Monday Musings: Serious vs. Silly

Sometimes, it feels as though pop music can be divided into two categories.

Actually, I'm joking. It never feels like that. But there are certainly ways of comparing pop songs to each other (it would be awfully hard to do my blog if there weren't), and one of those ways is judging how serious or silly a pop song is. Now, it's definitely a sliding scale, and sometimes you can't even tell if a pop song is supposed to be serious or silly. Take this, for instance:

This is R.E.M.'s "Shiny Happy People". It was released in mid-1991 and was embraced as a simple, catchy pop song from the decidedly complicated band. But the joke was on R.E.M., who intended the song to be a parody of a catchy pop song, really calling to mind the oppression maintained in China through propaganda, or, as put more eloquently by the Chinese government, "shiny happy people holding hands". The band hated the song since, not including it on their first greatest hits album and rarely playing it live. It just goes to show what can happen when you don't know how seriously, or maybe ironically, to take a song.

What if Alanis Morissette meant for "Ironic" not to have any irony in it, thereby making the song ironic? Who knows? Still hate the song.

Anyway, I suppose the degree to which you take certain pop songs seriously must come from the degree to which you take pop music seriously as a whole. I'm usually of the mind that you can't be too serious with pop music. If you had to be, then there would be no Weird Al to grace us with his formidable talent. That said, no one wants to necessarily see their sacred cows get taken down, either. As much as I don't understand Beliebers, I would understand them getting angry at me if I jibbed and jabbed at the twatsicle a few too many times. Yes, that would include calling him a twatsicle.

So when it comes down to "is this song serious" or "is this song silly", it's all very subjective. I haven't met anybody yet who feels a spiritual connection with "Gangnam Style", but if they do, then fine. More power to them. I've never met anybody who listens to "Hallelujah" for a laugh, either. If they do... uh, I don't know what's so funny, but keep doing your thing.

Overall, I guess this was more of a philosophy session than an opinion piece. But I think it's important to just back away from it all and think about why we like or dislike certain things, or why we find certain things funny, or serious. More in-depth reviews about my likes and dislikes coming this week. Stay tuned!