Good Music /= Good Poetry

 Heading into college, I hope to have my own radio show where I play common/well known music, but have one show every week or two that is strictly new or uncommon music. I've gotten this idea from the radio station 101.1 WKQX where they play newer music Sunday nights on a program called Queued Up. Therefore, I've been setting a standard for myself where I find at least one new song a day and add it to my Spotify account. I've set up a quick way for myself to scroll through copious amounts of bands and songs to find one that I enjoy.

 First step, the rhythm/music. It's the most important factor to a good song. If you don't like how the instruments work with each other, then nothing will make you really like the song. Personally, I look for songs with a faster pace, so I scavenge the song to see if there is a faster rhythm, and if not, then I move onto the next one. Next step is the singer. Although less important, the voice and how it works with the music can change the song as a whole. If it all sounds good, then I listen to the song straight through, and add it to a list, but I never actually look deep into the lyrics of the song.

 For example, some of my newer additions to my music and the meanings of the lyrics were unknown to me until i actually focused on the lyrics themselves. One of these songs is Sondre Lerche's song "Bad Law." The sound of the song was interesting with a solid singing, so I would just enjoy the sounds and rhythms instead of what the lyrics are. Only recently, I noticed that the whole song is about the murder of a wife and going through the court systems to a guilty verdict. So instead of focusing on words as a whole, taking pieces from the song are all that can be taken from how good it is. 

 Also, I've been listening to more foreign music, most notably from the Scandinavian area. From the Finnish Satellite Stories to the Swedish Oh My!, the music, although sung in English, works well for what I'm looking for. This hasn't really caused any issues between music and poetry, until I added the song "Låt Det Blöda" by Boris och The Jeltsins. This is a Swedish band that sings in Swedish, making any interpretation of the lyrics impossible, yet the song is still great to listen to.

 So while originally I thought that it was malarkey to say music isn't poetry, it can be considered depending on the way you listen to it. Are you listening to music for the story it tells or what the words mean to you, or by the way the song sounds? If it's the atter, like myself, then i don't think music can qualify as being poetry.