What's Your Favorite Song?

Our class discussion last week about what teenagers listen to and what drives them to make their music listening choices, prompted me the next day to give my junior and senior English classes a new assignment. I started class by asking the students to take out a piece of paper and pencil. After reassuring them that this wasn’t a quiz, I gave them a simple direction.

Write down the title, artist, and genre of your favorite song.

Their initial excitement quickly turned to panic cries of “Just one?!” “I don’t have a favorite” and “How much time do we have for this?!” Some wrote their answer quickly and with great confidence. Others hesitated, wrote, erased, and rewrote. Once they all settled on a song, I offered the next detail of the assignment.

Describe the song.

Some immediately began writing. Others changed their song choice (again). As they wrote their paragraph descriptions, I asked them to include why this song was their favorite.

Finally I asked them to write down their favorite lyric to the song they chose. (Using asterisks where profanity would appear).

The classroom was buzzing as they passed in their papers. Some were comparing song choices. Others were telling me that I had to listen to their song ASAP or begging me to turn the class into a music session to hear all of the songs. Alas, we had to get back to the tasks of the day, but it did make me curious as to how I could incorporate music into writing assignments, since some of my more apathetic students showed more energy and effort in those ten minutes than I had seen all year.

As I read over their responses, some statistics that we saw in class were confirmed. Rap was the most popular, followed by R&B, Hip Hop, and Alternative. There were a few surprises too. Jazz, Classical, Christian, and Indie Rock were all selected by one or more students. And more students picked a Metal song than a Country song. However the most shocking part is that no two students picked the same song. Artists like Drake, Kanye West, and Nicki Minaj were on several papers, yet each student in all three classes picked a different song. Perhaps there is still some originality in teen culture.

Their descriptions of the songs were equally intriguing. I purposefully did not give them much direction because I wanted to see where they naturally went with describing their songs. Some went metaphorical like one boy describing a metal song as “being in a nightmare.” Over half of the students described the songs solely by the content. “This song is about a boy in love with a girl who doesn’t love him back,” etc. Others described their songs by telling how the songs make them feel. I could usually infer that these feelings came from the beat of the song. For instance one senior girl described how the hip hop song made her feel energized and pumps her up before a party or a cheerleading competition. A junior boy described an R&B song as “chill” and that it also makes him “feel chill,” redundant yet obvious that the feeling, not the lyrics, was what was most important to him. The smallest majority (only four students) described the songs strictly based on the music. Their own music knowledge was transparent as they described songs “written in the key of D major in ¾ time” or a singer with “a high-pitched, yet controlled voice.” Finally a quarter of the students described all of the above. Telling me what the lyrics were about while also describing the mood of the song, how it is preformed, and/or how they connect to it.

The results of this small assignment were interesting to me. I expected hip hop/rap to be the most popular, and they did hold true to that. But I was pleased to see that some students were not afraid to be unconventional and pick “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” as a favorite or to declare boldly (and sarcastically) on paper, “Yes, I know a teenager that’s into classical music. Oh no it’s the end of the world…”. I also expected their descriptions to be more about the beat/sound of the song, yet the majority was focused on content. They are listening to the words of these songs, and while there were a few who couldn’t think of a lyric to write out, the overwhelming majority found that part of the writing assignment to be easiest and even added their own interpretation of the lyric.

The bottom line for me, teenagers love music. I knew they loved to listen to it, but they also love to discuss it and will write freely about it without complaint. I see more music writing assignments in my classes’ futures because this is an underdeveloped opportunity to practice descriptive writing and self-expression.