MUSIC-U.S.: Another Summer of Death on the Radio

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Sep 3 1996 (IPS) - It’s summertime here, so you would think that teenagers in the United States would be sitting around pools or at beaches, listening to goofy, pleasant music.

And yes, many kids are at beaches, listening to music. But the sound of this summer has been remarkable mostly for its somber undertone.

“Somebody tell me why/ We have to die,” sing the group Bone Thugs N Harmony on their latest song, ‘Tha Crossroads’, (on Relativity Records) which topped the pop charts for much of the summer. “Sorry, I never told you/ All I wanted to say,” Mariah Carey croons to a departed friend on her summer hit, ‘One Sweet Day’ (on Sony/Columbia), another chart-topper.

Even on a seemingly more cheery recent hit, like the rapper Nas’s new song ‘If I Ruled the World (Imagine That)’, (on Def Jam) the lyrics dream not about wealth or fame, but about freeing black prisoners and understanding why so many young people die.

Clearly, pop music has changed since the days when groups like the Beach Boys dominated the summer by singing about beaches, cars and girls — or even the more recent disco years, when the dancefloor, and not the mortuary, was the focus of pop songs.

Today, from the angry sounds of modern rock music to the grim, streetwise world of rap, musicians focus more than before on serious subject matter, whether it be drug use or youth violence.

The surprising thing, however, is that this summer’s major hits, regardless of genre, have invariably been concerned with death. But for a few exceptions — most notably the Macarena dance craze spawned around the Spanish song — summer has been a somber season.

‘Tha Crossroads’ is the perfect example: a huge hit for a virtually unknown rap group, the song attracted attention for its combination of mournful singing and stuttering rapping. But the appealing musical harmonies — half rap group, half barbershop quintet — merely cast a soft light on lyrics that mourned the passing of friends and family members.

Bone Thugs N Harmony also added a blues touch to their song, referring to the Crossroads — the meeting-place with the Devil referred to in songs by such blues masters as the late Robert Johnson.

“I’ll meet you at the Crossroads, so you won’t be lonely,” the group sings, in a stab at consoling those fearing death — although one suspects few people would be comforted at meeting the sinister gangster rappers of Bone Thugs N Harmony upon dying.

The song and the accompanying video pointedly refer to the group’s late producer, Eric ‘Eazy E’ Wright, who died of AIDS last year after establishing himself as one of rap’s dominant businessmen. Nas similarly has said he has been inspired to rap more about violence following the recent murder of his boyhood friend.

Not all the new songs are so clearly inspired by actual deaths. Mariah Carey and Boys II Men, in their duet on ‘One Sweet Day’, serenade a more generalised cast of friends and lovers who have moved on, peaking in a bombastic chorus: “And I know you’re shining down on me from Heaven/ Like so many friends we lost along the way,/ And I know eventually we’ll be together/ One sweet day.”

As with the rap songs, the contrast between syrupy musical textures and the actual meaning of the lyrics is jarring. Violins swell, Carey’s unearthly pitch ascends … and yet, those musical effects are meant to assure the listener that the prospect of eventually dying is, somehow, comforting.

The trend towards lyrics about death has surged in recent years, particularly in soul and rap music, the two genres most listened to by black teenagers. Perhaps the surge in death rates among black teenagers — who are killed by handguns at five times the rate of white teenagers — has played a role in the popularity of such recent funereal tunes as Ice Cube’s 1991 rap hit ‘Dead Homiez’ (on Priority).

Even soul ballads are not immune to the trend. Videos for two recent hits by romantic crooners R. Kelly (‘Down Low’) and Keith Sweat (‘Twisted’) both feature bleak narratives in which lovers are brutally murdered, a considerable change of pace for both soul singers’ smooth, sensitive images.

But it’s not just black artists who are in a grim mood nowadays. Witness the success of the Cranberries, an Irish rock group who this summer have produced two hit songs here with decidedly morbid themes.

As the summer began, the group was on the radio with ‘Salvation’, (on Island) a song whose anthemic chorus of ‘Salvation is real’ is undercut by its harrowing depiction of young drug users “with heroin eyes”. And now, as summer ends, the Cranberries are in a jauntier mood with the song ‘Free to Decide’, in which singer Delores O’Riordan bellows out, “I’m free to decide/ And I’m not so suicidal, after all.”

After a summer of like-minded songs, that’s a comforting thought.