For anyone who still insists lyrics are just harmless poetry, consider the grunge explosion of the early 1990s. That era produced extraordinary music, but it also made alienation, despair, and emotional detachment strangely glamorous. If a generation could absorb that emotional atmosphere through music, it isn't unreasonable to wonder what six uninterrupted decades of increasingly cynical and vengeful lyrics might accomplish. Audiences crave betrayal, public humiliation, vengeance, and emotional spectacle because those emotions command attention. Did pop music single-handedly make America meaner?