Lyric feedback from college students
A college teacher played “The Wrong Things” for a small group of 1st year college students and had them write about it.
I’ve posted their thoughts below.
Why?
A lot has changed in 3 years. Politics, covid, environmental armageddon, financial scandals, and the “great reset,” aside, I wrote the song from a basic perspective, “right” vs. “wrong” so that they might apply it to what they see. I believe in people’s ability to figure things out and come to conclusions, even if it takes a little bit of time (and reading and more importantly, listening).
The song, The Wrong Things by Evan Goodrow, is about the wrong things he
knows and thinks of. The wrong things he is talking about, in my opinion, are the
immoral and cowardly happenings going on in this world, and points out how they are
false, evil, or criminal, but nobody talks about them. Everyone perceives that the world
is self-centered and greedy to achieve something they want as you can see “if we’ve got
the love then it’s all we’re ever going to need to build something greater than” and
“everyone knows about the wrong things.” Like an accomplice, they shake their hands
in silence, do not say anything, hide about their wrong things such as crime or sin in
order to survive and become a greater, better person, looking at “everyones guilty if you
tell it that way, that’s shaking hands with the wrong things.” However, “someday those
wrong things they might disappear” helps me to understand that all of these wrong
things are something not important, valuable at the end of the world, which will
completely disappear. I really enjoyed listening to this music and interpreting the lyrics.
Before I tried to think and analyze the lyrics, I had no idea what he wanted to convey
about the “wrong things.” However, after I read it, and listened to it again, I was able to
think that he wanted to tell how the world is corrupted, and I really liked how he
contained a lot of meanings in one word, wrong things.
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I think the main idea of the song is to let the voice been heard. And stop to spread wrong
information.
This makes me think of the internet environment nowadays, because it is very easy to spread a
wrong information on the website, the truth is become harder to be heard by people. Because
people are mostly love to see the dramatic happening, so they were more likely to view the
dramatic information but maybe wrong.
Personally saying, I love this song. First of all, it has a very nice melody, and it’s really easy to
remember. Which means the information contains in the song will be spread to many people.
Second, I think the words of the songs are talking about the truth and singing it out is a good way
to express what does the singer wanted to say, and it makes a good point because the words are
not in an offensive way.
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I thought “The wrong things” in this song was about something new or making mistakes.
The first reason is because he says “We worry about the wrong things Use excuses to not
spread our wings” and I felt like this sounds people are scared of trying new things and making
mistakes.
Especially about “Use excuses to not spread our wings”, it could make sense if it was talking
about making mistakes. people tend to use excuses when they try new things because they are
afraid of making mistakes.
Also, “Someday those wrong things they might disappear The wrongs things Are still the wrong
things” I thought if we replace “wrong things” with “something new”, it would be like, “new
things at that time will be considered old someday for sure, but there always will be new
inventions instead.”.
Overall, I like this song since the lyrics are too vague to interpret the meaning of this music very
deeply and I felt that makes the song interesting.
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I would say the central theme of this song is a conflict between countries (war) or violence
because he sings we need love, and everyone knows it is wrong. Furthermore, he says that
someday we might forget about the wrong things, but these are still wrong. I felt this part means
that people discuss the wars or just something that people think is wrong for now, but if time
passes, we will forget about these things.
I like other students’ ideas that this song is about challenging new things. I like this idea
because we fear it when we try something new. This part suits the lyrics.
I like this song or the theme because we can find many main themes for each of them. Then
if he sings about the war of conflicts in the world in this song, I prefer how he expresses it
because it is poetic and composed of simple words.
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I think this song has a meaning dissatisfaction about the world. He is keep singing about
the confuse and wrong of the people and the world. He has a desire about change the world
better than now. I really like this song. It looks like extremely negative, but all true and we are
following this situation even if we recognize something is going wrong. Also, he seems like try
to get real love through world which he doesn’t have a satisfaction. I really agree these
sentences which the other group analyze about this song (Everyone knows that there are so
many immoral and cowardly happenings going on in this world)
everyone knows about the wrong things), We may not try to do something new or reach some goal because we are afraid
of making mistakes (a.k.a the wrong things). People in the world look at different things with
different eyes. There is no wrong thing, only things that are not understood.
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For you, there are bad things and good things. Your commitment is to concentrate on the
right things. Your right thing could be wrong for somebody and vice versa. Surround yourself
with the right people, connections, and decisions. And one day, you will become the right
person.
When I heard a song, I remembered a citation from Epictetus. “What disturbs and alarms man
are not the things, but his opinions and fancies about the things.”
The meaning is that we need to focus on the “right” things. But what if
I will miss something in the “wrong” things.
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I think the wrong thing means doing something that others think is wrong or isn’t right in human
values. In this song, I think it means that war is a mistake that human-made. Every country wants
to hide the truth and the reasons behind the war but the mistake won’t be erased even if we delete
the word on the books. We all know that we did the wrong things and can’t change the truth. The
only thing we can do is to love everyone in the world because love is the strong power of a
human.
This song is great and the singer did a good job at the lines, but these kinds of songs are not my
type.
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In a relationship, men and women who get along deceive each other, making
what was a very strong emotion disintegrate in a time of doubt. Men do not
come forward to explain and save. Women also just unilaterally speculate in
the information of life. Everyone wears a mask, knowing full well that the
relationship will break down, but no one can stop it. In the end all of
this becomes a remorseful mistake.
There are three reasons that make me think so.
First of all, “The wrongs things are still the wrong things.”, you can
feel from this sentence that this mistake is hidden, it is a mistake that
is kept quiet. All know but do not want to talk about it.
Second
“How can a man stand up or a woman be heard in this ocean of
message. There’s people that love us and others that don’t know our name
If the message is louder than the voice that carries it
others will hear it and come running” This paragraph illustrates the
problem in more detail for both and the escalating form of these problems.
Conflicts between couples can arise into serious problems such as domestic
violence, which happen to be invisible and inaudible to most people.
The third point is the rhythm of the tune, which is plaintive and deep,
like poetry, telling a story, very poignant.
I like it because this kind of song is quite harmonious as a whole.
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I think the author’s main idea is to accept the imperfections of the world.
I think the author is telling the audience that there are things that people don’t understand in this world, and there are also things that people need to change. We need to accept these so-called “wrong things” and change them with love and tolerance, just like a clam polishing the sand into a pearl with its gentleness. And there are a lot of things that are misunderstood in this world, so the person who came up with this idea was criticized. This kind of thing happens in every generation. In the past, women were considered to be the appendages of men, we were not allowed to show our faces, let alone wear skimpy clothes, and any woman who challenged the authority of men would be despised by people. But now most women have the same rights and status as men. So the world is accepting something that is considered “wrong.”