ABSTRACT
This chapter untangles the web of personalities involved in music video, including Sia (the artist), Ziegler (the actor), and the presumed narrator of the lyrics. Nowhere in the lyrics or the video do the peoples get the sense that the narrator, or Paak’s character in the video, is jealous of their lover’s new life. Lyrics that are explicitly positive tend to cluster around two categories: empowerment and success. Empowerment lyrics are those that describe a feeling of satisfaction in a situation that may not seem resoundingly positive. Songs about love and sex might represent the greatest overall proportion of lyrics in music. Such a universal topic transcends genres, appearing in country, hip-hop, rock, jazz, and classical songs. Many songwriters, such as the Canadian multi-instrumentalist Moonface, source lyrics from accounts of their own dreams as recorded in dream journals. Still more popular musicians draw inspiration from thoughts or visions that they might have had under the influence of drugs.
