Matt Johnson
Get Right © 2022
The lyrics of the album Get Right revolve around both my experience with the political climate in America at the time and my thoughts about adversity. In the song The Solution, for example, I was exploring an answer to the problem of racism.
The first track, My Savior, is an expression of my belief in God and looking to Him as Messiah and not anything else.
The next tracks Achieve and Accord deal with being shut out or shut down
from a conversation. Achieve encourages you to not give up when it seems like a long and hopeless journey.
Accord encourages you to use negotiation, compromise, or whatever kind of communication you can to lead you to resolution instead of conflict.
Rise Above and On The Rise both deal with struggle. On The Rise is about not giving up. Whatever struggle you're dealing with, believe that you can be bigger than it. It's about persevering through to victory despite setbacks.
Rise Above challenges you to not respond to a problem with emotion or anger.
Build is written from the standpoint of being ostracized or insulted. The song is challenging you to allow negativity when it crosses your path, but instead of reciprocating the same negativity, redirect your energy into something
constructive. Whether it be through creating a piece of writing or starting an organization, it’s through what you “build,” the person who wasn’t as nice to you can see something you are accomplishing. In this way, it may lead them later to potentially reconsider how they thought about you, how they were treating you before.
Hustler is dealing more directly with an adversary who may be trying to challenge you.
Different Man is about not letting anyone else tell you who you are and what you should do. It’s about being your own person.
Won’t Leave Me Blind Anymore says instead of becoming down or feeling defeated about a missed opportunity, try to get back up and use it as a learning experience to not make the same mistake in the future.
Given is a conversation with God. When things aren’t going how you want them to, God is telling you things are going to get better. Change is coming.
Side B to the album starts with What Can’t Be Done? If you say you can or can’t do something, either way, you are making a statement affirming some reality. But does it mean something is indeed not possible? A statement telling you something about what’s real and what’s possible may be a clue for helping you find reality. You get one step closer to the goal. They used to say it couldn’t be done to run a mile in less than 4 minutes. You couldn’t break the 4minute mile barrier before Roger Bannister broke it in 1954. Henry Ford once famously stated, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can't – you're right.”
My Rhythm, written as a pop song, is trying to say what other people may hate or say they don’t like about something, is to find something interesting or noteworthy about it. A critique is better than a criticism. But a criticism is better than to not to be acknowledged at all. The Jungle Book makes a similar point. But to critique or criticize something you don’t understand, isn’t really a good critique, is it? You can’t fully appreciate it. It’s kind of like trying to play music and not knowing what a chord is or singing a cover and not knowing the words are. It’s not going to be good music or a good cover, right?
Relax Your Rage is encouraging an insulter to back off.
Mission Accomplished is another song about perseverance despite others around you who begin to doubt. And remember, be creative!
