The presence of popular music is ever growing in today’s society and a lot of people pay to stream music from services such as Spotify or Apple Music. Since popular music and its lyrics are present through most of our day to day lives, the value which consumers place on the words they hear through pop songs becomes an interesting topic for discussion. This study stands on the shoulders of the previous research on the topic of lyrics done by Deborah R. Ostlund, Richard T. Kinnier and Alexander Carpenter, amongst others, and looks at the value of lyrics in popular songs amongst youths of Sweden. Using the song “Kan inte gå” by the popular Swedish band Bolaget, the study turns to both the producers of the song as well as upper-secondary school students and asks them what they thought when they wrote and heard the lyrics of the song, respectively. When dealing with a representative of the band a quality interview was chosen for method of approach and when the students were contacted a quantitative survey was used. The results of the study show that while music producers do keep the consumers in mind when writing lyrics, it is not always to satisfy their values. To the producers, the performance space is an equally important factor. It is up to the artist to be sure that they can stand by what they sing about. Furthermore, the youths do not necessarily care what the lyrics are as they are the words of someone other than themselves, meaning they do not have to agree with what their favorite artist sings about. This perspective admittedly varied in how consistent it was amongst participants, some did find it more important that the lyrics represented their personal values. Finally, when it comes to determining what makes a good song, music producers seem to know better than consumers what they enjoy listening to. Some of the participants of the survey were adamant that “Kan inte gå” was a bad song, yet still called it a “banger”. In conclusion, it turns out that the role of lyrics in modern, Swedish popular music is to help the song become just that: a banger.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-230409 |
| Date | January 2023 |
| Creators | Gustafsson, Malin |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Institutionen för kultur och estetik |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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