It’s a classic battle that parents and, well, let’s call them “conservatives” have had since music has been around – from the early days of Elvis, when kids with their devil rock and roll music started doing crazy hip gyrations and what-not, to present day bands such as My Chemical Romance, Slip Knot, Marilyn Manson, or Korn, and their angry music that causes kids to do bad things. Now I’m not singling out rock; the battle is also against rap artists such as 50 Cent or Lil’ Wayne, or any number of other artists that have angry lyrics and/or music – really, anything that can stir up emotions that could be considered “less than desirable.” Even now, people are still researching the whole connection between music and emotion. Many argue that it’s the music that makes the kids miserable. However, that famous line from High Fidelity springs to mind: “Do I listen to music because I’m miserable, or am I miserable because I listen to music?”

It’s not a hard thing to figure out, dear readers. We can come up with as many excuses as we want for why two teenage girls committed a double suicide while listening to emo music. We can put the blame on Marylin Manson for Columbine. To be honest, we can take anything in the world that is considered a disaster and blame music for it. It’s an easy thing to do. It also takes away accountability. This makes it easier for parents and such to make sense of such senseless acts. The fact of the matter is no one wants to actually take the blame for such things, so it’s easier to pin it on some angry artist or violent rapper.

However, to do that would be the biggest asinine thing a person could do…and yet we still do it. We still have researchers looking into the effects music has on people – young adolescents, more often then not. Is it a waste of money to put so much time and effort into researching something as trivial as music and its affect on the psyche? Absolutely.

Take the classic mix-tape, for example. Everyone has made them. From the kid in high school that’s trying to get the girl to like him, to the college frat boys heading out on a road trip – we all dig through the music library on our computers and carefully select each track for whatever the occasion might be. Put simply, we use other people’s words and music to express how we feel…as in, how we “already” feel.

Think about it. After a fresh break-up, you can usually find one person (if not both) sitting in their room with the blinds closed and the lights off while some sappy, sad music is playing. It’s not that the music is making us feel sad and broken-hearted, but we, as human beings, are just picking at our wounds. It’s a human condition that we can’t seem to escape. When we feel angry, maybe we throw on some death metal and start banging our heads against something. When we’re happy, maybe we throw on some up-beat pop song with a catchy hook and riff. There are, of course, people that argue this: “Oh, I listen to happy music when I’m sad because it makes me happy.” Well, you’re full of shit, you liar, you. We might try to put on a happy song but, in reality, we’re just thinking how naive this singer must be to sound so happy. Soon enough, we’re flipping through the tracks until we find some David Gray or Damien Rice, or any other singer that strikes just the right chords as to what we’re feeling.

It’s just a human condition to do these things. And music isn’t the only way that we do this; the guy going through the mid-life crisis might go back and visit his old girlfriends to find out why they broke up with him (yes, two High Fidelity references in the same article. If you haven’t yet, I strongly suggest picking up the book by Nick Hornby, because it is far better than the movie, but now I’m off topic…). Or maybe it’s the prodigal son that returns to his old hometown full of bad memories, just for a nostalgic trip down memory lane. It’s just what we as humans do – we pick at scabs.

So music in itself is not to blame for senseless acts. However, it can and should be used as an indicator to deeper issues. If your teenage son is depressed all the time, sitting in his room listening to emo and scribbling angry poetry on the wall while he cuts himself, chances are the problem isn’t the music. However, if you’re missing all the other signs of a deep mental issue, maybe you should see the music as a reflection of how that kid is feeling. Instead of throwing out his CDs, posters, clothes, friends, and so-on, which would probably make him more angry (and thus sending him further into that deep, dark depression, which can then lead to dangerous behavior), maybe we should take a second to talk to him or her. Get a little more involved in their life. Help them find the problem instead of trying to fix it (because you can’t fix something if you don’t know what it is. And if you think it’s the music…well, I can only throw so many insults out).

Music is nothing but an expression of emotion. We use music to express ourselves because sometimes we can’t find the words to properly put across how it is that we feel. So instead, we throw on some death metal and exorcise the demons that way. But when you’re young, it’s not so easy. It becomes increasingly difficult to express yourself properly because, well, kids don’t know how to express themselves. They’re kids, after all. So, eventually, after it’s been building and building, the way they finally do express themselves might not be the best way. It might instead be a very dangerous way. And parents throw out the argument that they can’t get through to their kids or their kids just won’t talk, but maybe those are the parents that aren’t trying very hard. Maybe those are the ones that are running away from accountability.

Instead of running away and playing the blame game, you’ve got to try everything else under the sun. Take the kid out to a few concerts, introduce him to some new music that follows the lines of what he already likes, but something that is more appropriate. Talk to the kid and find out how school and life is, who their friends are, what they’ve got hiding in the back of their closet. If it’s a bag of pot, that’s okay. If it’s some alter with a goat’s head, well, then you’ve got issues. However, those issues DID NOT come from the music; more than likely, they came from you. Or they came from a lack of something, which still comes back to you.

Let’s put the accountability where it belongs.