Te wants to apply thinking to, and draw principles of thinking from, externalities. It’s probably bored by my discussion of itself.
Te generally
Te is regularly confused with the urge to care about productivity for the same reason Si is regularly confused with the urge to care about routines and the past. Care about affecting external things and interest in how the world generally works and is organized creates an easy path to productivity, but whether someone wants to be productive is irrespective of that.
I talk a little about Te v. Ti in the Ti section, so check that out now if you want.
What Te values in music – Established power/straightforwardness
What I mean is that Te music finds energy by tapping into well-established sources. It does not have to connect to a genre or a set of rules the way Si might want; but why would you bumble around coming up with new ways of doing things when you could just do the things? It’s not like there are a billion types of emotions people use music for. Why come up with new ways of writing to them?
In general, this means that Te will like when songs have known purposes and are direct (which is different from Ni wanting songs to be defined; they don’t have to have a purpose as such). While I find it hard to explain why that’s inherent to Te, I can show you that it’s true from how Te-loving people are with the rest of their lives. The Te stereotypes of wanting to do things and get to the point are analogs for how Te songs will go. Skip the long-winded intro (am I talking about songs or how I talk?); don’t bother with twists (am I talking about songs or garbage bags with drawstrings?). Get in, set the mood, and get out again. What else is music good for?
When Te is too dominant
Te’s practicality means the typical person encounters a lot of Te-infused music. It’s not necessarily on an album, but it’s in commercials and movies and department stores. Songs that are direct and impactful have clear societal uses.
When that becomes too much of how people experience music, Te is too dominant. Songs labeled too slick or commercial might be too much Te and not enough anything else – they’re pointed at something beyond itself in a way that cheapens it. Just as unbalanced Te is associated with faceless corporations, unbalanced Te music is associated with faceless art, like manufactured pop bands.
Some examples
Overly commercial songs aren’t fun to give as examples; you know what they’re like. So what’s an example of good Te in a song?
I submit the Squeeze classic “Another Nail in My Heart.”
When people listen to music I like – and if you’ve already heard my albums or clicked on these links, you know – they might think I’m automatically into ponderous material. But there’s plenty of pop that works for me – I just want something fresh in it. And “Another Nail in My Heart” has plenty of freshness in a setup that is otherwise tested. The beat is solid and steady and keeps a driving tempo (an easy sell for Te – “it does its job and brings energy!”), and the bridge and chorus are standard chord sequences. But the verses have a super-unique chord sequence, the guitar solo is after the first chorus rather than the second chorus, and a marimba shows up. The song’s not by the numbers at all, even as it has plenty of identifiable pop conventions to anchor it and it’s under three minutes. Well done, Squeeze (a nice Te compliment)!
You see a lot of Te energy in the professional songwriter business for several reasons. When you’re churning out song after song and hoping they can be sold to a performer (or arrangements like that), unless you’re writing for a particular artist, you might use conventions – what broadly works – to give several artists a chance to record it. And the speed at which you need to write those songs means you just can’t make a new framework for every song (which Ti would be interested in) – you have to get the job done.
This dovetails with many popular performers performing someone else’s songs in part, like Elton John with Bernie Taupin’s lyrics, or in their entirety, like Meat Loaf and Bonnie Tyler with Jim Steinman. For the performers, why try writing when there are these perfectly serviceable songs over here to pour yourself into? (This is probably easier to do when the performer is a high-Fi vocalist – the Fi of the performance pairs with the Te of the song.)
That, in turn, means you sometimes get these Te songs performed by multiple artists in a short time period. My example for this – due in part to Dear Kristin’s performing the song in 16 Personalities Getting Ready for a Date – is Jim Steinman’s song “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now.” Originally used in his own assembled band Pandora’s Box, it is far better known from Celine Dion’s release seven years later (1989 v. 1996).
The instrument tracks underneath both groups are very similar, and might even be identical. The original singer, Elaine Caswell, asserts they are: “It was the same exact track I sang on. They just took my vocal off and put her vocal on[.]” The original singer kept having to leave places where Celine’s version was played, because Celine had the hit with the exact same track – she was living the life that Elaine didn’t obtain with it. They later met, and Celine “was very, very nice” and complimentary of the original vocals, wanting to do Elaine’s performance justice.
This is the world of Te pop music: an emphasis on the performer to make a track distinctive, more than the song itself being distinctive. That’s an oversimplification – when you hear one Jim Steinman song, you can hear the others a mile away; a lot of Max Martin songs are like that too – but it’s an oversimplification Te might appreciate.
Lastly, there seems to be a recent surge of interpolations – using hooks from other songs but in one’s own style – that have taken the pop music world by storm. It’s textbook Te, and it can get bonus Si nostalgia points if it’s from another song people know really well. Dua Lipa’s “Break My Heart” uses the big guitar riff from INXS’s “Need You Tonight” in the verse bass line and chorus melody. It wasn’t intentional Te use, though – the writers just found that the riff was working, and then Dua Lipa was listening after the song was finished and realized the similarities and got it cleared. As she said to NME, “It was a funny moment where we were like, ‘Eureka!’ And then, ‘Oh, wait a second…’” But it was easy to get it cleared because INXS’s publishing rights holders “really liked the song,” and the shared credit “just brought nostalgia even more to the forefront, you know? It confirmed that part for us.”
If it’s true that ISTJs are a disproportionately high part of the population, this explains part of why popular music is popular – Te and Si are a combo that can broaden appeal regardless of the message. You can put a variety of moods in there (i.e., you don’t have to choose Fe or Fi) but it’s easy to convince people that it’s marketable. When using art to make money, Te has a head start. That’s just the way of the world, as Te would be happy to tell you.
Next part: Ti (Introverted Thinking)
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