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For this blog post I listened to Indian pop music to compare with that of America’s. The first song, Closer by Mickey Sign and Dipret Dhillon is a song from the male perspective trying to get a woman to love him. The interaction seems almost balanced as singers love interest also shows interest in him “all of this touching and teasing is making this obvious”. An interesting lyric is “This boy is now slave to your orders just make my one wish come true”. To me this gives some cultural insight on what extent Indian couples are supposed to go for each other. Song #2, Akh Lad Jaave by the male artist Badshah, Jubin Nautiyal and female artist Asees Kaur is about a couple that is madly in love with each other as shown by the lyrics “I can’t find sleep all night long when my eyes meet yours”. The song uses these powerful statements to show the powerful feelings this couple has for each other. Song #3 is Jind Mahi by Daljit Dosanjh. Jind Mahi means love of my life in Punjabi and as the title suggest the song is about an intense love. The lyrics are very deep and dramatic as shown by the lyrics “why are you so far, come closer so close that our breaths cross, come let’s become one.” Similar to the first two songs, Jind Mahi uses strong statements to show the interconnectedness of the couple. Song #4 Gotta Go by Zack Knight is different from the other songs as it is about the singer getting his heart broken. The singer gives strong emotional response to the one that broke his heart and goes into detail about how she made him feel.

The Indian pop music displays relationships as having a much stronger bond than American pop songs. There is a clear difference in the way that way that Indian pop songs show relationships than do American pop songs. Indian pop songs tend to place more emphasis on emotion in contrast to the American pop songs about love which tend to be more about the physical aspect of relationships. For example, while say so by Doja Cat places a lot of time on the feelings of the other person, she spends most of the second verse talking about the physical aspects of the relationship. Further comparisons can be made with Gotta Go and American break up songs. While Gotta Go focuses on the transgressions made by the woman who broke his heart American pop songs concentrate more on the individual self. For example, Break My Heart by Dua Lipa questions her own feelings about falling in love with someone who can potentially break her heart while not explaining what her lover did to make her feel that way.

The Indian focus on relationships is to be expected because India has a much more interdependent culture than America. India’s interdependent culture has a lot to do with their religious culture. For example, the Hindu Aharma of the householder where one spends a significant portion of their life taking care of their family. Also, culturally, Indian people are more likely to put others needs before their own while Americans believe that you must take care of yourself before you can take care of others. These cultural aspects also reflect why the Indian singers consider the other feelings more heavily than in American songs.

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This time around I have listened to and Nigerian pop music to analyze. I have listened to On the Low by Burna Boy, Joro by Wizkid, Fall by Davido, and Reason with Me by Rudeboy. All of these songs use Pidgin English which is a common form of colloquial speech spoken in Nigeria. Although this way of talking can make it difficult to understand, it may provide some cultural insights. On the Low by Burna boy is about the romantic relationship the singer has with a woman and how he makes her feel. The song Joro by Wizkid is about the singer hitting on a girl. The name of the song “Joro” can mean crazy as in the way Wizkid feels about this girl. It can also refer to his flirting with the woman. Fall by Davido is about the singer apologizing to his significant other and stating that he doesn’t want to be a player anymore. The music video has a different in that it starts with Davido being yelled at by his significant cuother and then going off to fantasize about his ideal relationship. The deepest of the songs lyric wise was Reason with me being about how the singer was once poor and his girlfriend at the time dumped him because of his finances and now that he is rich and successful, he wants to come back into his life. He tried to reason with her to stay with him when he was poor but now that he is rich the situation switched so that he has to reason with her of why he doesn’t want to be with her after she didn’t stick with him in his hard times. These songs all have in common the theme of theme of talking to a significant other (or ex significant other). This points to how important romantic relationships are in Nigeria which hints at a given that they are focusing so much on a person that the individual choose. However, while this can be seen as interdependent as well because of how much time is spent on finding a spouse, which could translate to time spent with the family later down the road. The reason behind this interdependence could be because of many factors including from old traditions, socioeconomic, and historical events. The traditions of Nigeria would include those of finding a partner and raising a family. As noted in our Clash! text western African people have a different view of relationships than we do in America in which you cant just cut someone off even if you consider them a enemy. For insight of how important family is to Nigerian culture, I added a clip of a wedding and interview of the couple where they explain a few of the differences from western culture.

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For this blog post I listened to Colombian Pop music and

Song #1 Perriando by Reykon

The Colombian song that I choose to listen to first was Perriando by Reykon. The name of the song “Perriando” translates to something like “dirty dancing” in English. The lyrics of the song follows this theme with dancing at parties to different songs such as La Murga De Panama. As well as being referenced in the lyrics, the instrumentals to La Murga De Panama were sampled in this song contributing greatly to the Latin pop vibe of the song. I was surprised to find such strong language in the song after reading the translation but compared to music that appears on the American charts, this song was tame. Culturally, this song places a great importance on dancing that we don’t have in American culture. In American Party music such as “Life is Good” by Drake and Future, the focus seems to be more on wealth than dancing. This could be because rather than focusing on the moment and what they have Americans tend to look towards future desires.

Song #2

Vallenato Apretao by Silvestre Dangond is the second Colombian song I decided to listen to, with its title translating to Tight Vallenato. Vallenato is a form of popular folk music that originated in Colombia. The lyrics tell a story of a guy who watches a girl dancing in the distance, and dances with her no matter how he looks. The chorus also seems to have a sexual inuendo occurring. This song is really interesting to me because it seems to focus heavily on the other person in the relationship rather than the storyteller compared to an American pop song such as Heartless by The Weeknd which focuses heavily on the details of the characters life. This difference is likely cultural as the independent American culture is places more emphasis on the individual rather than relationships.

Song #3

The third song from my selection is Tusa by Karol G ft Nicki Minaj. In Colombia, “Tusa” is the word for how one feels after a breakup. As expected, the song is about a breakup, and the story of the song takes the viewpoint of the girl. She tries to get over the breakup by parting and drinking but is still hurt about the issue. The man seems to have moved on just fine however and won’t even send texts back to the girl. This interaction is likely to be based on the different levels of independence and interdependence that men and woman exhibit. The man being more independent was able to move on from the relationship quickly, but the woman, having more interdependence feels like she lost a part of herself when the relationship ended. Also, worth analyzing is Nicki Minaj’s verse. As a Caribbean-American her verse on the song displayed much more independence than Karol G’s, showcasing her confidence as being the “Baddest” girl he would’ve ever met, and being more easily moving on than Karol G’s character.

Song #4

The fourth song I listened to was Que Pena by Maluma and J Balvin. The title of this song translates to “too bad”. This song tells the story of a man who is reintroduced to a beautiful girl that recognizes him, but he is still trying to remember who she is. The title “Que Pena” refers to how its “too bad” that he doesn’t recognize her name. The character in the song smoothly attempts to get close to the girl while still trying to remember where he knows her from. Although this is the most lyrically independent song, out of the four I choose, it still focuses on the girl of interest as much as it does the main character.

Overall it seems that Colombia as a culture is more interdependent than the USA, but less so than Japan in that each artist placed some concern for their individual needs.

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Konnichiwa minnasan! (Hello everybody!) I decided to listen to a few Japanese pop songs and compare them to what is on the American charts. Imitation Rain by SixTONES actually uses more English than it does Japanese. The lyrics are very abstract and seem to be about a breakup as it uses language like “You said I will be the sky and you will be the sun to shine Fake dreams start to shatter like glass roses.” This song starts with a piano riff and transitions to guitar and pop beats and transitions back and forth giving the song alternating energy from sad to aggressive. The interesting instrumentals of this song made it memorable for me and the way the lyrics are so abstract make me want to return again and find more meaning in them. The second song 無謀な夢は覚めることがない by STU48 translates to “A reckless dream never wakes up” the song follows the theme of talking about dreams and how they are in life starting in the youth. The lyrics are abstract but remain clear on the theme. The content is inspiring to people who want to chase their dreams stating that their dreams have meaning. STU48 is a female group and in this song, they use very catchy vocals and electronic sounds. This song was entertaining but I found I do not enjoy the big Japanese girl pop groups as much as I do other acts. The third song was 馬と鹿 by Kenshi Yonezu. The title of the song translates to Horse and deer. The Kanji used in these two words combine to form the word “Baka” which means stupid in Japanese. It is thought the origin of this word comes from people being told by the king to say a horse is a deer and then being punished when they were “stupidly honest” In this song the singer honestly tells his pains and of his love. This song is more focused on the storytelling than the its pop appeal and the emotion he delivers the song with makes it work for me. The final song I focused on was Pretender by official Higedandism. This song is about a man who is in a relationship with a girl but knows that the relationship isn’t meant to last and how it is still hard to say goodbye. Official Higedandism is a Pop band similar to an American pop band with a guitarist, male vocalist, drummer and bassist as the core of the band. The singer is very skilled, and the lyrics hit hard making this my favorite of the songs I focused on. All of the Japanese songs talked about their relationships and emotional connections with other people. Compared to Japanese pop music, America’s is expectedly interpersonal. For example, the billboard number one song on Americas chart, Roddy Rich’s the Box speaks of his achievements such as driving a bulletproof Cadillac. However, the song is not all about Rich as he also citizens the American police force as well. American Pop music seems to have more variety as you have songs from artist such as pop-band Maroon 5, and singers such as Dua Lipa and The Weeknd. This could be because of how Americans like to have many choices and establish their independence in contrast to how Eastern Asian countries would rather be part of a group. This could also be a reflection on how the different cultures listen to the music with Japanese listening to their pop music more for the meaning behind it and Americans more for the sound.