Iron’s role in diets and society cannot be overstated. Iron’s role in music is a little less clear, but…
…sorry, what? Extroverted feeling is the Fe I’m talking about? My bad.
Fe generally
It’s focused on an outward, or external, sense of feeling. That is generally associated with feelings of “the group” – e.g., the group at your place for dinner, a community you’re part of, or even social mores.
I like to describe Fe in someone’s stack from the bottom up:
#4 comes off mostly as harmless. If #4 hosts a party, it will be good, but other people have to bring the chips and drinks.
#3 comes off mostly as warm. A #3 party will bring drinks, so it will be good once you arrive with the chips.
#2 comes off mostly as safe. A #2 party will have chips and drinks when you arrive; you don’t need to bring anything but yourself.
#1 comes off mostly as the entire mood. A #1 party will have chips and drinks and pie and ice cream and please eat it all and put some meat on those bones and aaargh *drowns in comestibles*.
What Fe values in music – Relatability
“Feel-good music” is largely an appeal to Fe – it sets a happy tone for life. A song is relatable when it captures what the group is feeling. An element of a song is relatable if it helps the group understand the song.
So when Fe is part of the songwriting process, it might show up as positivity, or it might show up as crafting lyrics that try to capture a shared experience (as opposed to Fi, which will try to capture a particular experience and let the listener’s ear-chips fall where they may). If you take my harmless –> warm –> safe –> entire mood progression up the stack, in songs the progression would be something like positive –> upbeat –> bright –> happy. Some songs are overtly happy, and others have room to be happy, if that makes sense.
When Fe is too dominant
In regular life, Fe is too dominant when it keeps prioritizing group harmony at the expense of all its individuals. Fe becomes smog rather than clean air in that sense; everybody’s choking on the thick atmosphere, but it’s important to maintain.
In music, Fe overdominance is experienced as either cloying or bland. A song can be too happy for any regular listener to identify with it. More often, a song has tried too hard to be relatable that it comes back around the other side to unrelatable because it is filled with platitudes or other conventions.
Some examples
On the overbearing Fe ledger, we have those telethon sorts of songs from the ‘80s, like “We Are the World” by U.S.A. for Africa and “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” by Band Aid. In wanting to help everyone, it’s not clear that they’re helping anyone. These lines from the latter are unbalanced Fe:
(Verse 1)
It’s Christmas time, there’s no need to be afraid
At Christmas time, we let in light and we banish shade
And in our world of plenty we can spread a smile of joy
Throw your arms around the world at Christmas time
(The ending bit)
Feed the world
Let them know it’s Christmas time
In trying to be broadly relatable, it ends up saying very little. I would have fed the world already if I could, and feeding the world is disconnected from notifications of holidays. And while being afraid and wanting light and smiles and liking Christmas are all relatable things, put together, the sum is less than the parts.
I don’t know “We Are the World” nearly as well, but this bit stands out to me:
When you’re down and out, there seems no hope at all
But if you just believe, there’s no way we can fall
Well, well, well, well let us realize
Oh, that a change can only come
When we stand together as one, yeah, yeah, yeah
Fi lovers might respond, “I’m never standing together with this.” Ti lovers might respond, “If this is the only way a change can come, it won’t happen.”
But balanced with other functions, Fe can make a track stand out that otherwise might have some difficulty. Lower in the stack, I think of it as the remember-humans-will-listen-to-this function. That’s certainly how I use it as an INTP; I try to put handholds in for listeners who are not me, so that they can grasp what I’m doing and don’t have to know all my referents to “get” me.
Positivity can be that handhold by itself, incentivizing further listening enough to let the other parts of the song sink in. For this, I offer a song far away from ‘80s fundraising pop: “Squance” by Plaid. While Plaid’s a big influence on me, Warp Records and the IDM genre are not for everybody. But the song is so happy, bouncing along with its cheap retro keyboard sounds and simple, repeating melodic riffs, that it brings people along for the ride even if the genre is unfamiliar to them. So I listen to it more than some other IDM because it’s instant joy in a genre known for obstinacy.
Next part: Fi (Introverted Feeling)
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