Korri Piper

Propaganda in Music: Can We Turn the Beat Around?

My teenage daughter and I sat down to talk about propaganda in American music. She’s the sort of person who magically knows every lyric to any song ever written. I was excited to get her perspective on this topic. We initially considered music that has recently been released and in doing so discovered that we couldn’t provide full context for our examples and anecdotes without referencing some of the past. We’re hoping our conversation sparks similar interactions among your family and friends.

Korri: How do you experience propaganda in music? Actually, first we should probably define propaganda. Technically it’s defined as, “information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.” I think propaganda is always aimed at pop culture, so I want us to view it from that lens.

Moirin: Music, at least in my generation, is consumed sitting on the bus with earbuds in. It’s in your head. So it becomes a personal experience, first. Then when you hear something that ignites your interest, you share it with friends. That’s why most people hang around their same demographic. They listen to the same types of music. So if people are listening to Taylor Swift and sharing the same demographic, they’re probably going to absorb the messages that she’s propagating.

K: So because the physical part of music has become more internal, it creates micro communities because of the way it’s consumed, by listening first as an individual and then internalizing the message?

M: Exactly. For example, if enough people are listening to Lizzo talk about body positivity individually, they are going to start to realize that they can love their bodies even if they don’t talk about it with their peers.

Or, you meet somebody who listens to the same artist as you and you end up finding that you connect with that person because of the topic that artist is promoting. That’s where music can inspire and cultivate newer ideas. If the artist/music comes together with a fanbase because of the artist’s popularity, then it’s likely that ideas instilled by their propaganda will follow.

K: I think it’s important to point out that the propaganda doesn’t always have to be negative. Biased? Sure. But misleading? Not always the case.

M: No. It doesn’t have to be negative or even necessarily intentional.

K: Sometimes it is, and that’s helpful. If you think about propaganda in music during the time when the general populace didn’t know how to read or write, songs were the thing that created stories. Through them you learned how to cook recipes, soothe a baby, take care of your family…whatever.

I don’t think that has actually changed so much. If you think about modern day country music, the themes are general: “I love Jesus, my momma, my baby, my dog…”

M: “ … my truck.”

K: [laughing] But maybe it’s not actually that superficial? Underneath what those messages convey is a deeper one that says, “this is what my values are, these are the things that are important to me.” I don’t know that those things change that much throughout time, or even between popular genres—rock, rap, hip-hop, country, soul—it’s all really just expressing what the people feel, what they need, what they think, and what they do.

My experiences were built largely off of attending concerts. I could immediately tell when I was comfortable and welcomed some place and when I wasn’t. At last count, I’ve seen something like 700 shows. For the most part I’d say music has helped me feel like I’ve found a community in the world within the propaganda.

M: Yeah, I agree. I don’t go a single day without listening to music on my own. Like when I come home, I turn my radio on. Every bus ride back and forth to school I have to turn my music on  …  It’s a distraction that isn’t harmful because let’s say one morning I want to time travel, then I’m going to put on my favorite 80s playlist, or my favorite 60s playlist. Or, I might feel life is uneventful right now and I’m too absorbed in my studies, or my athletics, or my activities so I’m going to put on my indie teen music and live out a movie in my head. And that brings a sense of comfort. Some people tell me they don’t listen to music and I just can’t seem to connect with them fully. Some because they don’t have earbuds. Some because they just have other outlets, or maybe they are less overwhelmed by the world and don’t need that kind of portal like I do  …  a lot of times I just need something to drown out the external [city] noise  …  For example, when I was talking about time traveling, I think there are these decades and movements that I really wish I could have been a part of. The music gets me as close as I can get.

K: It’s interesting that you say that because so much of my youth was spent doing the same thing. That’s got to be true for all generations. Unrest amongst the enslaved people was voiced in spirituals that gave birth to jazz and blues. Eventually, Elvis took it and “gave birth” to pop-rock.

Did I ever tell you that Elvis is greatly loved in Ireland? Poppi and I stayed at a woman’s BnB and she literally had a 6-foot velvet Elvis. They have a radio station that is all Elvis, all the time. Supposedly he’s of Irish lineage. In American music, it definitely feels like there is a “before Elivs” and “after Elvis” time marker. He certainly fueled the fires of sexuality propaganda in music. I know you’re not a huge fan.

M: I respect his impact, but he sounds like too much of a character. It doesn’t feel authentic. I’ve always been more mellow with my music. I prefer the low-key stuff. He was loud and transitional and while I appreciate it, I don’t want to listen to it.

K: There are genres of music that I don’t enjoy either. When we talk about country music while I love Willie Nelson, Patsy Cline, Dolly, The Chicks, and even some Zac Brown Band. I just can’t grab hold of mainstream country music. It just hits me like someone is whining in my ear.

M: Well, first of all, you’re not from that time. You’re from a bridge generation. So maybe this contemporary pop-country stuff is an attempt to reconcile generations to ensure country music doesn’t die. By combining the generations they find a happy medium. That’s fine. It doesn’t appeal to me though, and I think that’s mostly because it doesn’t have much to do with our side of American culture.

K: What do you mean by “our side”’?

M: Geographically.

K: But there’s tons of people in CA who listen to country music.

M: Maybe I mean geographically more as urban vs rural + socio economics. I’m not saying “low upper middle” but you sit at home and work on a computer. Not saying that’s a bad thing, just saying you’re not working on a ranch, so you’re less likely to relate to songs about that because that’s not what you do.

K: I get what you’re saying, it’s not my lived experience.

M: No, it’s not.

K: That makes sense. What about what’s going on all over America in regards to country music? Think about our experience last summer: we were at a campground in northern CA, a beach in NJ, a beach in RI, and a beach on Cape Cod. All of those places are outside of the traditional seat of country music. You’d think it was relegated to certain areas—but that wasn’t our experience. Or, there’s me going to the Walgreens up the street in San Francisco and that’s what they have on for background music. That means something. That means the energy of the country is in favor of what that music is promoting. So what is that? Why is that?

M: You know there’s something about it that I can’t identify with, nor relate to. People try to think of rap, hip-hop, and country as total opposites when they literally have innumerable similarities, because they have this infectious quality about them. It’s less popular for girls, but a large number of boys from any race and any background listen to rap and hip- hop. It’s seldom I find a boy whose favorite genre isn’t rap. Why? If you conducted a survey of all Americans, I say the largest number would come back with country as their number one favorite music followed closely by rap and hip-hop. It’s just what people like.

K: If you look at these wildly popular shows like “American Idol” but still it says a lot about Americans when more folks vote for those shows than they do for the presidential elections. And arguably these shows don’t do much for the actual artists: I think the only people who’ve actually “made it” are Kelly Clarkson, Adam Lambert, and Clay Akin? Especially when it comes to “The Voice,” the winners are largely White and country musicians regardless of who their coach is.

M: Yeah, or even regardless of their individual talent. Objectively, the more talented singers (vocal range, ability) get eliminated.

K: So what is that saying? Is that saying folks who like that type of music are more inclined to own a tv, watch a tv, have a smartphone, vote on things? What is that saying about propaganda in pop-music culture? To your earlier point about guys and their preferred genre and the idea that rap and country have similarities …

M: …they tell stories.

K: Yeah, and most frequently those narratives are about men conquering whatever the heck is getting in their way. Or if it’s a lady, as the joke goes it might be, “Oopsies, I killed my husband (again)”.

I feel like certainly in terms of rap music and country music we’ve had a lot of male domination. Also, when those genres took a front seat in mainstream culture, the way that we consumed our music was very localized. A radio station in the middle of Tennessee was not going to play the same music that was piping over the airwaves in Harlem, NY. So there was less opportunity to build bridges even if there were shared experiences. Not everyone had money to buy records, tapes, cds, etc.

Then you had this technological advancement—the invention of the internet, streaming music, and huge corporate entities like Iheartradio emerged. Pre-Y2K kids would have been listening to only music their parents liked. Parents didn’t buy stuff like music for their kids. They bought sneakers, balls, ballet slippers and told them to get out of the house. If you think about it with a historical lens, we jumped very quickly from parents not consuming musical goods for their children to kids being overrun with it. Entre, KIDZBOP.

We haven’t really talked about any of the ladies of musical propaganda. I remember spending hours with my boombox waiting to hear Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, and Stevie Nicks on the radio. You’d end up memorizing the commercial breaks as much as you did the actual music itself. Talk about internalizing propaganda.

Those women (and many before them) paved the way for the current generation who have loaned their voices to “Me Too” and “Time’s Up”. It’s frustrating to watch because while we’ve made tons of strides, it’s still a mess.

Think of how Ke$ha and Taylor Swift both suffered experiences with sexual abuse/misconduct. Ke$ha’s persona of the party girl is celebrated in the American populace by consuming fast fashion, packing a club, having fun, and living by influencer’s videos. But at the end of the day, America doesn’t value that type of woman enough to validate or ratify her lived experiences. Yet Taylor, who originally came out more conservatively in the country market, was famous for being apolitical, and triumphed in her court case. Difference in their propaganda messages? One left the house after she brushed her “teeth with a bottle of Jack” and the other had that “good girl faith in a tight little skirt.”

M: This is all true. To be fair, I think those things are still changing for the better. Taylor has had to morph and mold her image over and over again. I mean, everyone was calling her a Trump-supporter until she literally released a song with the Fab Five telling Trump supporters they “need to calm down”. This is propaganda to the max.

Cardi B can also sing about being a stripper with little backlash because that’s a real experience of many American women. It’s a nice on-the-come-up story. So there’s certainly room for women here.

K: Can we reach back to how people consume their music again? I was thinking about how previously, you’d have to pay for music and own specific devices, which means your parents had to be of a certain socioeconomic group. You still need a device, but you don’t have to pay for music anymore. That’s a huge change. I spent years trying to hear lyrics right (and dissect their propaganda) but now Google can not only tell you the exact lyrics, it can also direct you to content that will analyze them.

I also thought about how you wanted me to take you to that show at the Fillmore, and I asked “Who is this artist?” And you said, “Oh she’s a YouTuber, Dodie.” I fully anticipated that I was about to walk into a pop-sugary event even though that’d be out of character for you. Instead she had a six piece band with strings and this amazing message about being open and accepting of the LGBTQIA+ community. I was NOT expecting that.

But, this is not someone who made it starting out like Tina Turner, Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey or anyone who has been overly produced where their images and music and all the decisions involving their work were made ahead of time by people with different opinions than said artists.

We made some kind of a half-step when Madonna released “Like a Virgin”; Brittney Spears sang “hit me baby one more time”; and Christina Aguilera got “a little bit dirty”. I think these women were able to sing about sex because the country had recovered sufficently from Elvis’s hip-swinging along with the realization that we’re all actually here because sex happened. And yet, so much music seemingly talked about liberating women when they had actually been pushed into a box to embody a persona. When you fast forward through their struggles you have arguably more genuinely liberated messages coming from Lorde, Halsey, Lizzo, and Meghan Trainor…hopefully proselytizing messages more culturally relevant, helpful, and honest.

M: This is one hundred percent true. If it weren’t for the generation I was born in, I wouldn’t have discovered Dodie or had that queer outlet. I wouldn’t have made it to that concert and seen all the other kids like me. Those older artists you mentioned certainly paved the way for that.

There’s actually something else I wanted to say. It gets back to the country and rap/hip-hop piece of the conversation. I was thinking about the prevalence of country and hip-hop starting to increase in the 80s and 90s through Y2K. There is a circular relationship to the 2 because I think they are reactions to each other. There is a way that those 2 genres are viewed as opposing forces (again some, not all) country can be viewed as preserving and conserving older values while hip-hop is viewed as pushing new values. It’s basically the definition of liberal vs conservative. Are you withholding enlightenment based values or promoting them? You have Tupac saying in the 90s that he “sees no changes”. So then country music keeps working to prevent those changes. Then hip-hop says let’s increase those changes and it just keeps going and going and going. But, it hasn’t stayed totally static: now there are country artists who are trying to create a change so you have bands like The Chicks who use country in a new and innovative way. Just like Taylor Swift….

K: …and Maren Morris. She recently won an award at the Country Music Awards and used part of her speech to highlight the contributions that Black female artists have made in country music. It’s not nearly the same as those women receiving their own recognition, but it creates some whisper of intersectionality in the way that she’s trying to use her platform to give voice to people who aren’t seen or appreciated.

M: And yeah, so in those ways I think another similarity between those genres is that they are catalysts for change.

K: You think about moments in music that have meant something for the rest of this country ... Certainly what rock and folk music did during the Vietnam War is an example ...  Definitely I think about Pink Floyd and how education has changed in this country. In “The Wall” they’re talking about a time when it was legally possible to beat a child in a classroom. Before the ‘70s and ‘80s, children would never have had a voice to say, “teacher, leave them kids alone.” Punk definitely did something for American culture ... It screamed a defiant “no” to a system of that held “children should be seen and not heard.” And then you got into the ‘90s and you really started to see the beginnings of the conversation about mental health. People were talking about Kurt Cobain with Nirvana, Courtney Love with Hole, Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails singing, “I Will Make You Hurt”. They were talking about the mental anguish that occurs in all lives–young people, adults, people with access to resources, people without resources. They were talking about it in a much less guarded way and a much more explicit way.

Those conversations gave way to the early aughts, and now you have artists like Lil Nas X. Rewind enough years and you were never gonna have a compact, buff, gay, Black man…

M: with sparkly pink boots…

K: …doing a country music crossover with Billy Ray Cyrus to make a hit song?! That was never going to happen earlier. Even with previous crossovers, like RUN-D.M.C. and Aerosmith.

Look at the cancel culture the decade before that and think about what happened to The Chicks. Because they had something to say about the president at that point in time, they got banned from mainstream country music. There were literally cd burning parties hosted by radio stations. It was like they were on the commie List during the red scare. There are other bands in the rap and hip-hop genres like NWA and Beastie Boys, who were bitten because what they said was too controversial. Now the controversy has much less impact or the length of time that you have to pay the price…

M: …the punishment is less severe.

K: Yeah. In terms of memory longevity as well as financially.

There’s another thing I think about that wasn’t as of note to your youth as it was mine. Tipper Gore was at the forefront of a propaganda campaign to police language in music. It was decided that you could record whatever you wanted on your album, but it would be softened up for radio play, and albums would be labeled with an “explicit lyrics” sticker. Extremely helpful heads up to parents, but also a literal form of censorship and arguably a violation of First Amendment rights.

M: I’m not arguing that it’s democratic, but those forms of censorship could be considered minor. There is some language that gets extremely derogatory—towards women, for example—and so long as that’s around I think people who are into that kind of stuff can have the choice to listen to it on their own. I don’t wanna hear that on the radio.

K: I don’t wanna hear that message in general. Like much else, we take the bad with the good. Propaganda in music really does offer a space for everyone. It’s always been a place for people who didn’t fit in to be heard and/or push the margin towards the center. Think people in the ‘90s who weren’t part of the norm—they weren’t considered “cool.” Whereas now, I feel like if you take a stand and fly your “freak flag” you’re celebrated broadly—and you have access to so many more people. Anyone with an internet connection really.

M: Exactly. I can be a ‘60s-civil rights activist or the protagonist in an angsty teen indie film during my morning bus ride to school. And the crazy thing is all the other kids on that bus are probably doing the same thing as me.

K: For all of time there have been harmful and helpful pieces of propaganda in music. We figured out some ways to course correct—but opened ourselves up to new issues. We can’t definitively say it’s all been for the better or worse because mores aren’t static … but we can definitely say the propaganda’s moved like the rest of life where change is the only constant.