A wedding is a special case of an occasional event. Practically: it’s all about having fun. The difficulty lies in the fact that two unfamiliar families meet (and more and more often all kinds of friends and acquaintances of the newlyweds), who are about to get to know each other. Traditionally approaching the matter, it is known that the most helpful in this is joint feasting, consuming high-proof drinks and dancing. And here comes the important question: for what? Music in this case is a tool that helps in integration.
Wedding songs to avoid at weddings
So it must be the right kind of music – danceable, lively, that the leg walks on its own. And it will suit all gathered. The keys to choosing the right list of songs will of course be different depending on who is going to play at the wedding, but in Poland we have quite a wide and, let’s say, iron set of hits from various music genres. By browsing various versions of the repertoires tested in various conditions on thematic websites, you can be sure that songs inappropriate for a night celebrating happy and fulfilled love will appear at the party.
Let’s look at the songs that have become a permanent part of the Polish wedding canon over the last few decades. Almost everyone knows them and happily sings and hums. We will never doubt the dance potential of the famous “Ducks” or “Lambada”. “And now we’re going for one” is a tradition-sanctioned interlude announcing the time for regeneration and subsequent toasts. But let’s start with such a “White Bear”, whose wedding orchestras must have on the menu. A cult song, but it’s actually a depressing ballad about a boy whose girlfriend dumped him and is now in a new relationship. The lyrical subject even begs his beloved to remember him, looking at the teddy bear symbolizing his sadness and feelings, “which has only gray tears in its eyes”.
The text of the song “Elevator to Heaven” from 2 plus 1, which is no less popular at weddings, is an even sadder story. The girl gets married out of necessity and without love, which she sings openly: “My beautiful Lord, I don’t love him, that’s the truth.” A letter to an actor she fantasizes about is a form of self-therapy, something to help you come to terms with the merciless realities of life. The song “Takie tango” by Budka Suflera, which is extremely popular at weddings, is also an unfortunate choice for such an occasion. The chorus is really catchy and, detached from the rest of the text, it can be used as a metaphor for marriage, because in it, just like in the tango, you need two and compatible hearts. The only problem is that Mr. Krzysztof Cugowski almost at the very beginning of the song sings: “There will be no tango between us / Even if a miracle comes true / Nothing will help”. It’s more of a break-up song or for divorcees who are indifferent to their charms.
It might also seem that the song “Jolka, Jolka remember” from the same band has been in circulation for so long that no one has any doubts that the text talks about a failed and supported by excessive alcohol consumption (“sorceress gorzałka” dancing in lovers and “meta two steps away”) Jolka’s romance, which began as unexpectedly as it ended (“I still don’t know why it started like this / Why it went out, no one knows either”) and that the lyrical subject mentions this relationship, because although he has numerous partners (“They are still different around me, I don’t wake up alone”), but “nothing is easy these days”. An odd choice for weddings also seems to be Lombard’s classic song “Przeżyj to sam”, and yet the site lists it among the top 250 hits on the list of wedding songs.
What else will we find there? For example, “She feels money in me”, “Less than zero” or “Whisky” from the band Dżem (no beautiful lady wanted to live in the wonderful hasjenda, so the lyrical subject appointed the title drink the best of the wives). The next proposal on the list is a song from Maryla Rodowicz’s repertoire “Szparka secretary” or “I tried so hard” from Red Guitars (let’s sing to the end: and now you don’t want meeee). “Red beads” from the Brathanks also appear here, and this is a text about the fact that the boy deceived the girl and then abandoned her, but she decides not to worry about it and adopts the same pattern of behavior as the cruel picker.
In other lists there is also, for example, “Małgośka” from the repertoire of Maryla Rodowicz. This is, of course, a song with wonderful lyrics by Agnieszka Osiecka, who talks with eloquence about the pain of a woman abandoned shortly before her wedding. The unfaithful not only throws Małgośka almost in front of the altar, but also marries another and potentially has children with her. Rightly so, “let him be damned”. These are just a few songs in Polish, so theoretically, the participants of the fun should realize that they are singing about failed relationships – this is not what newlyweds would like.
We also have foreign songs. Of course, in the case of English or French texts, there is a language barrier, but let’s not forget that The Police’s beautiful piece “Every Breath You Take” is about a stalker following a woman, and Sting himself has repeatedly said that the lyrics are terrible and no one should song to play at your wedding. The theoretically danceable “Billy Jean” by Michael Jackson was inspired by a true story: the psychofan wrote letters to the artist in which she claimed that they had a child together and eventually ended up in long-term therapy. The classic hit “I Will Always Love You” is a farewell song: while the chorus promises continued love, it is about separation and the fact that the lovers are not suited to each other. There are hundreds of such examples.
Listening and hearing are two different things
“In my experience, most people don’t pay much attention to the words of a song. They may know the lyrics and can sing them by heart, but they don’t pay attention to the specific words. listening,” wrote Sena Moore in Kimberly, who often uses verse and chorus analysis as a therapy tool for her patients.
The exercise is simple: the delinquent gets a piece of paper with the text of a given song and a pen. The song is played and the patient is asked to sing it and at the same time circle lines that particularly move him. As a result, the doctor almost always hears: “I never realized that this is what the singer was singing about”, “I have never heard this song like this before” or “Now I perceive this song differently than before”. And in fact, it’s not just about the lyrics. I admit that, for example, for many years I have not heard that the vocalist Kobranocka lisp, singing “I love you like Ireland” (the band claims, however, that it is a matter of technical errors, not a speech defect), until my own father pointed it out to me and my sister on one of our car trips together. Now there is no turning back, I lisp together with Andrzej Kraiński.
How is it that we listen when we don’t really hear everything in a song? Researchers have long known that when neurons process the same stimuli for some time, their reaction strength decreases over time – they “get lazy”. It is also known that the brain reacts differently when we listen to music and when we sing or speak. The activity of centers in the brain suggests that songs are first perceived by us as a coherent signal, and eventually we break them down into separate parts – Jessica Hamzelou wrote in 2010 in “Music and words: How the brain divides songs”.
In 2012, a team from the Tokyo Institute of Gerontology played familiar and unfamiliar songs to participants in their study – with lyrics, only melody and monosyllables instead of words. At the same time, the activity of their brains was recorded in the tomograph. PET scans showed that when analyzing the words of a song, however, other neural pathways are activated than when we focus on the melody itself.
Specifically, when we focus on text, the areas of the brain responsible for recognizing words and images work, and music stimulates the centers responsible for auditory processing. But you also have to remember that the brain processes words and melody at the same time, which makes things difficult. There is also the question of whether we consciously analyze what we hear, or whether we do it unconsciously and treat the songs as one of the elements of the background. It is also known that live music greatly supports the performance of tedious, boring and repetitive activities, but in turn interferes with the performance of more complex tasks and can be distracting.
Researchers looking for answers to the question of why people like to listen to songs with lyrics in languages they do not understand also have interesting conclusions. Music teacher and music therapy student Thea Tolentino explained in 2022: “When we listen to foreign music, we enjoy the words of the song as sounds and sounds, not words and their meanings.” That’s why we can sing the refrains of songs with lyrics written in foreign languages we don’t know, especially if they are accompanied by the right melody. Because it’s no secret that the background music – depending on the rhythm, key, etc. – it greatly influences what mood listeners detect and how they perceive the text. It is not for nothing that athletes often choose fast-paced songs for running.
Ethnomusicologist Lisa Decenteceo of the University of the Philippines Diliman believes, “The pitch, melody, timbre, amplitude, and other elements of a song affect listeners in many ways: emotional, psychological, cognitive, and even physical. Through these means, music adds a lot to the lyrics meaning and dimension. It is possible that often the words in front of us are masked in some way, because we focus on these musical parameters and the feelings that flow from them. And it can be very confusing, because the melody is one thing, and the lyrical layer is another. Therefore, we must remember that sometimes it is really worth checking what we sing. Because it can get awkward.
Source: Gazeta
Bruce is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment . He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
