Be Careful What You Sing

I love music. I love to sit in my car and sing along with my favorite tunes on the radio. I haven't got a favorite style or artist or anything like that. I just really appreciate a good song. There's so much that goes into it, and you have to get just the right mix to make a true hit. Tune, lyrics, everything has to line up to make a song truly great.

Sometimes we get those song stuck in our heads with memorable but obnoxious tunes, those are horrible songs. Then there are the songs that were good enough the first time I heard them, but someone at the radio station loved it enough to play if fifty thousand times in a row, and now I turn the channel whenever I hear it. The mediocre has drifted in the realm of the horrendous. Then there are the songs that you never get tired of no matter how many times they're played. I turn up the radio whenever I hear them, even after twenty years, because they're just that good.

Good songs make up about five percent of radio air time. Mediocre songs make up about eighty-five percent of that time. The remaining ten percent of radio air time goes to those really bad ones.

Except they don't always seem so bad. Especially at first.

I heard my sister singing along to a song once, fifteen years old and she was bellowing "Alcohol!" at the top of her lungs. She wasn't paying any attention to the lyrics, didn't realize that the entire song was about getting drunk and the dumb things you do when you're drunk. She just liked the tune, and didn't pay attention to the rest. More disturbing was hearing her sing along with "I dug my key into the side of his pretty little souped up four wheel drive."

That's exactly what I want people to sing about, get excited about, cheer about. Keying some body's car, which is a jail able offense.

NOT!

That song has a great tune and a fun beat, but the content of the lyrics is horrible. It's the exact opposite of what we should be doing, feeling, thinking. It promotes actions that will only make our lives worse, dig us into an even bigger hole. It glorifies rage without considering the consequences and acknowledges zero responsibility on the part of the woman who let herself get into a relationship with a bad guy in the first place.

Yet we surround ourselves with these songs, sing along, let them soak into us. Even when we don't think we're paying attention, we know all of the lyrics by heart. Their message seeps into our minds, poisons our thoughts, affects our actions and our lives.

Be careful little ears what you hear, the old Sunday school song says. Songs are powerful. We remember songs, remember them better than anything else. We use songs to teach little children because they are so powerful in our memories. We even put the alphabet to music.

Next time you're singing along with a catchy tune, stop and actually listen to the words. What are they saying? What are you declaring at the top of your lungs? It is really a message you want other people to hear, a message that you want to live by? There are lots and lots of good songs out there, and there are lots of fun, catchy songs with horrible values behind them. If the tune and the lyrics stick in your head, the ideas they carry will, too.

So be careful what you sing.