Linkin Park (and why lyrics in general have made me question my fitness as a parent)
My seven-year-old son likes the song Given Up by Linkin Park. It’s a loud song, which is much of the appeal, and you basically have to scream at the top of your lungs to sing along, which is the rest of its charm. So I put it on an Ipod mix for my kids.
At this point, I should probably mention that I don’t believe in buying albums with censored lyrics. I’m a writer and words are important to me. I believe that if an artist said something in a certain way, then that’s how I should listen to it.
Which leads to my son jumping around the kitchen more-or-less singing this:
I’ve given up
I’m sick of feeling
Is there nothing you can sayTake this all away
I’m suffocating
Tell me what the fuck is wrong
With me
Now, I can’t take credit for it, but my son never actually says the F-word. Honestly, he’s usually just screaming a syllable here or there (and thoroughly enjoying it). In fact, I almost hypocritically took the swearing out of the quote above. I don’t swear a lot. I use it sparingly in my own writing. I’m not thrilled to have the f-word on my blog. But that’s the word they used, so there it is.
Swearing is just one of my concerns though. I don’t want my kids dropping f-bombs at school (and thankfully they don’t). But language isn’t really the main issue for me. I want my kids to grow up knowing that words are just words and it is how you use them that is important. No, the real problem with this song and others might be better classified as adult themes.
I’m a fan of Linkin Park. I like that they don’t pull many punches in being angry and despondent in their lyrics. (It helps that they also write catchy hooks.) I’m plenty moody and though there isn’t a lot of time for sitting in the dark and staring out the window in a funk in my adult life, I sure found plenty of room for doing that during my adolescence, usually when I was pining away for some girl or another. I want my children to understand that it is OK to feel angry and sad. These are natural emotions that they need to learn how to work out.
But at seven and four, there is no way for my kids to contextualize when someone sings “put me out of my misery” or “I’m my own worst enemy,” which are also clearly understandable lyrics from Given Up. Same story for In The End, another Linkin Park song that comes up on the Ipod and happens to be one of my favorites, with the lyrics “in the end it doesn’t even matter.” Does a young child internalize that kind of fatalism?
Since I’ve had kids, we haven’t had to directly face the reality of death with them. Sure, they understand that people die and by extension that includes themselves and people they love. But it’s still a surface understanding. So, does it matter that two of our frequent flier songs, Shadow of the Day by Linkin Park and Into the Ocean by Blue October, seem to be about suicide? Should I care that the whole family is singing “into the ocean, end it all” or “the shadow of the day will embrace the world in grey”? After all, kids hear everything, they process everything, but I can’t know how it ends up being worked out in their frenetic little brains. Do I need to assume that they hear the same meaning I do?
Lyrics hit home with me in a slightly different way with my four-year-old daughter. Her favorite song is Manic Monday by the Bangles. It’s very cute when she dances and sings to it, and yet every time she shouts “come on, honey, let’s go make some noise” it makes me uneasy. She also loves Fergie’s Big Girls Don’t Cry. Actually, that one has a positive message, I suppose, about taking control of your own life. But what does “the smell of your skin lingers on me” mean to my daughter? Probably nothing. But I can’t help wondering about when I need to start thinking about the message she’s getting from the popular media. Do I need to care now about lyrics that involve sexuality and analyze their underlying message?
Maybe this is all just me flashing forward a few years to when I will really need to be concerned about how the forces of society are playing on my kids. They’ll get moody and hit puberty and suffer all the accompanying growing pains. And then lyrics will definitely have meaning for them. Let’s just say I’m not looking forward to having a front row seat for any of that.
But at the same time, I can’t imagine censoring lyrics (or in the future when they’re older movies, TV or books). I guess I just need to trust that my wife and I will talk through any questions that arise and that ultimately it is our relationship with our children that will be a bigger factor in their lives than the lyrics from a given song.
In the meantime, I’m getting an urge to listen to some Linkin Park with my kids. Bleed It Out, anyone?
Michael Landweber writes fiction for adult, young adult and middle grade readers. He lives in Washington, DC with his wife and two children. His stories have appeared in Pindeldyboz, Fourteen Hills, Barrelhouse, American Literary Review, Fugue among others. He is an Associate Editor at the Potomac Review and can also be found writing and blogging about TV, movies and other fun stuff at Pop Matters.
June 17th, 2009 at 11:39 pm
I’m listening to the Minutes to Midnight album as I write this
Normally this is where I offer support from my own experiences, but I didn’t start really listening to and understanding music until I was about 13, except for softer stuff my mother liked, such as “When the Children Cry” by White Lion.
I’m 17 now, by the way.
In my humble opinion, you’ve got yourself in a pickle here.
I don’t think your son and daughter actually know and understand the meaning of those lyrics. To them they are just words with a beat.
However, since you know what they mean, it bothers you.
My point is this: If you talk to your son and daughter about the lyrics to those songs, then they will consequently know what they mean. If you tell your son about the lyrics to Given Up, he’ll start thinking more about death and suicide. If you talk to your daughter about the sexual nature of the lyrics to Manic Monday, she may start thinking about sexuality long before she is ready.
Then again, it depends on how mentally developed your children are.
You may be able to talk to them and have them understand that the song lyrics are simply hypothetical.
This is based on the experiences of myself with my younger sister, who is now 9, and myself as a young child.
In my experience, a child as young as 7 or 4 has no way to understand the hypothetical lyrics of a song and how it does not apply to them.
At 4 and 7 years old, I certainly would not have.
Ultimately, you must decide what would be the best course of action for your children, based on what you think they would understand or not understand. Every child is different, some further developed than others.
Just my two cents.
If you feel like e-mailing me with any comment on this reponse, then please feel free. I’ll get back to you within a few hours, most likely. I check that e-mail address frequently.
Also, please check out http://www.raceofthedragons.com
My younger brother, who is 15, is an aspiring writer, unless hes’ abandoned the project or done one of his countless revamps…
He’s autistic, and doesn’t articulate words very well, so go easy on grammar mistakes and going into too much detail.
The opening words of the first chapter are up on the page. He is much farther along than that, however. The site is also under construction by my mother, slowly but surely.
If you have any questions about the story, again, feel free to e-mail me. The contacts on the “Contact” page are no longer valid.
Have a good one.
June 18th, 2009 at 8:16 am
Dalton,
Thanks for visiting my blog and for your insightful comments. I am impressed by your ability to put yourself in my shoes as a parent as well as articulating your own perspective. You are right that it is too soon to be discussing such issues with my kids. I hope that down the road I can communicate with them with the trust and respect that you seem to have in abundance in your family.
Regarding your brother’s writing, I think it is wonderful that he is working on projects. I started writing at about that age. Writing has always been an important outlet for me and I hope that your brother finds that so as well. The hardest part for a young writer — and I know this was true for me — is remembering that writing, like any other skill, takes a lot of practice and commitment to do it well.
Mike