Why Lyrics Matter and Why I Want You To Sing Mine

Words are spells. What you sing, you manifest. So why are we singing such toxic, ego-driven and contemptuous songs over and over?

Don’t believe that current music is more negatively charged than ever? See this article for proof.

A surprising majority of both industry insiders and listeners believe and perpetuate the idea that lyrics don’t matter. It’s the production and the melody that matter. While of course these both do matter, I challenge the idea that lyrics don’t. If they didn’t matter, why are they there? I’ll set the tone with this claim from Ian McGilchrist, by way of Ted Gioia:

[…] we are now living in a left-brain dominated world where verbalization, generalization, and brute-force rationality are dominant, while more nuanced elements in our lives—emotion, holistic thinking, spirituality, creativity, and (yes) musicality—get squeezed out of the public sphere.

How Lyrics Work: Words, Letters and Their Sounds

Lyrics matter because lyrics are words and words matter. Let’s break down why.

Letters

Letters are the building blocks communication. Each letter has its own vibration and resonance; its own sound. Sound is a form of energy. Every sound has a frequency, and this frequency is information that is felt and processed by beings equipped with senses to do so (at the top of that list is humans.) Each letter itself represents a strict and unchanging energetic code; a piece of information. That’s what enables language to work: strict, constant and agreed upon definitions and rules assigned in the form of spoken and written letters, words, grammatical structures, punctuation, etc. (It’s no wonder that this era of glorified rule-breaking and bending is distorting communication, which in turn is fraying the fabric of society.)

(Here’s an article on how sound brought two people out of a coma.)

Words

Words are strings of letters. That string of letters creates a new, more complex sound, which is a word. That word is now its own, more specific and detailed yet strict and unchanging energetic code. There is a clear and calculated energy behind every word. That’s why words matter. As much as we try to deny it, you can’t say, sing, type or write a word without manifesting the frequency of the energy behind it. That’s why the “sticks and stones” phrase is a bit of a fallacy. Words can hurt.

It’s well known in the spiritual world that words are a relatively new invention in the history of the Earth and Universe. Before we were hardened physical bodies with physical limits, we did not need words to communicate. We used thoughts and what is essentially singing. We strung tones and amorphous sounds together to convey an idea. Consider what you hear and feel when you hear a conversation in a foreign language. It’s just a bunch of tones and sounds, right? But those speaking it, get it. Words are just sounds that everyone (that speaks the same language) understands.

Words convey complex thoughts and ideas; it’s how we’ve progressed as a species. However, that’s also led to confusion, misinterpretation, weaponization and a host of other issues. This is especially prevalent and pervasive on social media where words are chopped up and spit out without tone, context or a second thought. Not to mention “written in stone” for all eternity.

Lyrics

Lyrics are a series of words. Words and their complex sounds come together as phrases to tell a story, convey an idea or describe an image. The ear receives this sound information and transmits it to the brain, where the brain translates it, comprehends it, and the thought, image or idea is then understood by the receiver’s consciousness. (This is how communication via the senses works and is part of how humans have built the world we’ve come to live in.) Add the vibration of singing a word and it becomes twice as powerful as just speaking it. That may be in part due to the ease of digesting the information. This is why jingles work so well; they get the information across in a way that is more fun and easy on the brain than plain speech.

If Words Matter, Why Don’t Lyrics?

If we know that lyrics are words and words matter, how is it that we’ve come to believe that lyrics don’t? Lyrics are deemed as “just a song” and are not interpreted with the same seriousness as words from a person speaking to you on the phone or at a shop. Lyrics are not taken as seriously as podcasts or talk shows. Why not?

I’m not talking about lyrics of the song playing in the department store while you’re shopping. Even I don’t hear those words most times. I’m talking about lyrics when music is the focus of the moment; when someone is truly listening to, and more importantly, singing along to a song – not just having music on as background noise.

I think we want to believe there is a wall of reality between the song and the real world. Much like there is a wall between TV/movies and reality. But is there a really a wall? What’s the differences if the ear hears the words and transmits the information to the mind all the same? There is no difference. We’ve just desensitized ourselves to the point of believing that we can control what we let in to our consciousness.

Truly Listening

We are getting my main point now. If you’re truly listening, it means you are engaged with the information coming at you; you are receiving and processing it.  If you are reading or listening to words, there is no picking and choosing what information hits or doesn’t hit. You can decide what to do with that information, but you can’t stop it from entering your psyche. The problem is, most people don’t know how to control what they do with the information they let in.

If you’re listening to or singing words about drugs, sex or partying, your brain is activating the vibration of drugs, sex or partying. If you are listening to or singing words of hope, faith or true love, your brain is activating the vibration of hope, faith or true love. The vibration of each topic is different. If you are activating the vibration of sex, your nervous system reacts; you feel something and that feeling may turn into a sexual thought, which may turn into a sexual action. If you are activating the vibration of hope by listening to lyrics of hope, your nervous system reacts; you feel hopeful, and that feeling may turn into a hopeful thought, which may turn into a hopeful action.

I have made my entire point in that last paragraph. If you are in tune and understand what I just explained, you may never again passively listen to lyrics. Once you understand that every-single-thing, including invisible things like thoughts and words, are energy – you will never handle information and media the same.

Why We Sing Along

If lyrics don’t matter, why are we so inclined to sing along to them? Why are there dozens of websites dedicated to displaying and even explaining the lyrics? It may be obvious, but I’m getting to a deeper point that the lyrical content of the majority of popular music these days vibrates at a lower, harsher frequency than ever before. The majority of popular music is activating the lowest frequencies in recorded music history. We are not activating feelings of hope, faith and true love because we are not promoting songs with lyrics about hope, faith and true love. We are promoting songs about alcohol, casual sex, drama-filled relationships and unmanageable anxiety, just to name a few. Even the songs that are attempt to hold a positive resonance are actually just neutral pleasantries or trips of blissful avoidance and don’t challenge the listener to be better or think critically. See my article The Moral Rot & Decay of Popular Music for some research-based evidence of this.

This is why I want you to sing my lyrics.

Every word I record is carefully vetted, chosen and strung together to create stories with a net-positive vibration. I address topics that have a harsh vibration, but I do it in a way that raises and doesn’t glamorize or compound the negative vibration of that harsh topic. When I write, I am not just complaining or lamenting; I am offering a relatable frequency, and then raising the listener along with me as the song progresses to a resolution. This used to be more common practice in popular music.

Michael Jackson, Celine Dion, Creed – they all grab you at the beginning with a relatable phrase but by the end, you are higher than you were when the song started. I don’t believe this is the case for much of popular music today. It grabs you at the beginning with something relatable, but doesn’t do much to raise you up from that state. Most songs agitate a problem to get you to commiserate (which = $ for the artist/label) but usually leaves you where it found you, vibrationally. I think this commiseration-based lyric writing is much deeper and more intentional in controlling society than most would ever consider, but I won’t go into that here.

Sing Something Positive

Every song I write is written with the listener and live audience in mind. I always consider “Is this going to be a gift to the universe if 1,000 people are singing it in unison?” and if it’s not, I change the lyric until it is, because there is real power in numbers.

These days we have millions singing and rapping along to low-vibe, toxic and sometimes dangerous lyrics. This quite literally is actually millions of people chanting to the universe over and over that they, for example, are better than someone else because of xyz, or, they are having an affair and are hiding it from their partner, or, they are perpetuating substance use and abuse.

Anyone with a true awareness and general sense of reality understands that this is bad for society. Listeners follow the leader, and the leaders are mostly spitting out ego-trips and conceited stories about themselves, as discussed in my article here.

Where are the songs about unity, higher powers, energy, philosophy and aiming for greatness and wellness overall?

Where are the lyrics about deep, committed love instead of sexually driven flings?

Where are the lyrics about overcoming instead of abusing substances?

Where are the lyrics about pursuing one’s purpose?

Where are the lyrics about surmounting immeasurable odds in the face of great adversity, without stepping on others to get there?

They are missing. I am writing them. I know I’m not the only one,  in fact, I’ve made many playlists of positive songs. You can find them on my Spotify artist profile.

With that, I leave you with this which fell into my ear as I wrapped up writing this article:

“Sing with me, sing for the year
Sing for the laugh and sing for the tear
Sing with me, it’s just for today
Maybe tomorrow the good Lord will take you away”

– Chad