Lifetimes in 3 Minutes: Music

Lately, I’ve been thinking about different forms of media. More specifically, the differences between movies, books, and music.

All of them vary in terms in the time we spend understanding them, with music by far taking the least. In ~3ish minutes, we hear a song full of rhetorical devices & references only to skip past it. In contrast, we spend hours analyzing the written word for meaning in literature classes – even when those words are a transcription of audio. The fact that just because something is intangible – sound – leads to its perceived lack of meaning is astounding.

In any song, an eternity is present. Similarly to how a story can liberally extend across years, decades, or even lifetimes - so do songs. Rarely does a mainstream song seem to be conveying a moment in the few minutes it is listened to. The lack of ability to hit pause (literally) causes a gap in our understandig of this crucial media through which thousands of stories are shared.

Some websites do a decent job of analyzing meaning, notably Genius. Regardless, the level of attention (or lack thereof) paid to songs of the 21st century leaves me concerned on whether such pieces of art will persist through generations. It can be argued that monumental works like To Kill a Mockingbird has survived in no small part due to its passage in high-school/college education; will not the same occur for the music we listen to today on the radio? Music from the past has persisted through centuries (think Beethoven, Mozart), will not the same be true for today’s Drake/21 Savage/Rihanna/YMCB? It may feel absurd to even suggest a comparison between the two artists, but then again artists often gain the respect they deserve after they are long gone.

To be clear, I am not advocating for not listening to songs back to back, or switching radio stations, etc. Instead I am asking for higher academic attention placed on the music media of today.