For years I’ve had summer jobs where I’m working with kids, and while they may still be in earlier stages of education than myself, I’ve ended up learning a lot and having some surprising “eureka” moments.
The latest of these came earlier today, as we had kids split between activities such as making bead bracelets, hula hooping, or playing with a volleyball. To help pass the time, Il regularly play music from my bluetooth speaker for all to hear, taking requests from the kids.
While cycling through hours of non-explicit 2010s pop and dance hits that the kids love such as Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber, I also inserted my own taste in music, eventually leading to “Azukita” by Steve Aoki, Daddy Yankee, Play-N-Skillz, and Elvis Crespo. Even though the song stayed in the same big-drum dance feel we had been in, the kids quickly wanted to skip this track, whining that they couldn’t understand the lyrics and disliked listening to non-English music.
Even though I gave in and went on to songs that were more to their liking, I started having an internal monologue wondering how they knew lyrics to and/or listened to Maroon 5’s “Moves Like Jagger” or Flo Rida’s “My House,” but couldn’t imagine listening to music where they didn’t know the language. Sensual lines and bottle-popping calls had gone right over their heads with no reaction (or pause in the aforementioned singing and dancing), but a foreign language immediately caught enough attention to skip the song.
I realized this was a clear example of the subliminal messaging and passive listening that occurs in countless pop songs. The kids immediately protested “Azukita,” not from the subject matter (they made it quite clear they didn’t understand it), but simply from not understanding. They were listening closely enough to notice a different language coming through the speakers, but either didn’t notice or chose to ignore the lyrical content of the English songs they love.
This immediately made me think about the Rising Compass’ message about the actual messages in popular music seeping into the minds of all listeners, not just elementary schoolers, and what factors are at play in them singing along and dancing to Justin Bieber’s “Yummy,” but refusing to listen to foreign languages and calling out any expletives that might slip through an explicit label.
These kids have been taught and learned that as long as a song doesn’t have any bad words, play away. They’re not intentionally listening to the lyrics, thinking about meaning or lack thereof in the songs they hear. It continued to cement a lesson I learned years ago: there’s a big difference between hearing music and listening to music.