Emily Sulger

Music Essay

10th grade

The great philosopher Plato once said, “Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything.” I am a firm believer that this, in fact is true. Another thing that I truly believe is that most music that comes out these days, tends to fill our imaginations with thoughts that are so perverse that they cause our brains to fall and fail, instead of giving them the power to soar. Some current music has agreeable morals, but to me it seems that most don’t, with their premature sexualization of young girls, adult language, and overall controversial themes. These are only some of the reasons why

I prefer to listen to the music of generations gone by, as opposed to the somewhat questionable tunes of today.

The Good ‘Ole Days had so many quality bands, with musicians that made ideas come to life so complex and beautifully, that they truly deserved to be called an artist. There have been several songs from both iconic bands and one-hit wonders whose lyrics still linger in our minds today, demanding an impromptu sing-a-long whenever they happen to come on the radio. No offense to Miley Cyrus or Justin

Bieber, but I’d rather listen to Journey or Franki Valli anyday. Back in their day music wasn’t about drugs, sex, and money, it was about romance, going for drives with your sweetheart, and the American

Dream. It could attest to a simpler time, a time when chivalry was still alive and well.

“Sing us a song, you’re the piano man, sing us a song tonight, well we’re all in the mood for a melody, and you’ve got us feeling alright,” these are the words of those unfortunate souls that find themselves drinking away their sorrows at the local bar. To them it feels like they are the ones whom time has forgotten, that’s when they hear the young pianist named Billy. Without saying a word, young Billy is able to do the seemingly impossible. The young man takes the group of misfits, comprised of characters ranging from actors struggling to make a living, to waitresses who stretch themselves almost too thin in order to provide themselves with a substantial education, and he transports them somewhere else, to a place where they can, “forget about life for a while.” It sounds unreal right? There’s absolutely no way that one person can take so many others to a place that has been forgotten years before or change the way that those people think about themselves just by hitting a few keys on the piano. Or is there?

Old Music a.k.a “oldies”, can be like a time machine for both people of my generation and the generations that have come before me. Songs like, “Three Little Birds,” by Bob Marley or “You Should

Be Dancing,” by Bee Gees transport me to the swinging seventies , the decade where there was the biggest epidemic the country had seen, because everyone was getting disco fever. Those songs are classics that take you to a time where it seemed like love and the dance floor where all you had to worry about. If that’s not impressive how about we go back to when not just our country, but the world had the biggest bug infestation ever recorded, let’s go back to the time of Beatlemania. October 5th, 1962, exactly fifty-three years before I wrote this, the newest band on the scene released their first single, “Love Me

Do.” Its lyrics were simple and its meaning was clear, but this song marked the beginning of one band's rise to superstardom. Now decades after that first song was released, dozens of songs by, “The Beatles,” still manage to take people young and old and every age in between back to the days of the sixties, a time where bell bottom jeans, tie-dyed shirts and an afro were the staples that very cool kid needed, and a time where it was much cooler to make love than to make war. So tell me, can music take people back to times long forgotten?

“I don’t give a damn ‘bout my reputation, you’re living in the past, it’s a new generation, a girl can do what she wants to do, and that’s what I’m gonna do,” “Hello world, I’m your wild girl, I’m your ch ch ch ch ch ch ch cherry bomb,’’ those were just two of the many examples I can give you of what inspired angst filled teens in the 1980’s. Their parents may or may not have seen these songs as bad influences that were trying to turn their innocent children into misbehaving delinquents, but that's not how those

“delinquents” saw it. The songs helped teenagers see that they didn’t need to conform into the cookie cutter shapes that society tried to put them in, all of a sudden teenagers everywhere were seeing themselves as soldiers in a new revolution. Some might say that songs like these were the sparks that started a new way of thinking, and they might even agree with me in that, if it wasn’t for revolutionary bands of that time period such as Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, that things would be very different than they are today.

And that’s what gets me thinking...if music has the power to transport people to a different time or to start revolutions, then what can I do? If a simple song on the piano like Billy Joel’s, “Piano Man” can make the ones whom the world has forgotten sing out in joy, then is there anything I can’t do? If music has all of that power, what’s keeping me from finding a cure for cancer, or being the first person to set foot on Jupiter, or to put an end to starvation worldwide? If, “Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything,” like Plato said, then who’s to say that you or I can’t be the one to change the world. If music can start a revolution, then so can we!