With regard to the analysis of lyrics and popular music, the following additional problems may be suggested:
Generally it is taken for granted that this relation follows the traditional pattern set by the romantic song. That is to say that the music expresses in a more or less adequate way the content, the feeling, or the mood of the lyrics. Whereas in a vague way something of this sort doubtless still holds true, we will have to question whether any fundamental change has arisen in the interrelationship of lyric and music, tending to alter the whole picture.
The lyrics as well as the music are so »general«, so largely molded according to set patterns, that it appears problematic whether anything like genuine expression can still take place. It seems likely that the interrelationship is not so much that of expression, in the sense of an identity of the content on the past of the words with the music, but more or less that of a montage. Music and lyrics remain largely disassociated, and fulfill their function rather as two complementary media rather than as a strict unity of content, emotional or other. The relation is comparable to that of pictures and words in advertising rather than the expressive song. Example: The lyrics may function rather to add catch words or headlines to the music in order to make it more easily recognizable instead of expressing the feeling of the music. The fact that, according to all available information, in most cases the music is written before the lyrics, adds to the likelihood of a non-expressive relationship, since it will always be particularly difficult to interpret and express the emotional content of music and words.
We therefore propose a comprehensive study of the interrelationship between lyrics and music in popular songs. This study should be based on analyses of lyrics and music of the same hits, which should be compared most carefully. For example, a check should be made to show how far specific features of the lyrics appear in one way or another in the music, and vice versa. Further, an attempt should be made to discover whether any specific differences among lyrics of the same class (for example, ballads) exist, and whether any equivalent in musical differences between compositions of the same songs exists. Further, the respects in which lyrics and music aim at similitude, and the respects in which they do not, should be elaborated. Here the question of the role played by the title words comes to the fore. We shall have to check whether, and in how many cases, the musical rhythm aims at a reproduction of the rhythm of the spoken word in order to make it catchier rather than to express the content or the feeling of these words. This study should be supplemented by as much information about the intentions of lyricist and musician as we can possibly obtain. The results of the study should be put at the disposal of any further analysis of the lyrics. That is, we should try to study the lyrics in functional terms, with regard to the role they play within the general setup of the music – the relation of lyrics characteristic of popular songs.
As far as possible, this study should be related to the results of studies on advertising technique. Here, furthermore, the question should be asked whether a contrast between words and music ever exists, and if so, what purpose it serves. This certainly is the case in some of the sophisticated songs, such as Cole Porter’s, but it would be worthwhile to follow-up whether this trend has made itself felt as well in more lowbrow products, or whether they still cling to the idea of »fitting« music and words.
Before entering into an analysis of the lyrics, the starting point and the aim of such an analysis should be quite clearly established. On the one hand, we are not interested in the private psychology of lyric writers. On the other, the psychological effect of lyrics should be examined in case studies centered on the listeners rather than on an analysis of the lyrics. Why then should we study the latter? The answer is this: we start from the assumption that the lyricist himself is a sort of inarticulate social psychologist. His work and its psychological implications are not primarily based upon his own emotional structure, but rather upon his knowledge of a market; of what people want, what they do not want, and to what emotional trends it is necessary to appeal in order to sell a product. (This of course must be qualified by our knowledge of the artificial enforcement of certain materials by plugging but it may still be a safe bet that the lyricist’s actual behavior comes pretty close to that sketched above.) The intention of our study is to amplify the inarticulate, socio-psychological experience of the lyric writer in terms of an inarticulate scientific analysis, which brings to the fore motives which he manipulates without fully realizing their implications. We presume that this utilization of the implicit knowledge of the songwriter will succeed better by analyzing his products rather than by interviewing him, because the song represents an actual behavior, rather than his rationalization of that behavior which an interview would be most likely to get. The question of the extent to which the motives to be scrutinized are conscious, preconscious, or unconscious, does not enter at this point. It would be the task of additional interviews to find this out. From our preliminary knowledge of the material, however, we feel free to say that the borderline of conscious and unconscious motives within the lyrics is a very fluid one. It is very difficult to tell where the tricky innuendo ends and the involuntary confession of the unconscious begins.
The problem of the lyrics taking the point of view of the male or the female may be supplemented by the study of its psychological implications. Is there a fundamental attitude in songs the »subject« of which is supposedly male, and those in which that »subject« is presumably female? If there is no such difference (which is our hypothesis: we expect that a large percentage of lyrics can be regarded as sung by a male as well as by a female) what inferences may be drawn from this fact?
Can it be regarded mainly as a symptom of the desire to sell the product to as many persons as possible, regardless of sex? Does this indifference have anything to do with aesthetic stylization – that is to say, with the fact that the subject of a song is not realistically to be identified with a living person and therefore must not be treated realistically. (This holds good for the serious, romantic song which, in most cases, may be sung by a female as well as by a male. There is good reason to doubt, however, that this feeling of aesthetic aloofness still prevails in popular music.)
Does the indifference between male and female point back to any actual psychological indifference to both sexes in the present situation? For example, does the phenomenon of frustration, of loneliness, of daydreaming, appearing in most song-hits, actually apply to both sexes? Here the Freudian thesis that no fundamental psychological differences exist between the sexes ought to enter the picture and should be checked against the prevailing technique of lyric making. Finally, the problem of homosexuality, strongly suggested by certain musical techniques, such as instruments imitating human voices, the sex of which is doubtful (saxophone and certain mutes of the trumpet) should also be studied. Are there any hints of a homosexual attitude in lyrics? What might they imply?
This study should supplement the study of characteristic situations treated in the lyrics. We should try to establish whether these manifest situations have a random content (sometimes accentuated by innuendo) by which they obtain a psychological meaning different from what they imply in terms of the external wording. This whole study can be done only if a very careful survey and classification of the manifest motives has been given. Psychological interpretation should be given particularly to such motives which, though realistically their justification does not appear to be too strong, recur again and again. (Such a motive, for example, may be the motive of absence – of the separation of lovers.) We have good reason to believe that nowadays only a comparatively small percentage of young people have to suffer the fate of absence and that modern means of communication and transportation tend to abolish the phenomenon of absence which plays so large a role in traditional art. That it survives is certainly partly a relic of earlier ages and has the function described by Veblen under the heading of the survival of archaic traits.1 This, however, apparently does not quite suffice. The fact that the absence motive plays such a large role today may be an index of the fact that it still has a very strong psychological reality, whereas its external reality appears to diminish. Paradoxically speaking, people today may be absent while they are present. An analysis of songs about absence should try to discover the mechanism behind the absence motive. Attention should be paid, for instance, to the question of the number of cases in which absence is linked up with desertion. It may very easily be the case that absence, as a whole, is a sort of camouflage for the feeling of loneliness which tends to ennoble this feeling by giving it an archaic touch.
Case analyses should be made of the latent content of lyrics in the manner sketched during our conversation of October 17th.2 This would be valuable only if it were carried through in a comparatively large number of cases and checked against results obtainable from other fields of the study. A certain amount of speculation would certainly be unavoidable in such an interpretation. Its primary purpose, however, would be to formulate problems for case studies about the listeners rather than to offer a self-sustaining psychological theory. Even with a coefficient of the hypothetical, such case studies of lyrics will doubtless bring out valuable ideas for the understanding of the field. The results of the »latent« content ought to be compared with the results of the manifest content, and we should always try to find out why this and not another manifest content has been chosen in order to express the latent content. (The mechanism of psychological censorship, the adaptation to well-known patterns of daily »surface« life, and a great many other elements, would enter into this mechanism of translation.) Finally, we should try here to formulate in a hypothetical form a comprehensive theory of the unconscious structure or behavior pattern underlying the whole make up of lyrics.
This whole problem should center around a very specific question. It is generally assumed by social scientists that the mechanisms involved in lyrics, like those in motion pictures, magazine stories, and soap opera, are mechanisms of wish-fulfillment and psychological identification. This supposedly explains the role played by the all-pervasive motif of frustration. During the analysis so far attempted, we have been more and more forced to doubt the validity of this assumption.a Some of the problems involved here may just be listed without any claim to link them up systematically.
a.) According to orthodox psychoanalytical interpretation, the sex motif ought to be latent and the other motifs obvious. It appears to us, however, that in popular music, the motif of sex is only slightly censored, often underscored by innuendo, and makes up the manifest content of the songs. Is this true? And what does it imply? Is a second level of sexual motifs of a different order hidden, or of an order different from those mentioned in the lyrics? Or does the deeper meaning of the lyrics have little to do with sex and should it be approached only from a completely different angle? This study is fundamental for the whole problem of the lyric.
b.) Special attention should be paid to the role played by the motif of impotence in the lyrics. Are we justified in interpreting a great many lyrics about loneliness and frustration in terms of impotence? Upon what evidence from the context of the lyrics could such an interpretation be based? Furthermore, the question of jazz rhythm in terms of a »failure« to act correctly in accordance with the ground beat should enter at this point.
c.) What role is played by the motif of the invidious or malicious either against oneself or against others? Do the lyrics derive any gratification from maliciously describing failure, weakness, unhappiness, and so on, rather than some lyrics »expressing« the feeling of unhappiness, frustration, etc. Here the lyrics of ballads will play a particularly large role. Attention should be given to detailed questions, such as how far ballads give a hint of the illusionary character of the feelings they avowedly express; how far they make a fool of themselves, and how far they imply the motive of self-contempt.
d.) Pseudo-nursery rhymes should be studied. Do they really and simply express the desire to get back to the carefree and happy days of one’s own childhood, or do they rather make fun of this very happiness, and express a sort of contempt for it, particularly by swinging the music? A clue may be offered by a type of song now playing a major role: the »daddy« song, in which the identification with the child’s attitude is jeered at by a strong innuendo of the supposed child’s attitude as that of a prostitute who wants to get as much money from her lover as possible. It is our hypothesis that »daddy« betrays the secret of the pseudo-nursery rhyme. This of course can be answered only by a comprehensive study of pseudo-nursery rhymes and also their relationship to the music which often may have the function of disavowing the words.
e.) An attempt should be made to develop a psychology of the novelty song which as far as we know has never been undertaken. It should be found out whether the motifs of the novelty song are mainly things taken out of the world of things, isolated and obtaining a disproportionate and grotesque meaning of their own. What does this mean? Is any feeling of the overwhelming superiority of the world of things implied by it? (Is the mechanical unhuman predominance of things over man in the present situation comparable to, say, the attitude basic to Chaplin’s Modern Times, where Chaplin’s song displays the idea of a novelty song driven to an extreme of absurdity.) The interpretation of novelty songs may lead to the final societal interpretation of the whole field of lyrics.
Finally, an attempt should be made to get at a societal nucleus of lyrics. It is our leading hypothesis that the motive of sex is only a surface one, whereas actually the lyrics try to set out patterns for social adjustment to existing conditions. This assumption is strongly corroborated by the fact that in spite of all the talk about unhappiness, frustration, and so on, recurring throughout the lyrics, the motif of resistance or of a negative attitude toward life practically never occurs. If we may state our hypothesis in an exaggerated way, it would run like this: that sexual relations as implied by song lyrics actually fulfill only the function of »social tests« by which people have to prove that they are like everyone else. The feeling of impotence stems mainly from the fear of failure in this test and being different. The sort of relief offered by the song is that, while everyone fails, no one is actually different and even the weak person is admitted to the society of the normal. It will be particularly hard to study this mechanism. A clue would be a study of the songs in which the motif, »I am not«, plays a large role. What does this song-subject suppose he is not? How does he react to this being different? How does he want to overcome it and what effect does he attribute to it? Another element of the problem of the hidden social content of popular lyrics would be the problem of the magic word. A great many words play an outstanding role in lyrics – for instance, »rhapsody« and »reverie« – the meaning of which is unknown to the majority of listeners. Further, there are very often allusions to the social status or to the magic of a particular social layer from which most of the listeners are likely to be excluded (the campus, the graduation ring, etc.). What is the function of these paraphernalia? (Does the very fact that they are beyond the actual range of experience of the customer play a particular role in the lyrics?) Here also the motif of »fun« ought to be studied. Does the element of humor represent a social agency controlling and, as it were, criticizing the reaction of the private and isolated individual? All the latter questions, however, are just first hints of the possible problems. The problems themselves can be studied in a positive way only if the psychological analysis of the lyrics themselves has been advanced to such a point as to allow for these more far-reaching societal influences.