LogFAQs > #950375059

God_Of_Entirety posted...

What do you mean by shallow?

Myself, I'm just over "toxic" themes in songs for the msot part.

For me it's everything or nothing. I like generally earnest, wholesome songs, like stuff from The Weepies or like the song In The Arms of a Woman by Amos Lee. But if something goes out of its way to be as toxic as it can be - like No Children by the Mountain Goats, or Maria Mena's breakdown of her toxic, abusive relationships - I can fuck with that too.

The issue I have is with casual, normalised toxicity in music. I don't like your standard "we used to be in love but then you changed and everything hurt and we're different people now" songs, or songs that romanticize this idea of being mistreated and left as a lesser person because of it. It's either someone romanticizing an old relationship that made them feel like shit, or romanticizing self-destructive traits because it's fun to be young and free with the freedom to ruin 3-5 years of your life with someone who never loved you.

I brought up Maria Mena earlier because I think that she goes deep into toxic behavior in her music. She has an album about her divorce, where she accuses her husband of being emotionally distant and being unsuited to an equal fulfillment of needs in a relationship - but in songs like Where I Come From and Bend Til I Break, she strongly implies that she physically hurt him during arguments and sought out other men to cheat. The core of the album is "this was a bad idea for both of us, and we both deserve better than each other". She also has a song lyric that goes like "My teen angst led me to look for something destructive, and there you were / with all the characteristics of my mom, familiarity of home".

I still like toxicity in my music, given that it's framed as toxicity. Songs like No Children scratched an itch I had for years, and I'm a better person for getting that out of my system. The issue for me has always been music that glosses up toxic behavior as #goals.

---

I can feel it in my bones, I'm gonna spend another year alone.
Now Playing: Persona 5, Minecraft