ITT: lines from popular songs which deserve the full attention of philosophers (or sophists)...

ITT: lines from popular songs which deserve the full attention of philosophers (or sophists). bonus points if you have to take them out of context to make them interesting

I'll go first.

>It turns out freedom ain't nothing but missing you. (Taylor Swift, "Back to December")

Swift demolishes all the high-flown rhetoric about liberty by suggesting that license is an absence of affections (which imply commitments) and not a sum of possibilities. Pure freedom is nothing more than the absence of Love. As such the project of the liberals and libertarians and so on is flawed—if we give up on our commitments—to God, to country, to family—we will not gain "freedom", because freedom is nothing.

>If you want it, take it

Ariana Grande least spooked musician

When everythings meant to be broken, I just want you to know who I am.

>But to lose all my senses, that is just so typically me (Britney Spears, "Oops...! I Did It Again)

Spears presents a nutshell variant of Ibn Sīnā's classic Falling Man thought experiment. An implicit dualism is posited in her rejection of consciousness as an emergent phenomenon solely contingent on sense-data; the sapient is not merely the sentient over time. An essential selfhood persists even in the theoretical anaesthetic 'vacuum', rehabilitating and revitalising a long-neglected essentialism.

>everything I said I'd do I did / I'm good

The Weeknd believes that a man's virtue is in fulfilling his promises, both to himself and to others.

Completely wrong. Grande is speaking to God of her own soul: "If you want it, take it"—as in, "my soul is mine to make it thine". Her song is obviously theological. See where she apostrophizes the devil:

>I was under your spell
>Like a deadly fever, yeah, babe
>On the highway to hell, yeah

>I only wanna die alive
>Never by the hands of a broken heart
>Don't wanna hear you lie tonight
>Now that I've become who I really am

Grande wants to live her life before she dies ("die alive") and not from a "broken heart"—why? Because she must "become who I really am". As such she doesn't want to hear the devil lie "tonight" (in the the night of the soul, cf. Dante's selva oscura). This is standard Christianity—Grande is giving up emotional fatalism for life in Christ in order that she may be regenerate, "becoming" the perfect self which God intended.

Where she slips into heresy—I think this is a mere accident of speech and not a considered doctrine—is in the tense of "I've become", whereas she means to say "I am becoming".

I can't make up my mind whether Taylor was ever likable, or if she was obnoxious from the start. Some songs, like "Back to December" or "The Best Day" are wonderful. But...

I knew something was wrong when she made "Mean", which really had just about the worst moral she could have come up with: "you're mean to me now, but someday soon I'm going to be rich and famous and you'll just be a loser"

Going back, it occurred to me that there was something of selfishness in "You Belong With Me" and "Speak Now", both of which feature Swift asking a man to break up with his current girlfriend (or fiancée), who is in each case "the wrong girl". (And which of your many boyfriends, Taylor, were you so perfect for?)

It's hard not to feel sympathy for the girl singing in "Dear John" to a nasty and abusive older lover, but after feeling pity for Swift so often, you begin to wonder if you're getting only one side of every story—and whether Swift has rather too much self-pity to offer us.

And now that she's a huge celebrity she's still writing songs about shaking off the haters, but she's also writing songs about holding grudges, pursuing probably ill-fated but exciting romantic flings, never going "out of style", etc.

Was she always this conceited? Whether celebrity made her mean, or whether it just made her shameless, I don't know. But the whole thing was a cause of disillusionment for me. All it takes is some acoustic guitars, the right chords, and a soft and intimate style of singing to trick you into thinking you're not listening to the most disgusting sentiment. Music is such an effective vehicle for sophistry, and that's frightening. Is it really okay to let children listen to this? How do you prepare them to see through it?

Hello Darkness my old friend,
I've come to talk with you again.
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seed while I was sleeping.
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.

Fuck the pain away.
-Peaches

My guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking
I had something to protect
"Good and bad, I define these terms,
"Quite clear, no doubt," somehow
But I was so much older then
I'm younger than that now

The whole song really.

>Cynicism isn't wisdom
>It's a lazy way of saying you've been burned

it would be better if you gave explanations

this isn't popular

the point of this thread isn't just to pick out 'good lyrics'

Keep going. Ignore the retards

The song "Classic Man" by Jidenna can very easily be construed as Stoic.

In the name of higher consciousness
I let the best man I knew go
'Cause it's nice to love and be loved
But it's better to know all you can know
I said it's nice to love and be loved
But I'd rather know what God knows

-Lana Del Rey, "Pawnshop Blues"

She majored in philosophy in college. Maybe it isn't a coincidence that so much of Western philosophy was done by monks, and so many philosophers never married (Kant, Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, Leibniz, to name a few). Maybe Kierkegaard was onto something with the Knight of Infinite Resignation.

>so many philosophers never married

Kierkegaard had one of the worst oneitis cases ever and Vicky literally hit the parks picking up rent-boys, dunno about the other two. Not disputing your general case, but "never married" is a somewhat contrived category imo.

Opinion =/= fact.

>Have you ever had sex with a pharaoh?
>I put the pussy in a sarcophagus

He "murdered" the pussy.

>Kierkegaard had one of the worst oneitis cases ever

A little disingenuous to say that, don't you think, seeing as he was engaged to her. It wasn't as though he couldn't be with her so he swore off all other women; he literally could have married her but chose not to. As for Wittgenstein... well homosexuality is something everyone's made up their mind as to the cause of, but I'm of the opinion that there are many psychological reasons for different psychological states, homosexuality included. Regardless, he certainly was a loner, even if not a virgin. The reason I said "never married" rather than "virgin" is because my point was more about them never taking a permanent romantic partner, never being devoted to a single person, not simply about sex.

>never being devoted to a single person

Yeah but there was David Pinsent, though, for Wittgenstein. And it's not overly relevant, but Wittgenstein did propose to a chick and got knocked back. I think you're getting at something that's definitely real, but you're trying to squeeze it into too narrow a space, if you follow me.

>Am I in love with you

>Am I in love with you

>Or am I in love with the feeling

>Yeah but there was David Pinsent
Ya, then he died, at like fucking 26. Ramsey even sooner. R dying at like 24 was a fucking shame.

If there are no opinions, do facts even exist?

Pinsent, Skinner and Ramsay all died in their 20s

No wonder Wittgenstein was fucking nuts

Inception?

Cause it's a bitter sweet symphony, that's life
Trying to make ends meet
You're a slave to money then you die
I'll take you down the only road I've ever been down
You know the one that takes you to the place
Where all the veins meet, yeah

There are no facts, only opinions.

Well, if three of his brothers committing suicide didn't do it, that may have.

*interpretations

I'm a wee bit pished, apologies.