Music and Feelings

There are so many things that distinguish one sort of music from another. The emotions they want to express might be the same, but they can create such different feelings which, while they’re being conveyed, also give the genre its characteristic, well, feel.

Take, for example, telling a woman that she looks beautiful, or that you love her:

Soft Rock – Soft rock is about expressing the feeling of comfort that you have with the girl and the kind of comfort you want her to feel. Examples: You’re Beautiful – James Blunt, Southern Girl – Incubus

Hard Rock – The feeling isn’t as much love as much as making love; hard rock songs tend to convey feelings like the night spent together was wild and completely worth it. Examples: Trampled Underfoot – Led Zeppelin, American Woman – Lenny Kravitz

Soul – Here the songs are slow, more like ballads, what are typically classified as ‘love songs’. These songs involve crooning words of love strung together as a method of, well, ‘wooing’ a girl. Examples: Are You Lonesome Tonight – Elvis Presley, any Pat Boone song

Funk – Well, not to undermine these songs, but funk romantic songs involve conveying your emotions while the two of you are on the dance floor, generally to a hip-shaking beat (otherwise they’re quite similar to Soul). Example: Call My Name – Prince, Pussy Control – Prince

RnB – The music is informal, the lyrics are regular sentences spoken musically – until the main beat drops in for the chorus and it gets all warm and perfect for you to say it over and over again how beautiful she looks to you... Examples: Ellie My Love – Ray Charles

Jazz – Jazz just lets the music create a light-hearted, happy feeling inside and lets the title of the track tell you what it’s all about. The fact that it’s a compliment is just an added bonus; a lot of times jazz just overrides the emotion for the feeling that it wants to create. Example: The Way You Look Tonight – Sonny Sitt & Red Holloway

Metal – Things such as liking a woman are too trivial for a genre like metal. The best you can hope for is a song where the guy kills the girl in a fit of jealousy and starts growling about a psychopath’s existence.

So, to sum up, Feelings, more than Emotions, are more or less unique for every different genre. A more thorough analysis would prove that it is the feelings itself that are the only classification factor for different genres of music. If a person chooses to represent a certain emotion and express a certain feeling with it, he or she shall inevitably create music of that particular genre 9 out of 10 times. This is also why certain people prefer certain types of music over others – because of the feelings associated with them, which they can relate to at a subconscious level. These feelings are represented by a type of music that they can appreciate at a more conscious level.