Read Between The Frets: The Philosophy of Rock Music

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The American teenager is often depicted as either a mindless fad-chaser listening to the latest shallow boy-band music, or as a scarily intense quasi-vampire child that listens to nothing but mind-numbing death metal.  While these two cases may be seen as polar opposites, and the two example teens would most likely hate each other if they ever came into contact, their musical tastes share a common thread.  The music of these imaginary American Teenagers lacks substantial content.  The real American teenager, while occasionally eccentric, is neither a pop head nor a vampire.  The real American teen listens to more than one type of music, and the real American teen enjoys music that contains substance.  Despite this common misconception that teenagers listen only to thoughtless, emotionally blunt music with simple melodies and memorable lyrics, thoughtful and even philosophical content does have its place in the American teenager’s rock library.

One might ask, “How can it be proven that teens listen to philosophical music?”  It is impractical to follow enough teens around to make a general statement about the music they listen to, so how might one make such a statement?  Modern technology has provided a tool that compiles information on all of the songs being broadcasted on the radio and how many listeners are tuned into each station.  This coupled with album and single sales statistics gives the music industry a relatively accurate view of what the public is listening to.¹ Not surprisingly, the public is not listening to the shallow poppy music or the coma-inducing death-metal of the media’s representation of American teenagers. 

The Stats

According to Billboard, a company that takes statistics of both radio, album, and single sales and turns them into various top 100 lists, the top modern rock song on September 15^th was Believe by Staind.⁵  This song, while appearing to be a simple song about loneliness and a lost love, has philosophical roots beneath its lyrics.  The entire song revolves around the artist asking for his loved one to return and believe in him.  He asks for a second chance at their relationship, and at his life.  He enumerates the many things this loved one has done for their relationship and asks for yet another chance for her to believe that the “weak” may “become the strong.”  While at the surface this song asks for a loved one to return, this song is truly about whether or not a person can change, and whether or not someone should get another chance.  The two are connected, but the latter is clearly a philosophical question about mankind.  This question is one that many may ask at one point or another.

Second on the Billboard top modern rock songs that week was Let It Die by the Foo Fighters.⁵ While this song has a notably darker name than Believe and a much faster tempo, it is by no means a death metal song.  It describes a relationship in terms of a death, but upon a more in-depth look, questions his lover’s role in the death of their relationship, “Your hands were tied” suggests that its death was out of her control.  This song takes a look at the mortality of human relationships, and marvels at the way that two lovers can so easily be completely separated.  Third is another piece of philosophical merit, I’m Not Over by Carolina Liar.⁵ This song explores the both the artist’s lack of control over his relationship with a loved one, but cannot this lack of control be extrapolated to any situation in which one loses control after hesitating?  The top three songs of Billboard’s Top 100 Modern Rock Songs chart all deal with philosophical matters, one need only look past their specific cases to the heart of the song itself.

Billboard, however, is flawed when it comes to studying the music of teenagers.  While it may be an accurate tool for measuring the play-rate of songs on the radio, it does not specify who is listening to these songs.  Theoretically, a large group of middle-aged intellectuals could be stealing air-time with their philosophical rock-music, skewing our statistics in that direction and misleading you to believe that teens listen to philosophy.  For those that fear the intellectuals and their presence on popular radio stations, this article will discuss why philosophy is enjoyed by teens.

Why They Buy

The truth about popular rock music is that there is no formula for making a rock song popular.  The popularity of a song comes from innumerable subjective conditions; the status of the artist, the current fads, and the relevance of the lyrics all play a major role in the popularity and eventual success of a rock song.  What is popular one day can be over-used the next, and what is distasteful one day can simply be risqué the next.

One major factor in the popularity of a song is the popularity of the artist. Song popularity is greatly increased by loyalty to the band that performs the song, and a popular band can sell more albums based only on the success of their previous music than a band that is not well known.  Fans that follow a popular band sometimes seem shallow for buying music based on the people that sing it rather than the musical merit of the song.  However, in a world where a person is judged by the music they listen to, it is not unreasonable to listen to music because you identify with the artist behind it.  Fans that follow a particular group make a statement about themselves based on the band that they follow and the songs that they listen to.  The music that one listens to often leads to a judgment of his or her philosophies, be that a reasonable means of judgment or not.  To listen to certain types of music is to be associated with others that listen to that type of music, and the philosophies that they hold.  For some, this is the very reason that they choose to listen to a particular band or genre of music.  For those listeners, a band with little or no meaningful content would not be popular at all, as it would provide nothing to be associated with.  It is not necessarily shallow or thoughtless to listen to music simply because it belongs to a certain band or genre of music; it is a means of associating oneself with those that are similar in thought.  People have searched for and associated themselves with others of similar philosophies since the first beliefs arose.  All religions, countries, and organizations are theoretically ways of associating oneself with particular philosophies; musical preference provides yet another way to accomplish this.

Another large factor in the popularity of a song is current musical fads.  Different types of rock music come into fashion and go out again, being roughly assigned to decades.  The 60’s are usually associated with the early Beatles music and Psychedelic rock.  The 70’s are remembered as the hard rock years.  The 80’s are viewed as an era of punk rock, heavy metal, and “big hair” metal, followed by the grunge rock of the 90’s.  While this is a very simplified look at the last 50 years of music, and is by no means the exact history of musical fads, it illustrates large changes that have taken place in musical styles over the last few years.  A grunge band in the 70’s would have been unpopular, just as a soft rock band from the 60’s would have been out of place in the 90’s.  A popular song and a popular band must be appropriate for the current musical fads.

These fads are closely related to the relevance of different songs to their audience. Throughout the years, different generations have had different beliefs.  These beliefs strongly influenced the medium through which they communicated.  Songs throughout the years have dealt with political issues, economic problems, and moral questions that arise in their time.  The response to these issues was a direct result of the philosophies of the artist writing each piece.  The reactions with which the audience could relate to the most became popular.  This was because the audience could hear, and could agree with the philosophies that existed within the music.  Without such philosophies, the music would have been senseless, or even non-existent, as there would have been nothing to inspire the songs.

It can be said that philosophy is central to the popularity of a song, as it is the meaning behind the song and the beliefs of the artist that give a song its substance; its “life” some might say.  Without “life” and feeling, a song is hard to enjoy and to promote.  Is music not a means of communication? Does one not listen to a song to hear what it has to say, Not only in its words but in each sound as well?  Without this “life,” without meaning, a song has nothing to say.  It is not a joy to listen to, and it gives the listener nothing to feel, nothing to share, nothing to pass on to the next person.  What makes a song popular is its ability to be passed on to others as a mode of communication, as a statement not only about the artist, but about the listener as well.  If the listener hears nothing in a song, he or she would never pass it on, because to pass it on is to endorse it and to tell the receiving ear that they will enjoy it as well.  No one would endorse nothingness because nothingness is not related to them and does not offer them anything for such an endorsement.

The Cold Hard Facts

A survey of college students endorsed the following bands as their favorites.  They passed on these songs as part of themselves, perhaps you too will listen to them and decide that you will endorse them, and make them part of your own identity.

Statistics Updated Weekly

Each of these bands has a message to offer, a life that they put into their music, and each of these bands gave something to those that listed them as their favorite band.  The driving, heavy metal music of Metallica and Disturbed are hard and sharp on the outside, but upon a closer look have meaningful lyrics that oftentimes question the society’s current state.  The hard rock classics of Led Zeppelin provide their own take on the world and offer a song for everything from breaking up to hooking up and everything from thankful praise to anger and despair, providing for their listeners a philosophy revolving around strong emotional states with a beat for all of them.  The American punk-pop² music of Blink-182 offers yet another take on life, the mix of class-clown goof-off pop mixed with angst-filled, teenage pains punk rock.  This blend offers the listener a look into their teenage emotions or serves as a reminder to older audiences of the “good ol’ days” as a teenager.  A look at only a few of the bands given by those who took part in the survey revealed philosophy at the heart of their music.

René’s Big Hit

The problem that these bands deal with is the need to appear “cool” in order to be popular, but also the need to provide real music that their audiences can connect with.  Socrates, Descartes, and Kant would not be very popular today because they would most likely not be considered “cool.”  While the Discourse on Method³ may be the cornerstone of modern philosophy, I doubt it would be very popular to young listeners around the world today.  If Descartes instead found a way to sing his findings to a good guitar riff and a strong drum beat, he might make it to the Billboard 200.  He may do even better if he hides his findings within examples that relate to teenagers.  Now that René Descartes is topping the charts, he can broaden his philosophical musings, writing to his established fan-base about almost anything he wants as long as there’s a beat in the background, now René has taught something to half the teens of the world through a few songs that externally sound like teenage pop-rock, but are internally something far greater. 

In a way, rock stars are today’s philosophers.  Proposing this would bother some and would prompt them to mutter about how far society has digressed, however it is already visible that there is more to rock stars and their music than meets the eye and ear.  At the center of each song is a philosophy, and at the center of each rock star there is some engine pushing this philosophy forward in a way that the average person can listen to and agree with.  Philosophy has not digressed, it has improved.  What was once an intellectual pastime argued only in the ivory towers of universities and behind the closed doors of private clubs is now part of everyday life.  The average person can listen to a song and be affected by the philosophy behind it, unlike the average person of ages past who had no need for philosophy.  This new age of widespread philosophy not only provides ideas for the public, but provides something to be thought about and expanded upon.  One song may very easily inspire a new song, or an idea that can also be spread along with the music that influenced it.  The once private pass-time has now become the public’s way of life.

So it is not that rock merely exists with philosophical content in it, it is because of philosophy that rock exists at all.  Rock ‘n’ roll is the “Investigation of the nature, causes, or principles of reality, knowledge, or values, based on logical reasoning rather than empirical methods.”⁴ It is the ultimate goal of rock music to search out the nature and causes of our lives, not only from the perspective of the well educated and well endowed, and not only from the ignorant views of the public.  Rock ‘n’ roll examines our reality from all perspectives and presents it to all that will listen.  The truth simply lies deeper within the music than many would care to search.  The culture of rock is and has always been the culture of the thinker, of the revolutionary, of the man or woman that will not simply go about their day with unanswered questions.  Rock stars have centered their culture upon the premise that rules that are not well explained should be broken and that lines drawn in the past should be crossed.  This progressive mentality is the same of Aristotle, of Copernicus, of Newton.  The greatest thinkers of past have always broken rules, have always crossed lines, and history has remembered them as the founders of today’s civilization.  Rock does not simply include philosophy.  Rock is philosophy.

¹ How Billboard Works: http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/top-40.htm

² Blink 182 Bio: http://www.blink182.com/about/features.asp?AssetID=1073763&artistid=4

³ Rene Descartes: http://www.radicalacademy.com/phildescartes1.htm

⁴ Definition of Philosophy: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Philosophy, American Heritage Dictionary

⁵ Billboard Charts 9/25/08: http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/charts/chart_display.jsp?g=Singles&f=Hot+Modern+Rock+Tracks

Can be reached by searching Billboard Hot Modern Rock Tracks in Google