Pleasure
Twista Ft. Chris Brown,"Make A Movie," hip-hop/R&B,2010
Trey Songs,"Juniper Love,"R&B,2009
Jamie Foxx,"Storm (Forecass),"R&B,2005
Musiq Soulchild,"Love,"R&B,2000
Ginuwine,"Differences,"R&B,2001
Community Service
K-Ci & JoJo,"Momma Song,"R&B,1999
Village People,"Y.M.C.A,"Pop,1978
Super Group,"We Are The World: 25 for Haiti,"Pop,2010
John Lennon,"Imagine,"Pop,1988
Michael Jackson ft.Akon,"Hold My Hand,"Pop,2010
Without even attempting this assignment, if someone asked me which topic in the music industry (community service or pleasure) is most prevalent my answer obviously would be pleasure. Every time I turn on the radio or tune into a video majority of the songs are about pleasure. Pleasure is such a wide aim because pleasure basically constitutes anything that makes one happy. Most artists sing or rap about money, cars, sex, and drugs which give them pleasure. So when I had to name 5 songs that depicted pleasure I simply wrote down the name of the songs that were floating in my mind at the time. It’s not surprising that most songs are about sex, drugs , and money because every other aspect of the media make millions of off producing movies and TV shows that are about sex, money, and drugs. Basically if the characters are not having sex, doing drugs, or dealing with money in the work it probably won’t do well.
When deciding songs for both aims, community service and pleasure, the process in which I decided was different. It was almost three times as hard to produce a list of songs for the community service aim compared to that of producing a list for the pleasure aim. Not saying that all community service oriented songs are created this way but it seems as if most community service songs arise after a tragedy. It’s almost as if we as a society are saying forget about helping other people on a daily basis but wait until a natural disaster, etc. occurs to want to help out your fellow man. So after these tragedies artist (usually a group of artist) create songs about the tragedy to raise money and then the artists usually don’t produce another community service oriented so until another tragedy.
The Hindu understanding of the pleasure and community service aims expose the true nature of the American society once coupled beside American pop music. It’s almost as if the Hindu understanding and the American pop music portrayal of the American culture are exact opposites. In the Hindu understanding of the pleasure aim is basically saying it’s ok to enjoy pleasure but don’t think that having pleasure is simply enough. In American pop music if one has achieved pleasure they are usually content and that’s all that they need. For American pop music community service songs come far and between or usually correlate with a national or global tragedy. Whereas with the Hindu understanding it’s more important to help out and be a part of the community than it is to be self-absorbed.
