Over the years music has changed dramatically starting with Beethoven, to Elvis, to bands like Journey and Led Zeppelin, to where we are now with Kanye West and Wiz Khalifa. In the 50’s when Elvis Presley first became popular, his style of music and dancing was a disgrace to the older generations who were used to proper classical music and ballroom dancing. People felt so violated by his style, that he ended up getting drafted into the war in hopes that when he came back he would no longer be popular or even be remembered as a musician.
If we take a quick look at our generation’s music and style of dancing it is obvious that the people ridiculing Elvis in the 50’s, definitely would not be pleased with what we are doing today in 2016. Our morals in music have been changing dramatically over the years. We’ve gone from modest love songs, to rock with some edge to it, then to blunt sexual lyrics describing in detail things that are too inappropriate to mention.
Music is now portraying women as sex objects rather than actual human beings. The worst part about this is that the women in the music industry seem to be perfectly fine with it and are even accepting it and making their own songs about it. Actions made by these artists make women look bad in general and is affecting us in our everyday lives, even if we don’t realize it.
Many popular rappers are writing songs about sex, drugs, and other inappropriate topics yet they don’t realize how they are now influencing the youth of this generation. The songs that they are putting out are promoting drug use and immoral behavior and are telling people that it’s alright to do all the bad things that we are told to not do our whole lives. This music is bluntly telling us that it is alright to do drugs and to disrespect our parents and other people who hold authority over us.
Looking at the lyrics from a song from the 1950s and then at song from 2016 we can clearly see that our morals have changed and sadly downgraded majorly. In the popular song “Jumpman” by Drake something that is mentioned in the song is drug trade. The lyrics state, “Trapping is a hobby, that’s the way for me Money coming fast.” The word “trapping” means drug dealing. This is a promotion of doing and selling drugs because it is luring people into the money that can be made in the drug market.
When we look at bands such as Journey, things like that were never mentioned because of the morals that used to be in the music industries. Songs like “Don’t Stop Believing” promote having faith in love and it’s a boost of encouragement but that is not something you would normally find in today’s music.
Immorality is a major problem in today’s music and will be a very difficult problem to fix because of how popular it has gotten, and until the problem with what these songs are promoting is fixed, this kind of music will always be around.