So I'm sitting here and watching Sia's Elastic Heart video and two things popped in my head as I watched it: 1.) the symbolism went completely over my head the first go around and 2.) it's a great feeling knowing that I'm eclectic when it comes to music. The topic of this post is going to be about my eclecticism but I have to delve into this video for a second because of all the backlash I learned about when I was reading the ever so entertaining comment section for the video on YouTube.
Before you go on, watch the video right quick and then proceed:
Before you go on, watch the video right quick and then proceed:
According to what I read online, many people thought this had undertones of pedophilia between that of Shia LaBeouf (28) & Maddie Ziegler (12), which is completely crazy. I actually watched the video before I even looked at the comment section, as I usually do, and I only went there to figure out the symbolism behind the video. Upon going through a couple of comments defending the song and Sia, I found out that there was outrage over the video upon further research for the meaning. When I first saw the video I thought it was a father and daughter deal where she was trying to escape an abusive situation, or even the popular theory that they both had diseases and only one was able to overcome it. But alas after reading one particular article, (which I don't want to give credence to because I'm on a boycott at the moment for their reporting style), it was clarified that it was both forms of her emotions in the video.
The thing that gets me about the whole deal of people thinking it was pedophilia disturbs me because that wasn't my first thought seeing as how I know what interpretive dancing entails. Then the vibe of the song wasn't that of anything sexual at all, it was clearly that of an internal struggle of some sort. Those were just two things I took right off the top within like ten seconds of the song playing, I guess that's from my years of listening to rock songs that are meant to play on emotions. So anyone who doesn't see the art and struggle in the music in general won't see what the message is going to be when they actually watch the visuals for it. In fact I know people heard this song way before the video even came out, so that actually shows you who was listening to the actual song for understanding versus just listening to it because everyone else is.
Well first before I say anything else, I would acknowledge that people like to get mad about anything for any reason without even knowing why they are mad at it themselves. So naturally people who were mad at this video would find pedophilia as the perfect launching point for something to complain about. I mean come on, the little girl was already wearing the outfit from the previous, award winning video, and it was known that the video was going to be apart of a series of three videos, soooo smh at those people.
This seems like the perfect segue into the topic at hand lol.
I don't think a lot of people understand an artists true intentions beyond the sound they here, being eclectic allows people to hear that beat as a part of what the emotional tone is suppose to be, followed by the lyrics which puts the scene in your mind, with the visuals completing the play that was in your head. All music is meant to inspire some sort of emotion from you, whether it be profound deep thoughts to mindless just dance around in a circle all night until your blows up from happiness.
That's the purpose of music, to make you feel.
I know people will say this and that about eclectic people, but eclectic people really are the best kinds of people because they understand so many different types of music that they can tap into different types of songs to deal with different levels of feelings in their life. Classic music can be used to calm and make a person think, while jazz can put you into a euphoria of either sad or happy feelings while making you think on them, or they could play some Rap or Hip-Hop, depending on what it is and it can have you getting hype or thinking about something from the past that haunts them. Rock, Reggae, Pop, Techno, any kind of music can make you tap into your mind and make you feel, as long as you let it.
Too often people get caught up on the sounds associated to race and regionalism rather than listening to the message behind it making you cope. Now there are artist out there that promote trash and hate, but for the most part, artists try to sing about their pains and dealings. Emotions are universal, regardless of who it's coming from, so if a white rock artist is singing about a woman whom he loved with all his heart, and she suddenly left him and she's happy now, I can relate to that because it has happened to me. If I can catch the tune and the drift of the song, then I can listen to it. One of the most notable songs that come to mind that crossed multiple ethnicities, outside of Michael Jackson, has to be N*SYNC's Gone. That song ended up on 106 & Park with fully grown black men singing every single word, that's what put Justin on the urban maps from there on out.
The one thing I want people to take from this is to reach out and try to listen to something that's similar in a different genre, (and there are artists that are similar in different genre's), try to learn and understand that artist, then slowly branch out to others. It will help you in the long run when you're somewhere and some random artist comes on and you actually like that song. I mean in Rap & Hip-Hop they incorporate some of the most random songs you would never think they would know into the very beats you love. A lot of those producers, well the great ones at least, are very eclectic and they actually work with multiple artists across multiple genre's.
Just give it a shot, you may never know what you might find in those unknowing lands, it's worked out for me so far.
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