Peer Pressure

Music can be used to influence ideas and views amongst society, Take big hit pop star Rihanna for example, signed to Def Jam records. Def Jam is part of the Universal Music Group which in turn is part of the French media conglomerate Vivendi, but not important just yet. And, Youtube is something that is commonly used alongside Facebook to help get music out there; people will post a Youtube video for a song that they like. Also, if you have been on Youtube lately you might have noticed this thing called Vevo, which is a music video channel that seems to have ‘Taken Over’, and is also owned by The Universal Music Group. So then, by putting the pieces together, you can see how the Universal Music Group will want money from Def Jam and Rihanna, so they could use Vevo which plays a big part in the Youtube recommendations and the music on the site, to post about Rihanna everywhere on the site and recommend her videos, which in turn would sell her records bringing more money back to the daddy, Vivendi. All that remains then is how does this influence us via Facebook? Well, when little Johnny B. Goode is sat Facebooking on an evening finding new songs from Youtube, he comes across Rihanna because of Vevo and he automatically likes the music because of the official, ‘cool’ looking recommendations. He then posts the video on Facebook for all his friends to see and all of them fall in love because everyone else has, bringing more money back to Vivendi. And why does the music and the video seem so cool to the younger generation, the answer is because we don’t have to pay bills etc. And have more money in the back pocket to spend on these things so the music is aimed at us deliberately by these huge companies. So guess why the majority of pop songs for a long time and currently in the charts are about sex, drinking and clubbing?

After all that, time for some entertainment, this is "Another brick in the wall" by Pink Floyd;

Now then, this is a much different use of music here, it is being used to pretty much replicate what is going on in society for the artist at the time. With the music trying to give a close reflection of his life, and showing us how the "Brick in the wall" is a metaphor for a mental wall he is trying to build to seperate him from the rest of the world. It isn't filled with political messages in any way, he's just 'saying it as it is'. Also, by listening to these songs from different periods you can get a good idea of what society was like at each time, therefore social commentary songs are good for documention, as well as for story telling and protest uses.

Another way music is used to tell stories or influence society starts when we are young in the form of things such as nursery rhymes, which teach children the morals of the society they will grow up in, also making them aware of music on a basic level. However, most of them seem to be fairly innocent stories. Here is the score and lyrics for the popular nursery rhyme 'Baa Baa Black Sheep' and is said to date back to the 18th century.

Both images acquired from Google Images.

    This nursery rhyme is sung as a variation to the French melody 'Ah! Vous dirai-je, Maman' (1761) and has also been used on the familiar 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star'. The rhyme itself is said to be related to a wool tax from 1275, and although it is unlikely to be teaching children about taxation nowadays, the use of a simple melody over a major scale can help the child gain an awareness for music, whether they know it or not, the major scale will be present at various points in their life time, and therefore these simple melody's program the sound of the Ionian mode into their subconscious.