The Problem Of Literal Listening

In this thought provoking piece by Kat Harding, she explores the issue of literal listening in the music industry, particularly when it comes to the music of women and people of color, and why it is that there exists such pressure to leave artistic interpretation out of their lyrics.

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Guest post by Kat Harding of CASH Music

At the end of last year, someone behind the Twitter account for Louisville, Kentucky all-dude band Quiet Hollers took some time to call out the artist Mitski for a supposedly incorrect lyric in her song “Texas Reznikoff,” in which she calls Texas “a land-locked state.” Included in the tweet were the lyrics, a map of Texas with a hand-drawn arrow to the “oshun” [sic], and a photo of a man looking confused. (They softened the blow slightly by including “(love this song + whole album for real)” in their tweet.)

Mitski quote tweeted the whole thing with an exasperated but measured comment that she’s knows that Texas isn’t really landlocked and that “the meaning of the lyric is between me+who I wrote it for.”

This minor incident is emblematic of a much-larger issue with women and people of color who write songs. There’s a distinct burden on them to leave out artistic interpretation when it comes to lyrics. To some people, their words must be taken literally and should be examined as such in both benign Twitter exchanges to the courtroom.

A more famous example is the explosion of commentary that occurred when Beyonce dropped her incredible visual album Lemonade. Thinkpieces abounded, trying to figure out exactly what Jay-Z had done.