'Is music a reflection of society?'

“Is music a reflection of society? Or does it lead society? Or both? If so then what does this tell us about our own society?

“Most of the popular music nowadays is either:
“1) people rapping about sex and drugs. 2) people singing about sex and drugs. 3) people singing about crashing cars into bridges. 4) people rapping or singing about partying.

“Of course most of these people have little to no talent and dress like sluts or "gangsters". There are some artists that are talented and write good music, but those are not as popular and numerable.

“So what say you?” - Ascendant606

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Music must surely reflect society and also influence society. It depends. You can't be talking about society as a whole because not all the members of any society listen to the same kinds of music. It seems, from the rest of your post, that you mean, specifically, young people and pop music.

The use of the word "society" is always suspect. Are you on about old grannies in a old folks' homes or members of a Muslim gang in Alum Rock? They are both part of British society but I doubt they listen to the same music.

I think you are correct about 'most' pop music being about sex, drugs and stuff. Then again, that's been the case since the 1950s or even before that. (Not sure about people crashing cars into bridges though. Though there was a lot of car-driving and crashing cultures in the 1950s - think of James Dean.)

Perhaps it's unrealistic to expect pop music to be about other things such as quantum mechanics, abortion and 18th century Kantian philosophy. One point of pop music, surely, is that it's not about these kinds of thing. If you want to think about other things, then don't listen too much to pop music. Then again, I suppose that in theory pop music could be about quantum mechanics or daffodils and there is, for example, a lot of Christian pop/rock music and also intellectual and political rock, etc.

In other words, if you truly want something different, go look for it because it exists.