By Monica Crystal Gomez
A sincere and vulnerable song can affect anyone who listens to it. Anyone who places themselves in the artist’s shoes and plays the moments in their life in which they were feeling each lyric, each verse, or chorus, can find comfort in music. It’s a powerful and expressive tool that can deliver a strong message and complex emotions. Even so, many artists will take personal life events, relationships, or situations and transcribe them into soothing melodies, creating an authentic and truthful song. While in recent years, bubble-gum pop and lively feel-good radio music have taken over the charts, in recent months gossip-inducing music has started to run the mainstream media. Artists, such as Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, Shakira, and Miley Cyrus are creating work that completely exposes and references their past relationships and reveals the issues within their personal love affairs. Although, at what point does the emotionally dwelling craft transform from raw lyrics to wanting to cause media controversy?
Just recently, two well-known female singers released songs openly referencing their past lovers and lamenting the outcome of their relationship. On January 11, 2023, Shakira dropped her new song, along with DJ BZRP, exposing the ending of her 10-year relationship with Spanish soccer player Gerard Pique. In the song, she mentions his name, as well as his new girlfriend’s name, Clara Chia, and even includes her ex-mother-in-law in the mix. Just 24 hours after the song was released it received over 63 million views on youtube, making it the most streamed Latin American song on Youtube. As soon as the song was released all social media pages and gossip-media outlets were bustling with jokes, videos, commentary, and personal opinions due to the blatant references and unambiguous indication of what the song was about.
Similarly, 2 days later Miley Cyrus released her song “Flowers” in which she celebrates self-love and independence after ending a relationship, which many fans speculate is about her previous husband, Australian actor Liam Hemsworth. The song was released on the actor's birthday and she makes references to Bruno Mar’s “When I Was Your Man”, a song Liam reportedly dedicated to the singer. Due to fan commotion and peaking interest in the singer’s love life, the song received over 100 million streams in one week on Spotify.
For the majority of her music career, Taylor Swift wrote about past relationship experiences dropping slight hints within her lyrics, album covers, and social media pages about who her music was about. Although, the public wasn’t always too kind to the artist's vulnerability and authentic writing, constantly humiliating and reducing her writing talent since she wrote about past romances. In the previous year, Swift re-released a controversial 10-minute song possibly referencing her ex-boyfriend Jake Gyllenhaal, where she exposes the intimacy and significance of the relationship. Even releasing a short film about the song. The internet quickly jumped into shame, belittle, and mock the actor for his indecent actions, causing hysteria in the social media life of young women. Gyllenhaal was a trending and hot topic, even labeled as “the most hated boyfriend on the internet” by multiple Twitter users. The song eventually peaked at number 1 on the Billboard hot 100 and broke the record for the longest song to reach number 1.
Another female artist that broke the internet in the past years was Olivia Rodrigo with the release of her debut single “Drivers License.” The song was a massive hit, spending eight weeks at number 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100. After the initial release fans quickly began speculating who the song was about on social media platforms, deducing the singer was referencing her rumored ex-co-star Joshua Bassett and his new girlfriend Sabrina Carpenter. The rumors and speculation that Bassett mistreated and hurt the singer to be with someone else, caused fans to be fueled with hurtful words. Sending both, Basset and Carpenter, hurtful messages across all social media platforms. Both singers have also released countless songs in response to all the hate they endured after the release of the song.
While music is the best outlet to express hindered emotions, artists have more to think about before releasing music, than just truthful authenticity. They must put out music that sells, that captivates an audience, that sparks interest and nothing sparks more interest than unfiltered gossip. While it’s possible that many artists are just looking to express difficult feelings or even get slight revenge from horrid ex. Fans are the ones who cause the hysteria, the hate, and the endless Tiktok videos mocking the situation, and the tweeting of hateful words. The true intentions of the singer will never truly be known, but every artist wants a massive hit and to have their music heard.
Have any questions about this article? Ask the writer at gomezmc1@uci.edu!
Comments