Argumentative Essay: Can Music Cause Violence?

Bradley Cole

Kendra Gallos

English III Honors

20 April 2016

Can Music Cause Violence? As the music spectrum expands into more and more genres, there are countless numbers of songs about almost any topic. Some are completely harmless; Nintendocore creates songs that are reminiscent of theme songs from the Nintendo game systems; Lowercase uses quiet and ambient sounds to create a very relaxed mood. Other genres promote violence and uncivilized behavior, such as brutal death metal or gabba. Although many artists write violent songs as an emotional release or as an act, many parents and organizations blame them for causing violent and antisocial behavior in teens and the mentally ill. They suggest that music be censored, or given a warning label as to what an album or song contains. Parents around the world are worried about their children listening to heavy music. They are under the impression that this kind of music is harmful to their child’s

But this also, in a way, shows that it could come to being accepted by society in the future, and loved. Elvis and the Beatles were considered taboo when they first started out, and now they are cultural icons. Heavy metal is also “often used as a scapegoat to distract from the thoroughly more complicated societal problems” (citation needed 4). Here is an example: if somebody walks into a school and shoots someone, and they were a fan of pop music, nobody would think twice and just assume that the person was a deranged killer. If somebody else walked into another school and shot someone, and they happened to be a metal fan, then society would say that metal music drove that person to kill. Society does not want to face difficult problems, such as keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill, so they just say that, ‘Oh, this guy listened to heavy metal before he shot up that school, so that’s what drove him to do