Why waste time calling someone when a five word text message makes the same point, more quickly and succinctly? The tricky part is navigating the social conventions around texting. One person’s wink face is another person’s mood killer.
Just ask quirky New York singer-songwriter Hannah Elka Meyers. On her new album, You’re the Pacific, Meyers debuts a song whose title makes exactly that point. In “Emoticons Turn Me Off,” Meyers bemoans a potential love interest’s use of smiley faces (she calls them emasculating).
Meyers probably belongs to the majority of people who find the ins and outs of texting etiquette exhausting. She’s not the only one singing the text message blues, either. Here are five other songs about texting gone wrong, including a choice lyric:
“Longest Text Message” by Childish Gambino: “Texting on my day off, ‘Hey babe, what’s going on?’ ‘Sorry I can’t make it out. Sad face, emoticon.'”
“7 Things” by Miley Cyrus: “When you mean it, I’ll believe it. If you text it, I’ll delete it.”
“Devil in a New Dress” by Kanye West:: “Text message breakups, the casualty of tour.”
“Messages From You” by Drake: “I hate gettin’ messages from you, especially when you say you should’ve stayed.”
“Lollipop” Lil Wayne (Remix Featuing Kanye West): “Cause you don’t want that late text, that ‘I think I’m late’ text”
(Texting image via Shutterstock)
Jared Levy is interested in the intersections between music and philosophy. He tweets here.