Romantic Songs Genre Popularity - On the Topic of Relatability in Entertainment Media
"Romantic songs are easier to get more popularity than if I were to made songs about Environmental Issue - that I had to get extra effort to let others know about it!"
This is a statement of a Musician Guest who got invited to my highschool. I can sense a bit of frustration in the tone, however the musician felt like it was worth the effort to stay true to his songs about Environmental Issues. I remembered they did get a spotlight at that time because their song stood out at that time.
Probably many musicians and songwriters in the 2010s might share similar frustration that Romantic Songs genre related to people faster. And I want to sit down with that thought.
Speaking of romantic songs, I'd like to share classic Honeyworks songs that I have always loved since highschool:
Bokuga Namaewo Yobuhi/僕が名前を呼ぶ日
I also recently read a book about Arthurian Myths by Flame Tree Publishing, that they mentioned how Chrétien de Troyes, a French Poet who wrote several stories for Arthurian Legends, where his stories was written to entertain people at the time. However it is important to mention that while the story was influenced by the political and marital aspect for power, the story he told was mainly focused on, and I quoted:
"Men who seek love matches and are willing to lay down their lives for the women they adore"
And the result? The stories were well-received by the people. This made me realize that, even Romance in the context of heroic stories were very popular.
Now I'm going to talk about in the context of Entertainment Media
As someone who has worked in the Entertainment Industry, I couldn't agree more that some genres do sell faster and well, while the others needed more effort to get people hooked and made them decide to engage with that media.
Relatability.
As someone who lives in Southeast Asia, my childhood stories are brimming with ghost stories to teach us to not mess around and behave well, and it does shape the culture in my country. Though now that I think about it, maybe the spirits and ghosts in the story have their own boundary that we had to respect; They often times resided in an isolated forest or nature that if we were to disturb it, they'd get mad like humans do. But the point is, the culture around Spirits are becoming part of our lives and stories that some business people thought that selling ghost and spirits stories are easy way to make a quick buck - In which while it is true, though I believe that the relatability accepted by such wide audience is such an important factor.
Also, I still believe you still need to write really good story and have interesting visuals, in a more saturated spirit and ghost commercial entertainment world. Which actually same goes to writing romantic songs; You still need to have the skill and work really hard to really make great ones in the context of commercial settings. So it's not actually directly 'easier'!
I hope you like this blog entry! It has been sitting on my thought while I was reminiscing the days of my highschool that I had to write about it here