‘It takes a worried man to sing a worried song.’ So croons popular singer Paolo Nutini in a song on his latest album Sunny Side Up (May 2009). In doing so he reveals the serious side to the glossy pop culture of the 21st century.
In the era of the iPod, Spotify and free music downloads, song lyrics are fast becoming one of the most important windows into the thought-world of our society.
One concern resurfaces regularly across the genres — that fear lies at the heart of everything. As we shall see this is probably an echo of the earlier existential ‘angst’ or brooding disquiet about the apparent meaninglessness of everything. An obvious example is Lily Allen’s 2009 hit entitled simply ‘The Fear’. In January 2010, the song was re-released on the internet with a new promotional video. Young people from across the country are filmed singing along with Allen, and these snippets are put together to create a montage. A whole generation joins together to affirm her words, which speak of an overpowering fear. This kind of fear, the chorus points out, is the cause both of emotional numbness and the loss of a moral code:
