Why are Musicians and their Lyrics so Serious?

We are filled with music nearly everywhere we go. Cafes, malls, hair dressers and apartment walls. We commonly find the lyrical subject matter to be very serious, and presented in a very serious manner (i.e., following all the rules and not surprising anyone with anything too musically extravagant).

Let’s take a song I recently heard in Pigeon Cafe called Smile by Lily Allen. I preface this with an admission that I enjoy the drum mix, and the sound of her voice and lyrical phrasing. Here are the opening lines:

When you first left me
I was wanting more
But you were fucking that girl next door
What’d you do that for?
— Lily Allen

That doesn’t feel very smile-inducing, does it? But later we do find the reason for the artist’s arrival to smile-land, when she declares:

At first, when I see you cry
Yeah, it makes me smile
…
At worst, I feel bad for a while
But then I just smile
I go ahead and smile

The entire piece revolves around (don’t fall off your chair) being heartbroken and the subsequent process of overcoming.

What strikes me as bizarre is that although the artist overcomes the heartbreak and returns to her old smiling self, the song doesn’t feel like we should be smiling. You know what would be more interesting? Take the same lyrics, and sing it in the spirit of smiling. Let us feel that you’ve transcended the pain by singing it with a smile. It doesn’t quite feel that way in its current state.

Much of serious music is presented as a condensed story; the cute depressed artist starts with heartbreak but soon overcomes!!! The pattern is heartbreak then overcoming, over and over. It’s been said 25-30% of Taylor Swift’s songs are heartbreak-themed. That’s a significant amount of tracks to follow the same theme for a single artist. This means a rule is being followed, namely reaching for the same concept because it “works”. Why do artists do this? The concept of heartbreak then overcoming is an experience most painfully and commonly experienced by nearly every human on earth at all times. That is a large, perennial audience. A song of this nature can be written at yearly intervals to generate new fans at will. Almost like a weapon of mass hypnosis.

Anyway, back to the song:

I couldn’t stop laughing
No, I just couldn’t help myself
See, you messed up my mental health
I was quite unwell

Our culture uses the mental health movement as another form of subtle marketing inserted into art disguised as moustache twirling lyrics. When you hear “mental health”, you’re automatically transported into the domain of cultural consciousness, building a bridge between your life and the song. These words are meant to hook you like a fish, but truly are of little value to the essence of the story.

Our minds are inherently difficult to manage, and the mind’s “health” is a lifelong endeavor. Humans interact by pushing their desires onto each other, and that’s what makes the world so chaotic and erratic. The major problem is we have been force-fed to hyper-fixate on achieving mental health. Ladies and gentlemen we are supposed to take this life as lightly and comically as possible, with a smile even while it is thrusting hard into our behinds. There is no other way. One reason why most music is serious is because the artists writing them take themselves seriously, their problems seriously, and follow the serious rules of serious (pop) music.

Let’s take an example of a song that uses humor in a fresh way. Frank Zappa has a tune called Dangerous Kitchen, where he lists all of the terrible things that are experiencing in our own dirty, dangerous kitchen.

The bananas are black, they got flies in the back
And also the chicken in the dish with the foil

… ….

Who the fuck wants to clean it? It’s disgusting and dirty
The sponge on the drainer, is stinky and squirty
If you squeeze it when you wipe up, what you get on your hands then
Could unbalance your glands and make you blind or whatever

You don’t need to be a Zappa-level eccentric to write interesting music. If you want to come off as an artist who overcomes heartbreak and want to teach us something about pain, show us you’ve learnt sometimg. Write a song that makes us smile.