Grace Crilly
Professor Boulous
Identity Essay
27 April 2022
Listening to my own music that I have on my phone using Apple Music and YouTube, it makes me think of when you're looking at another person's phone and you look at their account on streaming services such as Apple Music or Spotify or Pandora. The music they listen to can tell you a lot about a person, having to do with what genres of music they listen to. In this essay, I'll be discussing how a subgenre of singer-songwriter in pop music best expresses my personal and social identity.
I was born in 2001, where in this era I was born into Generation Z, where I overall have been exposed to pop music in various forms on how it is a subgenre to many different genres in music, including singer-songwriter. Further into how pop music correlates in more genres I've been exposed to such as punk, rock, alternative, folk and ballads. If I were to perform myself, singer-songwriter would be the genre I would sing. I would only like to sing lyrics that came from me and not have someone else write them for me, where I can venture out in different genres to be vulnerable and emotional that has a pop (as venturing into different genres within the) singer-songwriter sound to it. The genre of music I listen to the most as well as have the most songs on my phone that happen to be in the pop and singer-songwriter music genre. Why I listen to pop singer-songwriter music the most is because I like the feeling of being connected to an artist who writes and sings their emotions and vulnerability. I overall experiment in and out of the many genres of music there is in the world of music, however, I'm discussing pop music as it's subgenre to songwriting as to how it represents who I am. One thing I've learned from singer-songwriters who make pop music (and others outside of pop) that does correlate with other genres, is how they write their songs as singer-songwriters about using their own experiences. I find myself often listening to artists who write their own songs as a preference of mine, where when I listen to the lyrics I often resonate with them. Pop singer-songwriters who I've been exposed to in different eras growing up consist of Ariana Grande, Jess Glynne, and Olivia Rodrigo.
These artists have overall changed my thoughts to what I enjoy just by listening and how it also changed my thoughts on music, thinking logically what I'm listening to. I was in my younger years when I first started listening to Ariana Grande. Grande's genre of pop does include R&B in her sound. Her genre of music often has a danceable beat to it, like most party songs, which this domain of music is what I enjoyed as a part of her making both dance-pop, and electronic-pop music that doesn't over or underwhelm Grande's vocals from the music production in songs such like "Break Free," https://youtu.be/2Ek3WMM7I-0 , "One Last Time," https://youtu.be/Wg92RrNhB8s "God Is A Woman," https://youtu.be/RQTgJRwMdKQ "Problem" https://youtu.be/o7pmIEDk2nc and "34 + 35," https://youtu.be/lR5raZbD7fE just to name a few. However, her genre is what further my mindset of the idea of perceiving what I'm actually listening to, as well as another artist, Rihanna. I was in my younger years when I was listening to Rihanna as well as Grande. With Rihanna as an artist though, most of her songs I realised as I grew up has sexual inneudos and the fact Rihanna was pushing the public image of herself as a 'sex symbol,' in the music industry is what further made me disliked songs I used to like as a pre-teen by her such as songs like, "Rude Boy," https://youtu.be/XikKVMYnPPc "Disturbia," https://youtu.be/M2oznG4dagc "S&M" https://youtu.be/mkkAWMNKPV8 and https://youtu.be/JxJq1q-73Po "We Found Love." Listening to these songs made me think of what I'm listening to, because as I further knew what these songs meant makes me question artists such as Rihanna, who doesn't write her songs either, why he or she in the music industry would sing songs about this certain subject such as sex that can percieved in a wrong way, for men or women to think it's okay to objectify people on their bodies. Overall, this is something I don't understand from the way I perceive her as an artist, as well as that I don't agree with. The previous songs mentioned have the genres of pop with an EDM sound, where they also have a danceable beat such as Grande.
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