I believe the media we consume affects the way we see the world around us. For this reason, it’s important that we are open-minded and take in things that are uplifting rather than media that brings us down.  I think it’s important that we don’t just wait for the positive media to find us, but purposely research it for ourselves because often we have negative media put onto us and we take it in unconsciously. 

For me, I see this mostly in the lyrics of songs. When you do your own research, I believe you can find things you connect to on another level and learn things that will personally shift how you experience everyday life.Perspective changing songs to me are songs that make you think outside of the box that you usually think in. I’m going to share four great songs with you that I believe do just this.

I think everyone benefits from a perspective change. There are always different views on life  to take in because there are endless unique experiences that happen every day. I think music is a great way to approach that. It’s my favourite way, at least, but there are many other ways to let in new perspectives. 

“So Much Trouble in the World” – Bob Marley (1979)

Bob Marley is good at bringing the general population into a perspective change. Everyone can take something from his music because his lyrics are expansive and transformative. His lyrics have depth and meaning but are not limited to one group of people.

This is my favourite Bob Marley song. It’s often that I am first hooked to a song from its beat rather than the lyrics. I added this song to my playlist for this reason, but after playing it at least five times, I started to pay attention to the lyrics. This song brings light to the fact that there are issues in our world, and it’s something that is okay to acknowledge. This is not to say there isn’t also so much good in the world to acknowledge, because there is. We can’t have the good without the bad, vice versa. 

One line that I think is the most eye-opening in this song is, “We’ve got to face the day /Ooh, we come what may/We the street people talking/ Yeah, we the people struggling.” We can’t hide from life. We should acknowledge that there is good and bad, and we should come into acceptance with that because you can’t force that to change in life.

“Where is the Love” – Black Eyed Peas (2003)

This is an iconic song from the early 2000s. I love how blunt it is. The message is clear: we should look at the values we claim to have because we might find that they don’t always match up with the reality of how we treat people. 

My favourite line in this song is: “If you only have love for your own race / Then you only leave space to discriminate.” To me, this means we should look at how we categorize people of different cultures. 

Some people need to hear this, and not just because it’s a catchy song, but because some of us haven’t woken up yet and need to hear an important message. 

I remember when I was in elementary school, I would listen to this song when playing the game “Just Dance”. Just Dance had a Black Eyed Peas addition videogame that came out in 2011. I didn’t fully understand the song till later on in life, but I always felt how positive and upbeat it felt when dancing to the song. 

“Rock the Casbah” – The Clash (1982)

This song was released in 1982 and blew up after getting played on MTV’s song rotation. This is another iconic song that first caught my attention because of the uplifting and catchy sound, but soon I came to actually listen to the lyrics, and I realized it was not only a catchy song but a long with meaning. I had to do a little bit of research to fully understand the song. 

“Rock the Casbah” is about an Islamic country’s banning Western music. The main chorus goes “Sharif didn’t like it/ rocking the cabash/ rock the cabash/.” The word Casbah refers to a fortress surrounding towns in North Africa. To rock the “casbah” means to go against authoritarianism by dancing and listening to music whilst expressing one’s individual freedom. 

To me, this song is perspective-changing because I believe it encourages us when looking at our lives to express ourselves without putting ourselves in a box because someone says we should. It is when we find ourselves not in a way that just pleases the people around us, but most importantly, ourselves. Though this is not the main point of the song, I believe it is something that can be reflective of it and bring a new perspective and freedom into our lives.

“Dark Necessities” – Red Hot Chili Peppers (2016)

This is one of my favourite songs from Red Hot Chilli Peppers, mainly because of the perspective it brings into dark times in our lives and prompts us to look at those hard times and accept them rather than fight against them. 

A lyric that stands out to me is “Do you want this love of mine?/ darkness helps us all the shine/Do you want it, Do you want it now?” The song points out that our struggles in life are not something we need to push away automatically, but acknowledge that yes, I struggle with this, but yes, I am growing, and I’m learning new things. 

To me, this means self-acceptance rather than shaming oneself. Our struggles make us the empathetic humans we need to be sometimes. Something that I’ve had to learn in life is that only sitting with the good things in life and fighting/ignoring the difficulties doesn’t help. I believe we should let the hard thing pass, whilst acknowledging that yes, this is happening, and it will pass.