Music is one of the biggest ways to influence people in the world. You can make music how, when, and wherever you want. Anybody with a microphone and a computer can make a song and put it out. Everybody, worldwide, listens to different kinds of music and interpret it the way they want. People look to music for inspiration and use it for motivation in their life. Americans are heavily influenced by music as it has become very important to the American culture.
It is easily shown that teenagers re the most influenced age group in America but it is not as easy to see what social class is the most influenced. Focusing on one class at a time can be a great deal of help as I try to interpret the Middle Class. The Middle Class should be a good start to find out the most influenced social class. The reason why it is so difficult to find the most influenced social class is not because of lack of research or lack of data, it’s because “the aversion North Americans have developed to talking about class” according to Chris McDonald of Cape Breton University (McDonald).
Other than the obvious very rich or very poor, Americans will have a hard time determining which social class they actually fit in. The Middle Class is looked at as the “normal people” because it is the majority in America. Middle Class people are not super rich neither are they super poor, somewhere in the “middle. ” Music, especially popular music targets these so called normal people because they are the majority and the music industry wants to be heard by as many people as possible.
McDonald says “Popular culture can sometimes provide such a frame for reference, but certainly not always” which is why the music industry looks to the Middle Class for ideas and topics to feed back to the people (McDonald). The music industry rarely challenges the standards of the Middle Class but continues to influence their everyday lives. Most artists do not make music to change ways of the people they target, their motives are to sell the most records they can. Many of the current ways of life and values were shaped the majority Middle Class. Chris McDonald uses many different techniques to get his point across.
He progresses from his personal feelings to detailed personal stories of tidying different types of music. There are many credible sources in his paper to make his audience further believe or agree with his claim. The feeling that the Middle Class is the hardest class to figure out is backed by his reference to C. Wright Mill’s study and also Canadian novelist Douglas Copeland. With the people of the Middle Class being so hard to get much information out of or figure out, seeing how much they are influenced by any type of music would be a huge problem.
He sees the Middle Class Just as Mill does, a dysfunctional place full of illness that both nominates and is contaminated. Even if a little exaggerated, the Middle Class is seen and portrayed like this in the media because they are hit with everything being the majority social class. Many of the music’s influences are blamed on the Middle Class because they make the music popular and the music sets the trends. Many believe the Middle Class craves the attention from the music industry and the rest of the media as it is used as motivation to “revivalist their commitment to self-control and moral discipline” (McDonald).
The artists in the music industry have a hard time Class, the Music industry artists can seem to be a bit hard to relate to. There are so many different types of people in the Middle Class so one artist or song is not going to reach everybody in the social class. A rap artist might go through the same problems that a person who never listens to rap goes through but he might not ever get a chance to hear his music. The Middle Class often criticize the artists for lack of authenticity, coolness, and even sophistication because of class or race.
Even though he Middle Class is the easiest to get the music to and touch, it is probably the hardest to influence Just because the large size of the class. Most of the artists in the music industry come from the Middle Class and instead of wanting to hear someone that’s like them, the people want to hear something different from themselves, something that they might not be able to live out in their own lives. Music sometimes seem to be too familiar to the Middle Class. The people of the Middle Class can and will laugh at themselves, which seems so weird to everyone else.
Listening to a song hat Jokes of your social class may seem funny to you because you can actually feel like you are in on the Joke as a member of the Middle Class. Finding humor in the music that shames the Middle Class kind of detaches you from the same class that is causing the shame. People are hit with a choice to make, either Join in on the Joking and mocking of the Middle Class or put your guard up against such music and become an “apologist” for the Middle Class. Music will make you make this choice many different times.
These choices come up because of the internal conflict of how he people think the Middle Class should be perceived and they think they should be represented. Music is one of the outlets that help people voice their opinion and also influence others to make a decision about something. There are a bunch of people that will sit quiet until they hear an artist with the same problem as them voice their opinion. Popular music can help this problem because social classes are not talked about enough. Hearing about your social class and its problems may spark some interest to talk about this topic much more.
It is hard to change something that is idly accepted for such a long time but the influence of music can be such a strong power over people, especially in the large Middle Class. People outside of the Middle Class have a built in perception of the Middle Class and music can have a big influence on how people can change that perception. Music talking more about the Middle Class life and everything that comes with it can change more people’s minds about how they think and feel like the people of the Middle Class are. Music can help people outside the Middle Class get past the myths they have heard and believe.
Music can also help the Middle Class understand the people on the outside looking in. The Middle Class is not the only social class that is misunderstood. The big influence that music can have can help people from different social classes help understand each other’s background and where each other from. Artist in the music industry like to tell their story in their music, which circulates through the people and touches them in a way which makes them want to inspire someone else. Listeners hear the artists’ story and feel as if they knew them even if they came from a different area, era, or social class form them.
The Middle Class is so big that many people do not know what it is like in the other social classes at all because they rarely witness the life of any other social class than their own. Hearing a song of an artist that has because of where he grew up or came from can be very intriguing to a person in the Middle Class. Work Cited McDonald, Chris. “1 Popular Music and the Middle Class: Potentials and Problems in the Study of “Dominant” Cultural Formations. ” Academia. Due. N. P. , June 2010. Web. 18 septet. 2013..
