There was once a time when it was brave for public figures to open up about what they have learned through therapy. However, now that going to therapy has become more normalized in pop culture (thank goodness), the way artists speak publicly in their work about this private process of inner self-reflection has changed. And, believe it or not, it has become less honest.
What’s lost in songs like “Relationships” and “Don’t Wanna Break Up Again” is the sharing of messy, inner feelings that have not been fully worked out yet but are expressed with true, unsanitized vulnerability. We live in a post-internet culture, riddled with therapy-speak that can easily become trivialized and divorced from real meaning. Despite this, there are some artists today—SZA, Doechii, Noah Kahan, to name a few—who have managed to find new ways to share unresolved, complicated feelings in their songwriting rather than hop on this problematic bandwagon. As a result, their lyricism is far more profound and relatable.
The Trivialization of Therapy-Speak in 2020s Pop Music
On “Anti-Hero,” Taylor Swift quips about her “covert narcissism,” a reference to the personality disorder characterized by, among other things, an inflated sense of self-importance. Meanwhile, Kacey Musgraves writes about finding a “deeper well,” or greater emotional healing and wellness from introspective thinking. Even Dua Lipa made an album committed to what she called “radical optimism,” or actively choosing “pure joy and happiness” amidst the chaos of life’s trials and tribulations.
The espousing of terminology related to psychoanalysis and self-care is all over the pop music landscape today. The intentions are pure, but the meaning is muddled. This is not to say that these artists aren’t speaking their truth, but when that truth is mixed with clinical terms and concepts that come from mental health professionals and self-help phenomena, the authenticity of original thought can feel absent.
Furthermore, it seems that the artist is speaking from the perspective of their evolved state rather than someone who is in the process of doing the difficult introspection necessary for personal growth. The effect can feel condescending or, at the very least, divorced from the actual struggle of what it feels like to reckon with one’s darker thoughts and impulses.
The actual meaning behind these therapeutic concepts can be cheapened as well. Some people may not know this, but pop artists are not clinical professionals. One could argue that it’s irresponsible for them to relay professional advice at all. In fact, their reiteration of concepts from therapy feels like a game of telephone, in that the true meaning behind these buzzwords gets lost in translation. This is most evident when their use of therapy-speak gets lumped together with unrelated ideologies like astrology.
Last year, there were multiple songs about the astrological concept of Saturn returning. Kacey Musgraves opens “Deeper Well” by name-dropping this phenomenon before sharing the lessons learned from her introspective evolution. More egregious is Ariana Grande’s “Saturn Returns Interlude,” which includes a narration from astrologer Diana Garland about the concept that after approximately 29 years, the completion of the Saturn cycle compels us to confront ourselves and “wake up.” The problem is that Grande’s inclusion of this theory alongside the aforementioned therapy-speak on the album—from her “codependency” to her “self-soothing”—ultimately confuses and trivializes all of these concepts. This leaves the listener unclear not only about the meaning of these theories but also about what the artist is actually trying to communicate.
What SZA, Doechii, and Noah Kahan Are Doing Right in Their Introspective Lyrics
It turns out that there is a way to acknowledge therapy and the pursuit of self-improvement without losing authenticity and originality. SZA confronts self-help concepts in her music all the time. In fact, her song about Saturn is centered around her own unfiltered, nihilistic perspective (“I’ll be better on Saturn / none of this matters”) rather than someone else’s polished theory. On her album SOS, she seemingly mocks our culture’s insistence that using therapy-speak makes us mature: “I’m so mature, I’m so mature / I’m so mature, I got me a therapist to tell me there’s other men / I don’t want none, I just want you.”
The lyrical repetition here is important. The artist is convincing herself that she’s mature and listening to what her therapist says before voicing her true feelings about her ex. This is a more sophisticated way to incorporate contemporary therapy-speak in music because it’s more honest. The artist’s perspective here is not that of the evolved person who co-signs the professional opinion. Instead, SZA sings from the point of view of someone still in the process of doing that inner work, unafraid to confess the darker feelings and to admit that she has a long way to go.
Doechii, who recently made waves with her showstopping performance at the Grammys, recounts a portion of her journey to sobriety on “Denial is a River” with a similar duality. There are two perspectives on this track: One is the artist in denial and the second is her therapist alter-ego. Once again, here is an artist who cleverly uses therapy-speak in a sophisticated way that differentiates herself from established thinking to ultimately express something new about personal growth. Nothing about “Denial is a River” is heavy-handed, as Doechii prioritizes self-deprecating wit and honesty over simplistic and overused takeaways.
A third artist I want to highlight is popular singer-songwriter Noah Kahan, who frequently immerses the listener into his struggles with anxiety in his work. On “Your Needs, My Needs,” Kahan opens up about the toxic traits during a breakup in which his ex-partner’s needs became his own. On the bridge, he details the darker days of this post-breakup isolation (“Rail-thin, Zoloft / Subtle change, shorter days”) as the song starkly changes tempo and energy to mirror the intensity of those darker feelings and the emotional honesty of Kahan’s confessions.
These artists prove that even in the face of highly trivialized therapy-speak in pop music, there is still a way to acknowledge these concepts while maintaining authenticity. Hearing overshared and overly simplified therapy buzzwords takes the listener out of the experience of understanding an artist’s struggles. The more relatable approach is to share the messy, unresolved, and even skeptical feelings that come with doing hard, introspective work and to show what it’s like to be figuring it out rather than having already figured it out. This is not only the braver approach, but it’s also the approach that leads to better music.
via @skipppppy_art