Suicide and Musical Influence essays

Suicide and Musical Influence essays In his article, "I'd sell you suicide': pop music and moral panic in the age of Marilyn Manson," Robert Wright looks to the problems with suicide from past and current hard rock music. There are many concerns that have come up with the current wave of popular music. Suicide and depression are some of the major themes in in most song lyrics throughout hard rock and heavy metal music. Suicide became an issue in the 1960's when serious problems, such as war, race relations, feminism and ecology were present (Wright 367). Neoconservatives felt that the lyrics in the music being played was prompting "sexism, profanity, satanic influences and drug glorification" (Wright 370). Ozzy Osbourne was the first heavy metal artist to be charged in court for the lyrical content of his music. The charges were dropped based on the first amendment which protect his right to freedom of speech in his song lyrics. Other cases had been linked to suicide with subliminal messages that teenagers heard in t he musics lyrics as well. Those who filed the suits stated that subliminal messages are what led their children to commit suicide. The 1980s had the highest number of teenage suicides ever recorded, and today, suicide continues to be one of the leading causes of teenage deaths. None of the suicidal cases have ever been linked with rock musics lyrical content. Using the art of rhetoric, Wright believes that the relationship of popular culture and public morality shows that rock music is not the cause of teen suicide, rather society in general is the root foundation of this problem. Wright, born in the late 1960s spent his early childhood in the middle of the beginning of the socioeconomic malaise. Popular culture began to arise, and produced heightened individualism, nonconformity and escapism, rather than the reverse (Wright 366). This time period did not articulate publicly the issues of poverty, drug abuse, and inne...