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Understanding pop love song lyrics can help anyone to better understand their relationships and themselves. The class on pop songs that I teach for freshman is an introduction to social science, but it is also designed to develop into a small (20 persons) self-help psychotherapy group. The social science part is not presented until late in the quarter, since the format avoids lecturing in favor of discussion.
Over many years of teaching, I learned that most students are deeply involved in pop music, just as I was at their age. For many of them these songs are almost sacred, or at any rate, very close to their hearts. Here is a typical statement (from a twenty year old student):
"I grew up listening to NSync, Backstreet Boys, Spice Girls and Britney Spears. Their songs defined my life. My friends and I would know every single word, beat, and dance move. We would religiously sit in front of the TV and wait to see if our favorite song had made it to Number 1. In high school, my friends and I were fascinated with the pop bands. We bought CDs, merchandise, concerts, and TV show appearances. Listening to the songs on repeat and knowing every word became our after school passion."
Perhaps a class built around pop songs would make learning social science more attractive to students, even to the point that it too could become an "after school passion."
The class is mostly based on discussions of pop love song lyrics that the students themselves have suggested. The students are asked to explain what the lyrics mean to them. After three or four sessions, when student have gotten to know each other, they often bring in references to their own lives spontaneously.
The class has two objectives: helping students to understand themselves and their relationships better, and introducing them to some basic ideas in social science. As the students talk about the representations in lyrics of the image of the loved one and of self, connectedness and disconnects, and emotion, they begin to better understand their own emotional life, and the social networks of which they are a part: their families, friends, organizations, and their real or potential boy or girlfriends.
In taking this step, they also come to understand some of the social science concepts in their readings, because they can see instances of them in their own lives: inter-subjective connectedness is discussed in social science in terms of alienation and solidarity, images involve self and other identities, and emotions such as love, grief, anger and shame are clarified. Most very rapidly realize that on the Top40, the representations of love, loss, anger, pride, and shame are misleading.
Not all students benefit from these classes, but the great majority do. They often say that this class is the only one in the university in which they can learn practical knowledge about love, emotions, and relationships. About halfway through the quarter, most of the students start to trust each other to the point that they can talk about themselves and their relationship with others. For the students who do, the class takes on some of the characteristics of group psychotherapy. Other students are too shy to speak up in class, but they have the opportunity to talk to me privately during office hours or by appointment.
I am hopeful that the success of these classes will get around by word of mouth, leading to many similar classes in high schools and colleges. If that happens, perhaps a contest for writing more realistic and beneficial love song lyrics might spread the word all over the country.
