet to escape from a situation, isolate oneself or to reflect on something. People can focus in one genre of music, artist or song and repeat that over and over as much as they want. This can be both a good and bad situation. Music can motivate you at the gym when listening to a high beat tempo while conducting a cardiovascular routine. However, music can also keep someone depressed or emotional after a particular event or situation. Suicide has been an increasing problem in young to middle age people over the last decades. This is can be attributed to a number of factors such as wars, financial distress from global recessions and increases in social platforms and information. Committing suicide has become an increasing problem in our society and in our military. Likewise, there has also been an increase in songs that discuss or are about suicide. All genres of music have some songs that discuss suicide, country, hip-hop, and blues are some examples. The genre of rock music to include alternative, grunge & emmo as they are all part or derived of rock music, show to have the most songs about suicide according to songfacts.com. The genre of rock music also has the most musicians of non-hispanic demographics which also correlates to the highest demographic of 25-64 year old males whom commit suicide from 2005-2009 according to the Center for Disease Control (www.cdc.gov). Suicide has also moved into the top 20 reasons for death in teens and young adults (www.cdc.gov).

MUSIC THEMES AND SUICIDE There are three common themes among suicide and rock music, one being the recent loss of a suicide victim, the second is how we will be affected by suicide or why not to and the third is committing suicide. Most of these songs are directed at young to middle aged groups. For example Good Charlottes’ song “Hold On” is an anti-suicide song in response to large volume of letters received by the band from fans thinking of committing suicide. The song lyrics urged them to “Hold on till the world gets better” and the music video was produced with the assistance of a suicide prevention group (Good Charlotte, 2002, track 5). The song “Jeremy” by Pearl Jam deals more with first theme of being affected by someone whom committed suicide based on a true event. Again this demographic of band is still young adult and non-hispanic and the boy whom shot himself is a white male age 16. The song lyrics go on to describe that Jeremy from Texas killed himself before his high school English class as a result of bullying. This song and incident both took place in 1991, however in 1996 another white male high school student in Washington State, shot two fellow students and a teacher in which he stated he was compelled by the video and lyrics of this same song to commit this act. Kelly Clarkson’s hit song “Haunted” also deals with this theme of how she was affected by someone whom committed suicide when she was growing up (Kelly Clarkson, 2007, track 7). She expressed her anger in the lyrics of how someone could be selfish to take an easy way out and leave everybody on Earth feeling guilty or what they could have done to prevent it. Her song features more of slow melody with softer vocals and acoustics, that makes you reflect more as she describes the incident in the song as opposed to Good Charlottes’ “Hold On” song which is a faster tempo with more guitar, drum and louder vocals which could be explained by in its’ attempt to lift one’s spirits not to commit suicide. “Just A Thought” by Gnarls Barkley deals with the third theme of thinking about committing suicide (Gnarls Barkley, 2006, track 8). This song explains that he has thoughts about killing himself and even in the lyrics he identifies that most songs are from non-hispanic bands as he says “when was the last time you hear a black man talk about suicide?” The song is from an African-American artist but still is in the same age demographic of middle age adult. The tempo is not slow or deep vocals to make you feel depressed but seems more to be a way of the artist expressing that we all have some thoughts of suicide and this is a way of release or to talk about them and it is not crazy to do so. Music can sometimes be the tool to assist one in committing suicide if one should continue to push himself to thinking this is a way out. Such is the case in “Goodbye in Gasoline” by Less Then Jake, in which the song describes how a man kills himself through carbon monoxide poising by letting his car run in the garage as his radio continually plays a sad song and he reflects how his life has changed for the worst (Less Then Jake, 2004, track 5). This band fits the demographic of white young adult males, but the song does not specifically state the demographic of the individual of which it is about. From the lyrics there are certain questions that you could draw from it. Such as if he wouldn’t been listening to sad music would he still be here on Earth? Did the music assist him in his thoughts to kill himself? If he would been listening to another type of song such as LMFOAs “Party Rock” could he still have carried through with his plan or would have this changed his thought pattern. All of the lyrics regardless of which theme they are reference to about suicide have on item in common, that is they are graphic and passionate in describing events and feelings about the topic.

MUSIC ANALYSIS The article “The Impact of Suicidal Rock Music Lyrics On Youth” points to several conclusions about a study that the attempted to predict reactions after listening to songs about suicide. Low self-esteem and avoidance pointed to higher levels of remembering lyrics of suicidal songs (Peterson and Safer, 2008). This is in line with my analysis that when one listens to suicidal music while feeling emotional or depressed it continues to harbor this mental state hood and begins the process of enabling or contemplating thoughts of suicide as opposed to listening to more positive or higher tempo music. Emo music has been blamed in several suicides of young teens, specifically of band My Chemical Romance which has cult like following, fashion style and subculture for the emo crowd. Hannah Bond a 13 year old girl discussed the glamour of suicide and was obsessed with rock band My Chemcial Romance and emo music is to blame (NME, 2008). The article points out the fact that this young impressionable teen whom at this age is influential and looking to belong to something, fell into the culture that feeling depressed and suicidal is a lifestyle that ultimately led to her death. I agree strongly with this article that parents need to be involved in young people’s music choices as if one surround itself in negative forms all the time or in this case emmo culture they will continue to do as they say because that is what they believe in. That we learn through repetition and in this case most songs by Chemical Romance are about suicide and with the ability to play the same songs are and over for hours could make one through repetition think suicide is alright.

PEER REVIEW Through a study of 418 adolescents by self reporting, observation and survey of exposing them to certain music and while feeling different emotions it can be concluded that a relationship exists between music and coping with depression or to thoughts of suicide. The study key findings are that adolescents are socially motivated to listen to music, given that this enables them to be members of musical subcultures providing a range of social cognitions, attitudes,values, cultural symbols, interests, identities, behavioural codes, sources of knowledge, role models, and a sense of belonging with peers (Miranda and Claeas, 2009). Which supports my analysis that the reason the Emmo genre is growing is that this musical subculture supports that feeling to belong thus once in the Emmo circle can bring the demise of suicide as it revolves around depression and self harm. We need to be actively involved in the contact young adults and teens consume and once recognized that they choose this genre or focus on specific songs about suicide, that this could be a sign for help.

References 1. Peterson & Safer. (2008). The Impact of Suicidal Rock Music Lyrics On Youth. National Institute of Medicine. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18340599 2. N.d (2008). Emo Music Attacked Over Teen Suicide. NME. Retrieved from http://www.nme.com/news/various-artists/36468 3. Miranda & Claes. Music Listenting, Coping, Peer Affilation and Depression in Adolescence. Psychology of Music. Vol. 37 (2): 215-233. 2009. 4. Valentine, E. (2002). Hold On [ Recorded by Good Charlotte]. On The Young and The Hopeless [CD]. Epic Records. 5. Parashar, R. (1992). Jeremy [Recorded by Pearl Jam]. On Ten [CD]. Epic Records 6. Cavallo, R. (2004). Goodbye in Gasoline [Recorded by Less Then Jake]. On B is for B sides. [CD]. Sire Records 7. Mouse, D. (2006). Just a Thought [Recorded by Gnarls Barkely]. On Crazy [CD]. Warner Records. 8. Kahne, D. (2007). Haunted [Recorded by Kelly Clarkson.] On December [CD]. RCA Records