《Easy》is
a music album released in 2012 by a local band, Rubber Band. There are totally
11 songs in the album, with the title songs “Easy” and “Slow and Easy”. To
match with the name of the title songs, the concept of this album is to ask
audience to get relaxed in the stressful daily life, and expressing a positive
way of thinking that try to be happy even when facing the hard times. The theme
of the album is also closely related to Hong Kong’s local social context, like
wealth gap and housing problems.
In recent years,
popular songs become more standardized. They become more and more like each
other in terms of the theme and the style (Strinati, 1995). It is very easy to
find popular songs describing love relationships between couples or expressing
the sadness after breaking up. Besides, elements of electronic, funk, dance
music are common to be discovered in the popular songs. Thus, it is harder to
tell the uniqueness of each song. However, different from the standardized
songs in recent years, members of Rubber Band put their eyesight on a wider
aspect that they consider more about social issues and attitudes. Moreover, by emphasizing
the original tone of musical instruments and adding some folk music’s element
into the production of the album, giving people the feeling of relaxation, as
well as their own colour.
Take the title song
“Easy” as an example, the temple of the song is quite slow, and it uses
acoustic guitar as the main tone of the song, composing a simple and relaxing
melody. For the lyrics, first half of the song describes many “unfortunate”
little things that everyone might comes across in daily life, like the fridge
runs out of beers, a new bought suit is get wet by a restaurant waiter, and
cannot leave office on time. In the chorus, the lyrics “come on, take it easy”
becomes the emphasis, asking audience to be relaxed and change the attitude. At
the last part of the song, it describes some lucky little things, like
discovering a coin in the pocket and the train enters the station while you arrive
at the platform. It gives audience a hope that if you change your attitude, happiness
can be around everywhere.
Other than that,
Rubber Band also takes care of social issues. The theme of the song “睜開眼” (Open Eyes) is to criticize the social problems of wealth gap and
injustice incidents in Hong Kong. In the lyrics, it says that old buildings are
being demolished, some people have to live in subdivided units and merely have
enough earnings to support their lives. While facing these injustice incidents,
Rubber Band asks audience to open their eyes and be brave to fight back. As a
result, this sing became one of the significant theme songs during the national
education protest in 2012. And the song becomes more popular among Hong Kong
youth, representing the attitude of fighting the injustice.
“Music that permits
its listeners the confession of their unhappiness reconciles them, by means of
this ‘release,’ to their social dependence.” (Strinati, 1995, p.69). Music is
not only act as entertainment; it can also help people release unhappiness, and
also raises public’s awareness towards social issues. Hopes that more people can be inspired by this album.
Chan Ping
10487980/21233836
Words count: 559 words
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