If I close my eyes, I can still here the chorus of It’s Not An Easy Road by reggae legend Buju Banton piercing my ten-year-old ears:
It's not an easy road
And many see the glamour and the glitter so them think a bed of rose, mi say
Who feels it knows, oooh
Lord help me sustain these blows
I cry!
It's not an easy road (It’s Not An Easy Road - Buju Banton)
Or lyrics from his inspirational hit, Destiny:
There was good and evil
We chose good
Why raise the time of the Most High?
His sons of men
The rich man's wealth is in the city, yeah
Destruction of the poor is his poverty, Lord
Destruction of your soul is vanity
Yeah, ay, yeah
Do you hear?
I and I, I wanna rule my destiny, yeah
I and I, I wanna rule my destiny
It’s hard to explain how deeply reggae music was infused into Toronto’s culture in the 90s, especially the community I was raised in. We listened to it daily, learned and recited the lyrics to memory, because it were those words that held us the tightest.
But if I had to reflect on the early to mid-nineties, I’d say it was all about gangster music. West Coast supergroup NWA was being followed by police on their tours while protestors burned their CDs for its treacherous “F The Police” type lyrics.
Ice Cube was the main culprit. He wrote over half of the Straight Outta Compton album, which was the record responsible for bridging the gap between the streets and the mainstream as it related to gangster rap.
But NWA weren’t the only ones.
Geto Boys, Compton’s Most Wanted, Mobb Deep, Wu Tang, were all creating hardcore music that reflected the realities of their experiences. This era often gets criticized for being too violent in its lyrics and depiction of street life, but that’s because you weren’t listening.
You know what songs and artists also shined during that era? Tupac with Dear Mamma:
“Now, ain't nobody tell us it was fair
No love from my daddy, 'cause the coward wasn't there
He passed away and I didn't cry, 'cause my anger
Wouldn't let me feel for a stranger
They say I'm wrong and I'm heartless, but all along
I was lookin' for a father, he was gone”
Ghostface Killah with All That I Got Is You:
“Seven o'clock, pluckin' roaches out the cereal box
Some shared the same spoon, watchin' Saturday cartoons
Sugar water was our thing, every meal was no frill
In the summer, free lunch held us down like steel
And there were days I had to go to Tech's house with a note
Stating, "Gloria, can I borrow some food, I'm dead broke"
So embarrassin' I couldn't stand to knock on their door
My friends might be laughin', I spent stamps in stores”
Nas with Whose World Is This:
“I sip the Dom P, watching Gandhi 'til I'm charged
Then writing in my book of rhymes, all the words past the margin
To hold the mic I'm throbbin', mechanical movement
Understandable smooth shit that murderers move with
The thief's theme, play me at night, they won't act right
The fiend of hip-hop has got me stuck like a crack pipe.”
Arrested Development and Queen Latifah were rapping about Revolution and Pharcyde was rapping about schoolyard crushes. De La Sol and Tribe Called Quest were making uplifting, cultured albums like 3 Feet High and Rising and Low End Theory respectively. This was the type of vulnerable, inspirational, challenging music being made, but it was the gangster stuff that captured public attention.
Two decades earlier, Punk Rock was having its own revolution. The Ramons screamed onto the scene in the U.S with their debut, self-titled album and The Sex Pistols did the same in the UK. The Punk movement had something to say. It raged against the commercialization of rock music, with sharp lyrics and humurous but nuanced undertones:
“Jackie is a punk
Judy is a runt
They both went down to Berlin, joined the Ice Capades
And oh, I don't know why
Oh, I don't know why
Perhaps they'll die, oh yeah” (The Ramones - Judy Is A Punk)
And, oh boy, what about God Save The Queen:
“God save the queen
The fascist regime
They made you a moron
A potential H bomb
God save the queen
She's not a human being
and There's no future
And England's dreaming” (Sex Pistols)
That punk energy stretched to the early 90s with Nirvana and Green Day. Music was rebellious, interesting — with songwriters taking chances and writing music that spoke to their hearts and to the times. No one was trying to fit in. It was quite the opposite; everyone tried their very best to stand out.
So what happened? Why does music and songwriting in particular, feel so stagnant in today’s time?
It’s not like we don’t have things happening in the world to talk about. Any of us can point to a number of social issues worth referencing. And even if a musician prefers to keep anything social or political out of their music, why haven’t we seen a shift in sound or style since Trap Music became dominant in the 2010s?
My thought is that music, like society, has become self-centred. If I had to sum up the 21st century in one word, I would call it individualistic. The “you can do it on your own” message is pervasive and transcends industries.
The solopreneur, self-published authors, do-it-yourself [add whatever gizmo here], independent this or that. The need to prove that we can achieve something without systems — don’t waste your time with college, forget a 9-5 — is one of the most prevalent zeitgeists of this century.
That collective shift in thought has made its way into music. Popular songs today rarely talk about anything significant. And even if they’re just for entertainment, the lyrics are so stale that they’re hardly worth quoting.
Even the pop-filled era of the 80s still gave us nuanced music. When Madonna sang Like A Prayer, the same number of people that danced the night away to those lyrics also wanted to crucify her for what they thought was religious mockery (the video didn’t help LOL). We also got Thriller in this decade, a pop album masterpiece and maybe the greatest pop album of all time, that also presented themes of escapism and ecstasy.
Speaking of masterpieces, the 80s also gave us Master Of Puppets, Metallica’s magnum opus. Metallica took thrash metal, another genre of rock that was flourishing at the time, and turned it into a more refined, storytelling spectacle that most critics describe as one of the most influential rock albums of all time.
Drummer, Lars Ulrich and guitarist, James Hetfield did the majority of the song writing on Master Of Puppets, which was mostly recorded in Denmark. With songs like Battery, Leper Messiah, and Disposable Heroes, the album’s lyrics focused on themes of power and its abuse in different forms.
“Lashing out the action, returning the reaction
Weak are ripped and torn away
Hypnotizing power, crushing all that cower
Battery is here to stay
Smashing through the boundaries
Lunacy has found me
Cannot stop the battery
Pounding out aggression
Turns into obsession
Cannot kill the battery
Cannot kill the family
Battery is found in me” (Battery)
I mean, c’mon! Those are lyrics!!
Sticking with the 80s, I would be remiss for not mentioning Prince. Purple Rain was released in 1984, the same year Tina Turner released Private Dancer. That album gave us her mega hit, What’s Love Got To Do With It, a song written by Graham Lyle and Terry Britten. Think about the depth of those lyrics, which is essentially a love song that ventures into heartbreak.
Funny story: Tina Turner almost never recorded this song. She said she “rejected it” when first reading the lyrics and hearing the sample because she thought it was too pop instead of the soul and R&B she was comfortable performing. It went on to be her biggest hit.
My point in referencing these songs is that these musicians and songwriters thought about situations other than themselves. And even when they did speak about their personal life, it was with depth and nuance and cleverness that added a fullness to the songs that just isn’t present in today’s music.
These writers were using metaphors to turn seemingly simple lyrics into abstract works of art. Their words were instruments, and the great musicians, the great songwriters knew how to fine tune those instruments till it played in precisely the right pitch.
How are musicians and songwriters today looking outwards to create songs? How are they being clever in incorporating meaningful themes but still turning them into hits? According to Billboard, the top song of the 2020s include titles like WAP by Cardi B (a song about wet vaginas), Peaches by Justin Bieber, Butter by BTS, and a Bar Song by Shaboozy.
Okay, okay, let me not be too disparaging. Harry Style’s As It Was borrows from 80s synths and takes a layered approach to songwriting. Lyrics like Ringin’ the bell / And nobody’s coming / to help / Your daddy lives by himself / He just wants to know that you’re well (oh, oh, oh, oh - admit it, you sang along with it), prove that this song is more than just a reminiscing on his ex.
And if I take it slightly back to the 2010s, what Sia was doing with songwriting with tracks like Chandelier and Elastic Heart was absolutely brilliant. That’s how you infuse deep elements of self-exploration and spin it into beautiful pop music that people can still dance to or cry to or analyze on so many different levels.
But we need more of that. Much more of it. Songwriters need to start challenging themselves again. It’s no accident that so many of the hits today are samples or remakes from earlier eras. Those eras are when music was fresh, original, fun.
Blinding Lights by The Weekend, Say So by Doja Cat, Fast Cars by Luke Combs - all sampled or remade hits of previous eras. And while the practice of remaking hits isn’t new, it’s certainly never been this ubiquitous. Sampling, specifically, is at the core of how Hip Hop music came to form, and that sampling still persists in much of the music today.
I wonder if we’ll ever get back to an era of true originality and creativity? When creativity was the price of entry and if you couldn’t pay, you weren’t allowed in.
But what do you think about music and lyricism today? Am I being too hard on today’s artists? Or do they need to start pushing themselves to create more interesting music?