Female Songwriters Use Softer Lyrics Than Male Songwriters - Research Paper Example

?Female Song Use Softer Lyrics Than Male Song Every day we hear songs being played on the radio or shown on TV that are written by maleand female songwriters. Although both songwriters manage to produce enjoyable and memorable songs for the general population to enjoy, one can say that each songwriter uses their gift of lyrics in two different ways. The females use their lyrics to convey the softer emotion of love and hurt. The mean meanwhile use edgier lyrics that have a concentration on the physical aspect of love and the sexual activity that goes along with it. Female songwriters such as Pink, Alanis Morisette, and Adele write songs based upon their personal experiences of love found, love enjoyed, and finally, love lost. While Pit Bull, Rod Stewart, and John Mayer write mostly about the shallow physicality of their relationships with women. Alanis Morisette, for one, is known as the Queen of Angst when it comes to her songs. Her music can best be described as raw and her lyrics, direct to the point but with a softer touch. Take for example her lyrics to the song Perfect (1995) which talks about the sheer physical perfection of the man she is with. She sang; “If you're flawless, then you'll win my love , Don't forget to win first place , don't forget to keep that smile on your face , be a good boy , try a little harder , you've got to measure up and make me prouder”. The lyrics that Ms. Morisette chose to use has a more subtle way of objectifying men. Her lyrics contain sexual innuendos which are never crass nor blatant. Instead, she offers a sensitive portrayal of how men must work just as hard as women to win a partner's love. For her, love is not all about the physicality of the act but rather what goes on behind it. It is through that compatibility and understanding that a woman becomes truly proud of her man. Male songwriter's also have similarly themed lyrics. However, men have a more direct to the point and mostly sexual stance when composing their songs. Take for example the lyrics in the John Mayer song Your Body is a Wonderland (2001). He sings the following lyrics to his beloved; “ Something 'bout the way the hair falls in your face . I love the shape you take when crawling towards the pillowcase . You tell me where to go and though I might leave to find it I'll never let your head hit the bed without my hand behind it .” The song can almost be seen as the male counterpart of Morisette's lyrics since his song dwells on the perfection of the female body but without the almost poetic description of the sexual connection of the female physique with a “perfect” love borne out mostly out of lust and desire than compatibility. Both songs speak of the act of the emotions the songwriters are feeling during the act of lovemaking. Yet Morisette is more ambiguous about it, thus causing her listeners to think more about what her lyrics truly mean. While Mayer leaves very little to the imagination as men prefer to be more directly descriptive in their lyrics than women one cannot deny that he does his best to romanticize the act of lovemaking in a way that only men seem to understand. Although the lyrics are poetic, there is no mistaking what the topic of the song is all about. This method of writing lyrics is something that female songwriter's do not normally do because the female lyrics tend to have veiled double meanings attached to them. Both men and women clearly write about their relationship troubles. But men have a lesser emotional investment in the relationship. Thus they see a different solution to the problem than women. This can be heard in the way Pit Bull described the end of his relationship with a girl in his 2011 hit Hey Baby where he rapped about the freedom that being a single man brings to his life; “ I’m a Dade county, self paid self made millionaire . I used to play around the world, now I’m around the world - gettin paid. Girl problems, no problems , doin anything that won’t solve em . I wanna get witcha mami, now let me see what the lord split cha”. These lyrics are a stark contrast to the way that female composers approach break up song in the sense that women portray their emotional investment in the relationship in the songs that they write. The softer lyrics of the female while singing about breakups are reflected by Pink in her 2001 song Walk Away. For the women, having a relationship work out is based upon the personal sacrifice one is willing to make to make the relationship actually work. She sings: “ I gave you three years of my life . You always said I'd be your wife ... Everything's rearranged, you came and changed it and gave me a broken heart . You don't wanna work it out, no . You wanna take the easy route.” Both men and women experience the same emotions. But as songwriters, they tend to present these emotions on different levels and with different degrees of emotional involvement. An example of the varying degrees of emotional involvement in the songs can be heard in the heavily charged sexual lyrics of Rod Stewart's 1977 hit Hot Legs. The song depicts what it is like for a man to be seduced by an underage girl in the middle of the night by setting forth the following lyrics to a melody: “ Who's that knocking on my door? It's gotta be a quarter to four . Is it you again coming 'round for more ? Well you can love me tonight if you want, bBut in the morning make sure you're gone . I'm talkin' to you, Hot legs, wearing me out , Hot legs, you can scream and shout , Hot legs, are you still in school . I love you honey !” The song depicts the emotional involvement in men in their relationships as being only on a physical, lust level and nothing more. While Adele, also singing about love with an older man is more cryptic in her lyrics about how the relationship is handled. Women get seduced into relationships with older men. However, women tend to take the relationship more seriously as opposed to men. That is why Adele's song Someone Like You contains more emotional lyrics describing the emotional entanglement that women experience in such cases; “ I hate to turn up out of the blue uninvited .But I couldn't stay away, I couldn't fight it. I had hoped you'd see my face and that you'd be reminded that for me it isn't over. Never mind, I'll find someone like you . I wish nothing but the best for you too.. Don't forget me, I beg . I remember you said, sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead. Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead.” Adele's lyrics, unlike Rod Stewart's lyrics that make light of the male-female sexual relationship, shows that women put a great deal of thought into the care and development of their relationships with men. That is why she begs a man to remember what their relationship should mean to him. She is hoping that their love was not based purely on lust but instead, was a serious relationship that the man will always remember. Clearly female songwriters have a wider understanding of the emotions that come with a relationship which is why they can write songs that listeners can easily identify with. The softer lyrics they produce allow for better conveying of emotions of love, hurt, and anger. Their male counterparts however, tend not to over-think their lyrics and just write songs about their relationships as they see it, from a physical standpoint. References Adele. “Someone Like You”. 2011. CD. Mayer, John. “Your Body is a Wonderland”. 2001. CD. Morisette, Alanis. “Perfect”. 1995 CD. Pink. “Walk Away”. 2003. CD. Pit Bull. “Hey Baby”. 2011. CD. Stewart, Rod. “Hot Legs” 1977. CD. Read More