In an age of error the most influential thing in a child and or a teenagers life is music. Whether it be Reggae, Hip Hop, Gangster Rap, R&B, Oldies Rock, Latin, or Heavy Metal it still has a way to overpower a persons mind no matter how old they are. Right now pretty much everybody that I talk to when I am on the Internet like Rap. I don’t understand how people could listen to non-stop cursing and fast-paced lyrics. Even though my opinion of the music isn’t so great the singers have to get some credit for being able to recite poetry in such a manner. I prefer the heavier stuff like Slipknot, KoRn, or Kittie because I enjoy talented people who play their own instruments, and personally I like very loud music. Reggae is well known because of one group and that group is Bob Marley and The Wailers. I happen to like them because they pretty much set the standards for a band that are known to people as Sublime. They are sort of a rock "n" roll/reggae band with hit songs like "What I Got" and "Santeria". My friends and I sometimes refer to Bob Marley as the "God" of music. Another popular style of music is the Pop music category. I think it features a bunch of no talent boy groups like N’Sync* and the Backstreet Boys. It is artists like this who are ruining our countries youth. These bands are corrupting the minds of our teen and pre-teen girls, and I don’t believe its right that they are doing this because very rarely do girls like the same music as my friends and I. Finally we get to the music that gets more interesting the heavy metal/rock music. I happen to like this style of music the best because the music means something. I don’t think that it is right for the tabloids to go out every time something happens with shootings at schools and blame it on the rock music. Rap is the music that gives the message of killing and shooting people. I don’t think it is right that they can go blame artists like Marilyn Manson and Ozzy Osbourne for children with weak minds when it comes to music that deals with death. Finally, my last point is that the tabloids judge a musician by the way that they look and from what they heard about them. They don’t look or listen to the lyrics to the songs they judge by their image and that is the wrong way to look at it.The newspapers add to the affect by talking about how heavy metal music and Goth music are bad for the child’s mind. "School Shootings are always caused by troubled teens who listen to heavy metal music," they say. The only reason they do the shootings is not because they listen to a certain kind of music; it is because they have weak minds that can’t handle the lyrics of the band. The tabloids not only blame the music but they also blame the movies. It isn’t right that they jump to conclusions that it is all the horror movies and the music’s fault. There are bands that write lyrics about things that they have experienced in their lives. The music I just happen to listen to is heavy metal and Goth metal. The bands in Goth metal have names such as Cannibal Corpse, Cradle of Filth, Six Feet Under, and Type O Negative. They are known for having songs that deal with death and other dark things. Six Feet Under is another band who I’m not too familiar with so I really can’t talk about how they can influence children. All I know is that their most recent album features a guy on the cover receiving a lobotomy by machines. Cradle of Filth is a band that combines witchcraft with music to make really sick and twisted lyrics. They are a band that I listen to because I like the way the singer alters his voice to sound all weird like a witch. The people of the United States do not approve of their music or concerts so the band is now banned from all 50 states. The decisions that these people make amaze me because the more they disapprove of the bands the more people listen to them. Ever since the "Columbine" school shooting music sales for Goth music and other paraphernalia has gone up. The U.S. did the same thing with Elvis, and look what happened he became even more popular because he was considered to be evil. They make such stupid decisions because it always blows up in their face. I think that they should use reverse psychology on the people and say to go out and buy the stuff and see what happens. The tabloids are always doing things to put down heavy metal music down. I think that they should blame some of it on rap. Rap talks about killing people in the other gangs, and it is always so vulgar with its sexual terms and language. It is the worst form of music because the different terms they use for killing someone is outrageous. Half of the songs that I heard were about "busting a cap" in someone, or sicking their dogs on a person. The tabloids say that rock/heavy metal is too violent for kids to listen to. I don’t see what the big deal is that people listen to heavy metal music. I think that the people who listen to, and take the lyrics seriously have a weak mind. Those are the kind of people who pull all of the school shootings, the people who can’t take listen to the song and say "hey it’s only a song, I shouldn’t take the words seriously". The people who are doing all of the shootings I think have a mental problem or have a hard problem telling what’s right and what’s wrong. The kids who orchestrated the shooting at Columbine high school had weak minds, and I bet that their life at home was very bad for them. I think that when they did what they did, they had no clue what they were doing. All they new was that the music told them to go out and kill someone. It wasn’t their entire fault that they did that horrifying thing, it was also their parent’s fault. I say this because I highly doubt that the parents of those kids expressed their love for them very often. The tabloids make everything seem worse than it really is, or they never really uncover the real facts. They are always working off of other people’s opinions about the situations.I will leave you with this quote, "I think the music works around the people, not the world works around the music".
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