Music is a universal language. It has the power to change the mood, to shift an atmosphere, and even encourage a different behavior. In modern society, music is everywhere we go: Spotify, radios, television, stores, movies, and elevators, to name a few. All in all, the average American listens to four hours of music a day. This means that music has the potential to affect the lives of many people, but how it affects people has much more to do with interpretation rather than the music itself.
When an artist is inspired to create, it is generally based on something in his life which has touched them emotionally. How we feel about things is controlled very much by our cultural background, by the events going on around us, and by the environment we find ourselves in. These aspects are often the inspiration which drives songwriters to write and can even give rise to whole genres. For example, “the blues” was most likely the result of adversity experienced by African-American slaves in the deep South where the genre got its start.
How culture is influenced by music is a little different. There are websites devoted to what the lyrics of a song mean. Usually, when a songwriter writes a song, it is a form of communication; they are trying to communicate an idea or feeling to their listeners. This communication, ironically, is often extremely poor. It's rare that everyone agrees on what it means, or that anyone truly knows what it means.
People aren’t getting a message from the music artist, they are seeing a bit of themselves in the music; something in the lyrics has triggered a memory, thought or feeling which is ultimately personal and not something the author could readily have predicted. Because it is personal— often deeply personal —it is very powerful. If you think about it, this is infinitely more interesting and exciting than the idea that the author has hidden an “Easter egg” and the listener found it. It means that some emotion or inspiration that moved the author to write those words resulted in something which then moved a number of people emotionally based on their own personal experiences, each of which can be different.
Music has the capacity to emotionally, morally, and culturally influence society. Even more importantly than the intention of the music artist is the interpretation of the music by listeners. Similarly, this concept of interpretation can be applied to many things in society. Everyone has different perspectives due to their unique experiences, and these can often be very different even when interpreting the same exact thing. This is why it is important to always keep an open mind and to try to look at things objectively and from different frame of references in order to come to a conclusion that is as accurate as possible.
