There are some great songs based on happy emotions. “My Guy”, “My Girl” and “Good Day Sunshine” come immediately to mind.
But the list of such songs is easily overshadowed by the far longer songs that tell of pain and sadness, of happiness thwarted. These range from great recent songs like “Bad Romance”, “Rolling in the Deep”, to classics like “When a Man Loves a Woman” and “Blues in the Night”.
Clearly, as I wrote in an earlier post, people everywhere enjoy hearing songs of sorrow and heartbreak. As several people pointed out in response to that post, the expression of such emotions can be cathartic, and therefore hearing sad songs can help us to deal with our own inner turmoil in a safe way.
It now occurs to me, as I see “Rolling in the Deep” stay atop the charts for so long, just as “Bad Romance” did before it, that there is a great net increase of happiness as these artists find powerful ways to express their own inner pain.
Perhaps there is some conservation principle at work here. Individual heartache can turn to art, and the diffusion of that art through the population creates a positive counterbalancing emotion within the larger society. Perhaps, on some level, what we are seeing here is an instinctive survival strategy on the part of our highly social species.
Have you ever noticed that situations that are difficult to live through (because of pain, embarrasment, discomfort, etc.) make some of the most engaging stories in retrospect? I wonder if it is the same for songs.
Of course, catchy songs like Rolling in the Deep and Bad Romance are still enjoyable when the lyrics are changed (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dErAZL1Hr8) or the presentation is, um, different (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8PAuvxCZuM) 🙂
Hmm, how about the successful songs about the problems of being a successful musician? I’m thinking along the lines of Pink Floyd’s Have a Cigar (and about half of The Wall), the Eagles’ Hotel California. I guess there are more about being marginal, like Simon and Garfunkel’s Homeward Bound, CCR’s Lodi or Travelin’ Band, Bob Seger’s Turn the Page. Money for Nothing fits in here somewhere but I’m not quite sure where…
The parodies might not be a fair comparison. I suspect people wouldn’t get much from them without the originals.
I think there could be a larger category here of “problem solving art”. Art that helps us work through emotional issues. In the examples that Adam gives, the artist is working out issues of isolation in the context of their own profession. The core emotional subject isn’t really “being a musician”, but rather the feeling of isolation itself, something to which we can all relate at some point.
Granted. I was being half-serious. I do think that the songs caught on because their melodies and rhythms are catchy, as much as for the resonance of the emotions they express (and also because the singers are talented). And I just love those particular parodies.
I would guess that much of art might be problem solving art in the sense you describe. What would other categories be? Maybe “celebration art” (where the underlying emotion is happiness or joy that is being celebrated, so there’s no problem to solve)? Maybe “mood art” where the goal is to create an emotional state without trying to judge or fix it? What else?