Things I Hate About Pop Music

“Let's cut to the chase here, Kesha says “Shut up let's have sex”. That is the complete gist of Blah Blah Blah, and most likely no one could deliver it more effectively and in a more catchy fashion. Throw in sea of synths and drum machines and this is the second major hit from Kesha. Hedonism has a clear champion and now a new theme song.”

Review of Ke$ha's Blah Blah Blah

Ke$ha's second hit single Blah Blah Blah has captured the hearts and ears of fans of pop around the world. The catchy tune and Ke$ha's almost bitchy sounding voice combine for a perfect song to put on the radio. But what about the lyrics? Oh yeah, those words she says that make it hard to hear the music! The lyrics to this song if anyone is even paying attention to them, say explicitly how Ke$ha doesn't care who she's sleeping with, she just wants you to “turn around, boy, let me hit that” So what's the big deal? Clearly this song is meant for young adults, or else it wouldn't be saying these things! But we all know that not only young adults are listening to the radio. Little kids hear this song, and because they don't understand what it's about, they start singing it in the middle of school. The fact that this has been happening for years now really irks me. How can parents let their kids listen to this music without telling them what it's about? I remember singing “Californication” by The Red Hot Chili Peppers when I was young, and my mother telling me not to sing it because it’s about sex (even though it actually isn't). Has our society just adapted to this racy and sexual kind of music, and accepted it as the norm? I, for one, have not. Parents may argue that telling their children at a young age that the songs their singing are actually about sex isn’t the right things to do, but I completely disagree. Kids need to be exposed to what these songs really mean if their parents are going to let them listen to them. This song, not unlike many others on the radio today, glamorizes sex and drugs, and advertises these things to those who are listening. It doesn’t matter if it is their intended audience or not! Consumerism tells us, subconsciously or not, that this is how we should live. When people who are sober or against drugs hear things like this, they may feel inferior or like they’re missing out socially because they’re not living this way. This can severely effect people’s self esteem and self image. Almost everyone hears songs like this, so almost everyone is effected, and almost everyone listens to these messages and believes them to be true. Some people could think that this song is only saying how Ke$ha lives her life, and we should live our lives without caring what anyone else thinks, which is a good thing. Some people may even think that this song has feminist feelings and meanings behind it. But this is why critically analyzing the media is so important, and this blog is too; we have too look deeper into the media and really try to see what it is saying to us.

Something else entirely that this song brings up is how Ke$ha talks about men in her lyrics. We as a culture are so used to men talking about women like trash in music, that when a woman talks about a man like that, we get offended! …Wait, that makes no sense. Shouldn’t we be used to this? Shouldn’t it be okay for a woman to say these things if a man says them first? Well, this is more of a battle of ethics than anything. I agree with the phrase “two wrongs don’t make a right.” I don’t think that just because male artists do this in their music that female artists should too. If anything, I think that gives female artists more incentive to NOT write songs this way! Just because we as females may be angry at male artists for writing songs this way, doesn’t mean we should stoop to their level. We have to be the bigger people (gender?) in this! It has been a stereotype for years that men “wear the pants” and are the dominant gender, and I think that plays a huge role in the lyrics of some of the songs that are on the radio today. Patriarchal ideas and thoughts still exist, even if only in the minds of men. Men need to feel bigger and stronger than women, or else they are weak pansies! These songs are meant to make men feel strong and powerful, but in reality, they should make them feel disgusted. Maybe if guys actually looked at things like this blog, they would see that sexualizing women doesn’t make them look good; it actually does quite the opposite. Unfortunately, socialization of these sexist ideas has been happening for a while now. If a woman is in any way less petite than they “should be,” we decide she must be a lesbian because she is “butch”. Which is totally ridiculous, but think about it; we’ve all done it. This music makes it so that we as a culture believe the fact that women need to be small, weak, and dominated by men, which makes women suffer in so many ways! Think about how the media influences girls with eating disorders. I’m not saying that men don’t have them, because they do. It’s just that even the radio tells women to be weak, and it also tells men that women are objects and nothing else. All around, it’s just a negative message, the same one we’ve been hearing for years: sex sells.