Married (or Otherwise Committed) Folk Out There: Do you find that you have a hard time relating to the lyrics of songs aimed towards the single and dating populace?

I love music; always have, and my tastes are pretty eclectic — I don’t call myself a hater of any particular type of music, except that I do reserve a certain loathing for most rap, R&B, and country. There are tons of good tunes out there that just make your foot tap or your insides jiggle in a way that’s oh-so-good.

However, if you start listening to the lyrics, sometimes I find that I have to suspend reality to “get into” the song and relate to it. For instance, if you listen to Kelly Clarkson’s, Since You’ve Been Gone, the tune is kickass, fun to listen to, and fun to play. The lyrics just don’t speak to me as a happily married man. Since I’m not involved anymore in the dating/hating scene, I can’t directly relate to the feelings of those lyrics. I can, of course, try to put myself in perspective with it by shuffling my mind back to a time in which those words would have described my situation, and perhaps that’s the answer.

I guess there are many songs in which we either have to fantasize to create a worldview that plugs the round peg of our emotions into the square peg of the song. For instance, there are many rock songs about drug use — I’ve never done any, but I can only imagine. Jerry Jeff Walker sings about getting hammered and boinking some random chick, and I’ve never done that, but I can imagine what it’s like if I fantasize.

Oftentimes when I listen to a great song that is aimed towards those still in tumultuous relationships — and there are a LOT of them — I get to the end and go, “Well, that’s nice, but it doesn’t apply to ME because I have a great wife and we don’t have those sorts of issues.” I find the dichotomy between the satisfaction in my real life and the dissonance in the music, and more importantly, how I enjoy it, to be fascinating.

Perhaps it acts as a release of the emotions we would otherwise have come into play — the innate human need for pain and hurt or, at least, violent emotional release. Hard, angry music gets out the anger and frustration, “party-all-night-long-fuck-the-establishment” gets out the surfer dude in all of us, and the dreamy, “always forever” songs get out the need for the typical paradise romance that never exists in real life. Music is linked heavily with emotion; perhaps it delves deeper than the surface feelings and acts as a therapeutic force.

So, grab the nearest CD, throw it in the player, and lose yourself in the music — it’s a lot cheaper than hiring a shrink.