Oma Persaud 1

ENC1102

12 April 2020

Professor Lambert

How Do People Make Meaning From Music?

Music is in every culture and language across the world and it’s part of our daily lives

regardless of where we go. As we drive to work, the radio plays the newest hits. Restaurants play

music in the background to set the atmosphere in their venues. The buskers sit outside on the

sidewalks singing as the crowds go about their days. In more recent times, it is a good way to

pass time. However, when we listen to music, what is it supposed to accomplish? What meaning

do people make from the lyrics in music?

There has been some research conducted on the effects of teaching with music and how it

affects learning for a student (Roger Jon Desmond, 279) as well as how music with lyrics

describing sexual stereotypes and endorsement of rape myths and aggression can alter one’s

ideas about these topics. (Sprankle, 34) Do lyrics actually promote drugs, sex and violence or can

it be used as tools to teach and improve? A central issue in how music is interpreted based on

their lyrics is the validity of measurement based on how vulgar or inappropriate one person may

interpret the song compared to another.

It is generally accepted that lyrics can make meaning for people, but how much does it

actually affect the mindsets and attitudes of the people who listen to music? There is evidence of

such a theory from previously conducted research. Some of the research looked at contained

varying age groups and it seems the ages correlate to how much of an effect the lyrics in a song

had on a person. While the general features of a song are time constraints usually from about 3 to
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5 minutes and a flow or rhyme, people of varying audiences still make multiple meanings from

the same set of lyrics.

The book, “Writing about Writing,” by Wardles and Downs, explains the components

about the threshold concept on how people make meaning from writing and how writing has

constraints depending on what type of writing it is. There are different ways to understand how

writing makes meaning for people. For example, Bitzer says understanding the situation is

important because the situation chooses what “rhetorical work” responds to it or in another

opinion while Richard Vatz says the rhetor’s response is controlled by the situation. (488)

However, Scott says the rhetorical situation is partly created by the rhetor, but also how they

react to the situation. (489) This source is helpful in understanding how people make meaning

because rhetors must ensure the audiences get their meaning whether intended or not. By

examining what “rhetorical situations” are, how they are responded to and how they come about

in the first place, authors can build upon previous ideas by adding in how constraints affect the

writing, audience, and the response to these rhetorical situations. Using this knowledge, we

proceed to see how the rhetorical situations created by lyrics in music can affect how people

make meaning.

Influence on People’s Perspectives

In the article, “Sexually Degrading Music Videos and Lyrics: Their Effects on Males’

Aggression and Endorsement of Rape Myths and Sexual Stereotypes,” by Eric Sprankle,

Christian End, and Miranda Bretz, they conduct research, surveys, and studies based on a series

of tests to determine if lyrics and visual stimulation altered one’s ideas about rape, aggression,

and sexual stereotypes. The study had 187 male undergraduate student volunteers from ages 18
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to 35. To measure the level of aggression, the participants were asked how long they would leave

a female in a bath of ice water since there’s no actual way to measure an increase in aggression,

but “it’s believed that instructing others to inflict pain on a future, fictional participant is a subtle

and ethical way of measuring aggression as ice water exposure has been utilized to induce pain

in the participant.” (Sprankle, 35). To measure attitudes towards rape, they used the Rape

Supportive Attitude Scale which had 20 questions with responses of strongly agree to strongly

disagree. The points were summed to a 20 to 100 range in which the study’s data ended with an

average of .88 as their final data. (Sprankle, 35) In measuring sexual stereotypes, the Sexual

Stereotypes Scale which tests a person’s endorsement of men being overly sex-driven, dating

being treated as a game, and women as sex objects. The score range is 14 to 70 and in this study,

the results were on the higher end of the spectrum. From this article, it can be seen that lyrics in

music do have an impact on how people make meaning from both lyrics and visual stimuli.

Another case study looked at was Mia Moody-Ramirez and Lakia M. Scott’s, study of

“Rap Music Literacy: A Case Study of Millennial Audience Reception to Rap Lyrics Depicting

Independent Women.” They researched the outlook of what people think classifies a woman as

independent. Mostly looking at female versus male rappers, the lyrics are analyzed by what they

classify makes a woman independent. In more recent times, there have been varying definitions,

while mostly positive, to what the lyrics say about what makes a woman independent such as

when male rappers identify a woman to be independent if they are “someone who does not

demand emotional and financial support while he offers very little in return.”(55) Females

rappers often are not placed in a leadership role when mentioned, but female rappers are found to

often define independence through financial stability and control of their bodies and sexuality. A
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song which is mentioned is Lauryn Hill’s “Doo-Wop (That Thing) which exemplifies this idea to

staying “true to one’s self” as she says in her lyrics, “Don’t be a hard rock when you’re really a

gem, Babygirl, respect is just a minimum.”(55) This study delves into the conversation of how

society views independence, but there is a lack of studies on addressing literacy, rap music, and

independence. Especially how they are intertwined and affect each other in the cycle of how

music is made. Between lyrics and the rhythm that goes into making a song, how do people

make meaning from music in terms of their independence? Would music have a significant

impact on how others see themselves?

Learning Through and With Music

So if a person’s ideals can be affected by music, what about how they learn from music?

The article, “The Message in the Music: Popular Culture and Teaching in Social Studies,” shows

how music and having rhyming lyrics can affect the learning of students and can be used as a

tool to teach. The two social studies teachers join both the conversations of how prior

experiences affect writing and how people make meaning from writing within constraints. One

of the examples they used about how their students remembered events in history is for the

Boston Tea Party when she changed lyrics from, “The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire!” to “The

tea, the tea, the tea is in the harbor.” By using a popular song at the time, students memorized

and learned the material better because it was easier to remember. But why is it easier to

remember lyrics than just the facts? How are people making greater meaning from having a

rhyme scheme or a catchy tune than when just making meaning without music? Even with the

constraints from changing the lyrics of a popular song to accommodate a historic event of the

rhythm and syllables, it was efficient for students to remember with the music.
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Continuing with the narrative of how music can help students learn, another researcher

studied adolescents and the impact of rock music. The author, Roger Desmond, usest the genre

of rock instead of the commonly used pop music. He studies the age groups between middle

school and high school with two tests. The first included memorization of the lyrics he presented

the students while the second test questioned whether the student gathered a meaning from the

lyrics which were presented to them. In his conclusion, Desmond states, “Taken as a whole,

these studies reveal that approximately one-third of any sample of adolescents are able to

articulate the meaning of available rock song lyrics.” (278) While the students struggled to

memorize the lyrics, they were able to take meaning out of the songs. The results were

inconclusive and asked for more research to be done, but it does prove that lyrics did have an

impact even though it was a different genre.

In proving the genres of music are not important in how people make meaning, I

happened across a journal which had conducted research on how the genre did not matter, but the

lyrics did. A journal written in 1991 was written by Edward Volz. In his article, “You Can't Play

That: A Selective Chronology of Banned Music: 1850-1991.”, he goes through each decade from

1850 to 1990 in order to analyze which songs were censored and why they were chosen to be

censored. Typically, from his analysis, the songs which were censored, got censored because the

lyrics were considered too vulgar or promoted acts of violence and the use of drugs. The FCC, an

organization basically made to handle what was played on the radio were the ones who would

decide what was allowed to be played. By looking at the lyrics which were censored, Edward

noticed the lyrics were typically just misinterpreted. As it is today as well, many songs may be

taken out of context and misinterpreted from what was intended by the artist.
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Methodology

However, there seems to be a lack of study or research on how music affects varying ages

based on how much they understand what the lyrics are saying. These differences should be

analyzed. The purpose here is to use multiple songs with varying degrees of what they talk about

to be analyzed by different age groups to see how much song lyrics affect the different age

groups. I also believe that perhaps language plays a role. I have seen very little research on how

different languages affect how people make meaning because if they cannot speak the language,

they must not know the meaning of the song. If the lyrics were to be translated, perhaps a person

could make more meaning from a song rather than just listening to the emotions that could be

held in a song.

To conduct an analysis of how people make meaning from lyrics in music, I will be

analyzing comments under music videos on the platform, YouTube. I specifically chose songs

which had broken records in the music world and were on BillBoard Music charts. In addition to

this vetting process, I decided to analyze songs which were within the top 5 on the BillBoard

charts. In the end, I chose three songs which are all in different languages. In Spanish, Bad

Bunny’s, “Si Veo A Tu Mamá,” with Post Malone’s, “Circles,” in English and finally, in

Korean, BTS’s, “ON”. Once the songs were chosen, now the search for comments describing

what the songs meant to YouTube watchers began. In order to choose comments that would

satisfy the questions of what this song means to a person, I had to ignore the comments that were

only filled with emoticons. I instead opted for those who wrote sentences or had something more

to say about the song. Another platform for music could be used if I were to take more data, but

YouTube seemed like the best option because it’s a platform used by all age groups and it is
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mostly anonymous. I collected at least 5 comments from each song which seemed to express

what the song meant to them and analyzed them. Within my coding scheme, I broke down my

analysis into the stases of exigence, genre conventions, stylistic changes, things which can’t

change, and constraints such as language, time, rhythm, and genre of music.

For my data, I used the five comments from the three songs which exemplified what the

music meant to them. In the first song “Si Veo A Tu Mama” by Bad Bunny, the comments

varied from hate to love for his new album. The comments read as “Your music makes me

emotional”, “I don’t speak spanish but this song goes hard”, “I dunno what #BADBUNNY sings

but this is my favorite song #Kenya”. One comment in particular says, “Esta cancion me

recuerda a mi tío” which translates to “This song makes me remember my uncle.” This song

must have brought back memories of her uncle implying she made meaning from the song.

Another comment was “I never saw such an awful album!” so they must have not liked what this

music had to offer.

The second song I analyzed was “Circles” by Post Malone. This song stayed at the

number one spot for more than a dozen weeks on the BillBoard Music Chart. Most of the

comments praised Post Malone’s vocals and new take on his style of music. However, these five

comments in particular stood out because they said, ““Post Malone makes me feel like I lost

someone who I’ve never had.”, “There is something very nostalgic about this song”, “I never

listened to him, but a few days ago I heard this song on the radio and had to shazam cause it’s so

beautiful and wow I’m obsessed”. All have one major commonality. It made these people feel

emotions when they listened to the song. The other two comments read as “When Post said

“seasons change and our love went COOOOLD” I FELT THAT HARD” and “this song sounds
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like one of those songs played in the apocalypse movies where everyone died, and ur the last

person alive.” These last two comments also show emotions where they were concerned and the

last comment especially made meaning from this song because they managed to create a place

where they thought this song would be appropriate.

The last song I analyzed was “ON” by BTS. This song broke multiple records as it

topped the Digital Sales Chart and stayed at top 5 for several weeks on the Hot 100 on the

BillBoard charts. The comments under this song are, ““can we just talk about how fresh and

clean this is yet it still feels intimate and warm?”, “I love the energy of the song”, and “Es

fantástico… impresionante...los amo”. The song left a good impression on these three YouTube

goers. Another comment says how the song really impacted her son, “My 6yr old son loves this

song! It’s become a routine for us to watch this video and the official MV before we get off the

bed every morning, and he wants this played when he takes a shower everyday. Lol.” How music

affects people including children, even if it may be in a different language, still manages to leave

an emotional imprint on someone.The last comment paraphrased since it is in Spanish says that

they have listened to this song two million times and could listen to it two million more times

because they love it so much. The emotional impact of music is so strong even on people who

may not speak the language as “ON” is in Korean.

Conclusion

From the analysis of these three songs and secondary research conducted, music clearly

leaves a lasting impact on people and how they make meaning from the songs. The range and

variety of which people make meaning from music however is very interesting because everyone

comes from different backgrounds and experiences. Specifically in “Circles” by Post Malone, it
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can be seen that the emotional impact resurfaces emotions from a person’s past. Most memories

that seem to be correlated with this particular song happen to be more sad or tragic experiences.

The lyrics in “Circles,” according to an interview Post Malone spoke in by Beats 1 Radio, is

about a person who realizes their relationship is a constant loop of breaking up and getting back

together. In everyone’s life, there are bad relationships whether it’s a significant other, a friend,

or a family member where it’s a constant fighting and making up. Humans are incredibly

emotional beings so the correlation with lyrics and the YouTube comments make sense with how

large of an emotional impact it leaves on a person.

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Works Cited

Desmond, Roger Jon. “Adolescents and Music Lyrics: Implications of a Cognitive Perspective.”

Communication Quarterly​, University of Iowa, 1987,

web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=4&sid=6f9672ce-874b-4da0-9f6b-

cc90d16b481e%40sdc-v-sessmgr02.

Moody-Ramirez, Mia, and Lakia M Scott. “Rap Music Literacy: A Case Study of Millennial

Audience Reception to Rap Lyrics Depicting Independent Women.”

DigitalCommons@URI,​ digitalcommons.uri.edu/jmle/vol7/iss3/5/.

Sprankle, Eric L, et al. “Sexually Degrading Music Videos and Lyrics Their Effects on Males’

Aggression and Endorsement of Rape Myths and Sexual Stereotypes.” ​Journal of Media

Psychology​, vol. 24, no. 1, 2012, pp. 31–39., doi:10.1027/1864-1105/a000060.

Volz, Edward J. “You Can't Play That: A Selective Chronology of Banned Music: 1850-1991.”

School Library Journal,​ 1 Jan. 1991, pp. 16–18.,

web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=6&sid=cfcae1ad-cda7-4b8b-b2ed-

12644559b748%40pdc-v-sessmgr05.

Wardle, Elizabeth, and Doug Downs. ​Writing about Writing​. Bedford Books St. Martin's, 2020.
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White, Cameron, and Susan McCormack. “The Message in the Music: Popular Culture and

Teaching in Social Studies.” ​Heldref Publications,​ May 2006, pp. 122–127.