SFJ lyrics
Contrasted with NFJ lyrics, which are likely to band people together to pursue a new vision for the future, SFJ lyrics might use the same Fe considerations to restore an old vision. To whatever extent the writer’s Si has connected with societal standards, that Si will combine with the Fe to convince in the same way.
Not contrasted with NFJ lyrics, SFJ lyrics will use Fe placement in the same way, where Fe-Si will talk more as already being a part of the group and Si-Fe will talk more about cohering a group. But that Si will draw on an existing set of standards, while Ni in the NFJ lyrics will ask you to picture something new.
That’s assuming the SFJ is trying to convince at all. It’s possible the Si is just happy about what’s occurring at the moment.
SFJ music
High Fe will again care a lot about the song being happy (Fe dominant) or upbeat (Fe parent). Si, not just for lyrics of restoration but for its own musical sake, is likely to pick an actual genre. I haven’t talked loads about specific genres that type clusters will like, but with high Si it will matter if it belongs to something – it’s like the song belonging to a genre reinforces the lyrical message of belonging.
That said, ESFJs do have an Si-Ne core, and that allows for genre-mixing so long as it feels good. ISFJs’ higher Si and lower Ne is less likely to be interested in that.
Some ESFJ songs
“Celebration” by Kool and the Gang (Lyric and music typing)
To frame as a party as a celebration is an Si way of bringing people together. The party is worth more because it connects to something/someone. It’s expected to be “a celebration to last throughout the years,” with hope that “everyone around the world” will “come on.” “One More Time” by Daft Punk carries the same kind of feeling – caring about “one more time” means there’s a caring about the last time(s) as well, which is more meaningful to an Si user.
Ain’t no party like an ESFJ party, ‘coz an ESFJ party has a good chance of being on a special occasion and getting scrapbooked.
“Deep Forest” by Deep Forest (Lyric and music typing)
Somewhere, deep in the jungle, are living some little men and women.
They are our past. And maybe – maybe – they are our future.
These are the only lyrics we get, at the start of a loping ethno-environmental dance track in a style popular in the early ‘90s (and that I remain a sucker for). The lyrics apparently refer to the Efe people of Africa, although the vocal samples throughout the song are not those of the Efe people (Ti check!). The album is loosely about raising awareness of these various cultures, but it’s dance music first. I mean, check out that huge flute hook – how can you not enjoy it on some level? So there is this fusion of feel-good vibes and an explicit (though undefined) link to the past. That sounds Fe-Si to me.
“Tijuana Sound Machine” by Bostich + Fussible (Music typing [it’s an instrumental])
If you’ve kept up with my music, you know I am majorly influenced by the nortec genre, from which this song was a big hit. A fusion of norteno (traditional Mexican) and techno (modern Western) styles, the key to making it work is that they normally play both pretty straight. The production is dry, allowing the electronic side to be more like an organic part of a live band rather than the dominant organizational principle. In this song, you can hear the buttons on the accordion (button accordions are the traditional accordion type), so even details like that are Si true to form. Nortec taught me a lot about using Si and Ne in a way that sounds natural.
But the focus in this case is the party – the music video in the link makes that clear. There’s a group getting happy from this Si-Ne curio. While I’m largely just excited that I told you about nortec music, I do think you can hear Fe-Si-Ne in this piece and the genre as a whole.
Some ISFJ songs
“God Is a DJ” by Faithless (Lyric and music typing)
This is my church – this is where I heal my hurts
In a dance song, the typical description of, and advertisement for, going into a club is luring the listener primarily with Se and maybe some Fi. There is a lot of focus on how you, an individual, can go to a club and lose yourself in the sensory experience and how it does something for you personally – even if that something is to give in to the group sensation. C+C Music Factory described this in “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)” thusly:
The music takes control, your heart and soul
Unfold, your body is free and a whole
“God Is a DJ” inverts that. While a euphoric v. a religious experience doesn’t mean Se v. Si automatically, that the dancefloor is a place of godly healing for conceptual reasons adds to the idea that the sensory perspective has a large filter on it instead of being taken at face value.
This is backed up by what is healing about the experience. It’s not that the movement of his own body does anything; that doesn’t come up. To the extent there’s physicality, it’s “the world I become, content in the hum between voice and drum.” But the other reasons are primarily group-based or values-based.
It’s in natural grace or watching young life shape
It’s in minor keys – solutions and remedies
Enemies becoming friends when bitterness ends
It’s in change – the poetic justice of cause and effect
Respect, love, compassion
Outside minor keys, this reads like the proud owner of a nonprofit counseling center, not a clubgoer. He’s healed in a religious way by seeing others healing. That hits me as Si-Fe in some order, and I’m taking the self-first perspective (and “This is my church” being the first line) to break the tie as ISFJ over ESFJ.
“Ordinary World” by Duran Duran (Lyric typing)
Given that the theme is an individual looking at the state of the world and trying to move on – “I won’t cry for yesterday” – this might not strike you immediately as an ISFJ song. But I think the story is told by an ISFJ who’s trying not to stay too down in his ISFJ concerns.
Still I can’t escape the ghost of you – that’s a fairly Si lyric in the first verse. And then there’s the chorus:
But I won’t cry for yesterday – there’s an ordinary world
Somehow I have to find
And as I try to make my way to the ordinary world
I will learn to survive
He really wants to cry for yesterday – the media reports and missing who he misses lead him to that point. Instead, he chooses to push through an Si grief. And we find out at the end that he does it for an Fe reason:
Everyone is my world
Anyone is my world
With “I will learn to survive” re-introduced in the middle of those lines, I read this as him moving past his Si for the sake of his Fe – using Fe as a parent. As another type who uses Fe to balance an isolating nihilistic loop, I feel this song quite a bit.
“Passing Clouds” by Footshooter (Lyric typing)
Like with “Mmm…Skyscraper I Love You” for the INTP, I thought when I started this book that this was one of the clearest examples of Se I owned. But for the same reasons, I now think it’s an Si story (it was written as a tribute to a London venue called Passing Clouds). The lyrics don’t seem to be published anywhere, so I’ll transcribe the first third of the song as best I can hear it:
Perched on the corner of a bending road
Past the pub, past the side door, past dancing wisps of smoke – ganja for laughter, cigarettes for stained lungs
Past the outside walls painted a deep color thick with nostalgia and longing
Past the dreadlocked uncles who never left this [?] area
Past my problems, his and hers
Through the back door, past security, past the bar
Squeeze next to the crowded cloakroom
Squeezing through bodies, smiling apologies
Past the kick drum competing with drunken laughter
Past the tall short-haired woman in men’s dress dancing with an invisible partner
Passing clouds in that cocoon of birth, chaos, and order
Where the music pulsed with my blood
Where [?] between legs widened easily, falling in love on the dancefloor with men whose names have been blotted out of holy books and like to behind Scripture
There is loads of sensory data throughout this song, as the speaker shuffles past individual people and describes them. But she is adding narrative to them the whole time, and she’s describing them to make a composite of the place, not to get into any of the stories as such. The real-life goal is to convey what it was like in a particular establishment that physically no longer exists. You could say that the people used as data points are also being used in a way to make the venue more relatable, that they have specific stories while tying in to universal themes of community, desires, and stress relief. There is such an abundance of sensory data that I have to rank it Si first, but the Fe goals and bundling are right behind it.
Next part: ESFP and ISFP
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