By Taylor Drake
On YouTube, there are plenty of playlists titled similarly to my poem’s name, “Blank Songs to Blank to.” This wording will provide a nice series that I will go back to; the framing of the sentence is perfect. On various streaming platforms, from YouTube Music to Spotify, and its questionable use of AI-generated artists, there is a curated music playlist for every imaginable activity.
The Ozzy Osborne birthed music genre, on its face, could be seen as anti-intellectual for its brash sound and at times, unintelligible lyrics. However, when dissecting the art, you will find hundreds of songs wrapped around topics like: anti-authoritarianism, anti-racism, and the rejection of religious dogma. Reading books, an activity that is far from the visceral act of heavy metal singing, is a quiet and quaint form of instating the previously listed themes. In the 1980s, “concerned parents” tried to censor and ban metal records; in 2025, “concerned parents” succeeded in banning reading materials from schools across the country. Have you ever seen a group with a name like “Parents against fascism” gain popularity?
The core subject of MTV’s Headbangers Ball has its usual visual associations and stereotypes. Satanic panic ideas of subliminal messaging, blood, demons, goats, etc. These themes are interwoven in the piece with an overall theme of maintaining concentration, staying the course, while the noise is in your face. Similar to trying to assemble reading comprehension while listening to “Master of Puppets”.