How has the music industry changed in the past few decades? According to Doctor Maerhofer, chair of Fine Arts and Humanities at the College of Southern Maryland, "The biggest change in the music industry to me has been the way they market music." As Maerhofer grew up, he noticed that industry's marketing brought about many changes, both beneficial and regrettable.
Values have progressively been undermined as the music industry has become a bigger influence in our lives. Before T.V. was at large, entertainment could be monitored easily by parents. "There was no 24 hour music, there were only select radio stations, guest appearances, and records." This limitation of entertainment provided severe censoring of lyrics. "We simply weren't allowed to listen to explicit language" says Maerhofer, "music had suggestive language, but nothing immoral was ever allowed to be broadcast." Doctor Maerhofer explained that between the 60's and 70's a few bands started trying certain, more derogative lyrics in their music. Much of the public highly disapproved of this, but there was nothing recording companies could do. "What were they gonna do, spank them? They were rolling in money." Logically, more singers began using explicit language, and before long, people were buying records simply because of the profane lyrics. Throughout the following decades, the language in songs has gotten worse and worse. I questioned Doctor Maerhofer on the most recent changes in music language. His response was that lyrics have changed to violence and sexuality. "The music industry, particularly in the 70's, liked to market songs that talked about killing policemen, or sexual references." Singers would sing any kind of thing for attention. "Groups like Suicidal Tendencies" Maerhofer continues, "wrote lyrics like," I saw your mommy in a pool of red, I saw your mommy and your mommy was dead." Violence was "cool" back then , but we still have this sort of thing in music to present day.
