Sing to teach — a song to explain love (and hate) in our world
There’s a thing called hate and there’s a thing called love too
I believe in love over hate, but sometimes this world seems to try harder and harder every day to reverse that concept. Early drafts of this story included recent hate examples but… you’re on the internet right now, meaning you likely saw hate speech before you got to my article. I’m here to spread the love!
When the hate demons creep in… I sing a line from Tobias Jesso Jr.’s song ‘Just a Dream’ off his solid solo album, Goon. The chorus lyrics are simple but perfect:
I can’t explain the world to you
I can’t explain the things that people choose to do
There’s a thing called hate and there’s a thing called love too
Like the love I have for your mom and for you
He vocally skips over the word hate but holds on to the word love. This is a Shakespeare tactic, emphasizing certain words. In my mind, I have sung this thousands of times since this album came out in 2013. The concept reminds me of cheap little mental tricks that motivational speakers peddle on audiences. But, it works when you sing it.
Kids and Pets
I was going to include KIDS in the title of my article. ‘How to talk to your kids about…’ is a sub genre I don’t want to compete with. Really this can be sung to a person of any age, or pet for that reason. I sing a silly tune to my dog when I wipe her paws down after every walk. Slowly she has learned to like (wags her tail) my jingle and knows that when I start singing, she has to stay still.
Music-related memory
You may already know that the reason song lyrics get stuck in our head is because humans originally remembered stories through music. Writing can be traced back as far as 3400 BC, whereas the oldest musical instrument dates back 45,000 years. Per Wiki’s Music-related memory page, many research study synthesis's support the concept that memory of text is improved by musical training. Likewise, “words presented by song were remembered significantly better than when presented by speech.”
The movie Parasite has a delightful 8 second segment where two characters recite a little song they made up to remember their chain of lies:
Note the term jingle — what does that make you think of? Advertising, I’m sure.
Ad jingles exist for you to remember
Also per Wiki:
Earlier research has supported for this finding, that advertising jingles that pair words with music are remembered better than words alone or spoken words with music in the background. Memory was also enhanced for pairing brands with their proper slogans if the advertising incorporated lyrics and music rather than spoken words and music in the background.
Sing this chorus to someone, and let me know how it’s received in the comments. Or, do you sing a different song? Let me know that too.
I can’t explain the world to you
I can’t explain the things that people choose to do
There’s a thing called hate and there’s a thing called love too
Like the love I have for your mom and for you
More on Tobias…
Overall, Goon is one of my favorite singer-songwriter albums of recent times. I don’t want to rank it in the pantheon of other notable albums, it seems to stand on its own. At times dark, at times light. For sure though, it was inspired by some dark times. To paraphrase an interview he did with NPR, Tobias had a rough week back in 2012. He had been scraping by as an artist in Hollywood. His week of hell started with getting hit by a car while riding his bike. He tore up his hand. When he got up, the car kept driving. Next, a homeless guy stole his bike, waving as he rode away. Tobias would get dumped by his girlfriend days later. And somehow in the same week he got ‘the call’ from his father that his mother had cancer.
Another track on his album is called ‘Hollywood’ and one line stands out — I think I’m gonna die in Hollywood. By many twists and turns of fate, I found myself living there in August 2020 (prior to that I had lived in/near NYC my entire life). I had a day where I was sure I had exposed myself to Covid, the wildfires were burning and ash had covered my car and the entire neighborhood. I thought my dog ate something toxic, politics and greed were lighting up Twitter trends as usual. I couldn’t stop doomscrolling. It was 100+ degrees out and while I was posted up in Airbnb, the homeless community was growing closer and closer day by day. I thought, how poetic that there’s a song for this too.
Thanks,
-Joe Espo
About me
I’m a screenwriter who needs an outlet for writer’s block, hence I occasionally write things other than screenplays. This should go without saying, but I’m not currently managed or repped. Read more about my projects here.
Find me on Twitter @JWEsposito where my average post gets 0.1 likes.
