Sociology

Explore one contemporary social issue or problem as expressed in music. Here is how to proceed:

1) Choose one social issue or social problem (i.e. substance abuse, environmental concerns, suicide, war, teenage pregnancy, hate crimes, etc.).

2) Find at least 3 songs with lyrics that address your chosen social issue/problem. You will need to cite these songs using proper APA formatting.

3) Analyze the songs for similarities and differences in how they address the social issue/problem. You may:

– look for themes within and among the songs (i.e. songs about war that talk about ‘ending war’)

– consider the year the songs were copyrighted

– consider the genre the song fits in

– what type of vocabulary, words, grammar, euphemisms, vernacular is used for the lyrics?

4) Find one source that addresses music and/or your social problem (i.e. the sources are providing similar analysis or commentary on how your social problem is addressed through music or on the seriousness of a particular issue or problem). This may be a popular source (i.e. a magazine article or website), but Wikipedia is not acceptable.

5) Find one peer-reviewed article that discusses your social issue or problem and how it is portrayed in the media (ideally this would be on how it is portrayed in music, but it can be a discussion about how the issue is portrayed in the news, on TV, radio, internet, movies, etc.)

6) Write up your findings and post them

Note: Information about the singer/band should be a very minimal part of this analysis; the lyrics are the heart of the analysis.