Now That's What I Call Analyzing Song Lyrics Vol. 2
Allow Me to Reintroduce Myself... My name is JOV(ial).
Song Lyric Solutions Architect
Behance Team @ Adobe
The Rules
Rule #1
Leave your Ideology at the Door
- Offensive vs Offended
- Remember Fahrenheit 451
Rule #2
All Interpretations are Valid, Not All are Equal
- Death of the Author
- Infer vs. Imply
- Remember Fahrenheit 451
Rule #3
There are No Experts
- Cracked.com
- Genius.com
- Wikipedia
Analyzing Lyrics As "The Message"
Discovering The True Meaning Of Selected Lyrics
Why is meaning often ignored in music?
- Passive Medium
- Missing Context
- Message vs. Medium
- Interpreting Too Literally
Born In The U.S.A
Missed Context
Seemingly: A patriotic call for endurance through potentially rough times.
Actually: A vet comes home after fighting for his country and gets no help. "Born In The U.S.A." is more like "But I was born in the U.S.A.! How can this be what's happening?"
George Will: He is no whiner, and the recitation of closed factories and other problems always seems punctuated by a grand, cheerful affirmation: 'Born in the U.S.A.!'"
Born In The U.S.A
Missed Context
Come back home to the refinery
Hiring man says "Son if it was up to me"
Went down to see my V.A. man
He said "Son, don't you understand"
Closing Time
Missed Context
Seemingly: It is closing time at a bar, time to perform the requisite mating ritual.
Actually: It is closing time in the womb, time to go into the places you will be from.
Closing Time
Missed Context
Open all the doors and let you out into the world
Turn all of the lights on over every boy and every girl
One last call for alcohol so finish your whiskey or beer
You don't have to go home but you can't stay here
Time for you to go out to the places you will be from
This room won't be open 'til your brothers or you sisters come
So gather up your jackets, and move it to the exits
I hope you have found a friend
Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end
Staying Alive
Message Overshadowed By Medium
Seemingly: A Ladie's Man Discussing His Domination of Disco Era Tropes... Loud Music and Women
Actually: A man struggling to get by in the big city. Disco Dancing is his only escape from the monotony of his life.
"Everybody struggles against the world, fighting all the bullshit and things that can drag you down. And it really is a victory just to survive." - Barry Gibb
Staying Alive
Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk
I'm a woman's man: no time to talk
Music loud and women warm,
I've been kicked around Since I was born
Got the wings of heaven on my shoes
I'm a dancin' man and I just can't lose
You know it's all right, it's okay
I'll live to see another day
Life goin' nowhere, somebody help me, yeah
I'm stayin' alive
Message Overshadowed By Medium
Hey Ya
Seemingly: ??? Good Dance Song?
Message Overshadowed By Medium
Actually: I think my girlfriend wants to cheat on me, but is afraid of losing our relationship, so let's end it now because staying together and being unhappy is dumb. Everyone else, lets just have a good time to avoid all this nonsense.
Hey Ya
Message Overshadowed By Medium
If what they say is "Nothing is forever"
Then what makes - then what makes
Love the exception? So why oh why oh, are we so in denial?
My baby don't mess around
Because she loves me so
And this I know for sho
But does she really want it
But can't stand to see me
Walk out the door?
Silly Love Songs
Actually: A comment on the value of love songs. An ironic response to John Lennon's accusation that all McCartney does is write poppy love songs.
Too Literal
Seemingly: Professing Love To Someone
Silly Love Songs
Too Literal
You'd think that people
Would've had enough of silly love songs
But I look around me
And I see it isn't so
Some people want to fill the world
With silly love songs
And what's wrong with that?
I'd like to know
Cause here I go again
I love you
I love you
I love you
I love you
Baby Got Back
Too Literal
Seemingly: Sir Mix a lot really likes big butts.
Actually: Yes, he loves big butts, but so does everyone else. The established concept of "skinny = beautiful" is wrong, and comes from whitewashing perpetrated by popular media.
Baby Got Back
Too Literal
Becky, look at her butt...
she's just so... black!
I like big butts and I can not lie,
You other brothers can't deny
I'm tired of magazines
Sayin' flat butts are the thing
Take the average black man and ask him that
She gotta pack much back
Baby Got Back
Too Literal
So I'm looking at rock videos
Watching these bimbos walking like hoes
You can have them bimbos
I'll keep my women like Flo Jo
when it comes to females, Cosmo ain't got nothin'
To do with my selection...
So Cosmo says you're fat
Well I ain't down with that!
To the beanpole dames in the magazines:
You ain't it, Miss Thing!
Bohemian Rhapsody
#166 on Rolling Stone's top 500 of all time
Most Played Song of All Time on BBC Radio 1
On It's Surface...
A Man Commits Murder...
Confesses to His Mother...
His Mother Please For His Life With Demons...
He resigns himself to the Demons...
His Mother Storms Away in Anger...
He Acts as if His Fate is OK...
Bohemian Rhapsody
Beneath The Surface?
Freddie Mercury has his first homosexual experience...
Confesses to his then wife...
He battles with himself and his wife over his sexuality...
He accepts his homosexuality...
His wife storms away in anger...
He is upset over hurting his wife
Bohemian Rhapsody
Methaphoric Symbols
Death / Devils = Homosexuality
God / Christ = Heterosexuality
Gun = A Certain Body Part
Mama = Mary Austin (his then wife)
Open Questions?
Why Does Mercury use negative symbolism?
Bohemian Rhapsody
Freddie Mercury has his first homosexual experience...
Confesses to his then wife...
Mama, just killed a man, put a gun against his head
Pulled my trigger, now he's dead
Mama, life had just begun
But now I've gone and thrown it all away
Goodbye, everybody, I've got to go
Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth
Mama, ooh, I don't want to die
I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all
Bohemian Rhapsody
He battles with himself and his wife over his sexuality...
- Mercury: I see a little silhouetto of a man
- Mercury: Scaramouche, Scaramouche...
- The Devil: will you do the Fandango?
- Mercury: Thunderbolt and lightning, very, very fright'ning me
- Mercury: (Galileo.) Galileo. (Galileo.) Galileo. Galileo figaro magnifico
- Mercury: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
- Mary: He's just a poor boy from a poor family
- Mary: Spare him his life from this monstrosity
Bohemian Rhapsody
He accepts his homosexuality...
- Mercury to Mary: Easy come, easy go, will you let me go?
- Mary: Bismillah! No, we will not let you go
- The Devils: Let him go!
- Mercury to Mary: Mama mia, let me go... Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me, for me, for me!
Bohemian Rhapsody
His wife storms away in anger...
So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye?
So you think you can love me and leave me, to die?
Oh, baby, can't do this to me, baby!
Just gotta get out, just gotta get right outta here!
Bohemian Rhapsody
He is upset over hurting his wife
Nothing really matters, anyone can see
Nothing really matters
Nothing really matters to me
Any way the wind blows
Analyzing Lyrics As "The Medium"
Appreciating Lyrics As Art In And Of Themselves
Why Hip Hop?
-
The human voice as percussion instrument
-
Persistent use of simile and double entendre
-
Rhyme Scheme & Dialect
-
Immersive Storytelling as communication method
Human Voice as
Percussive Instrument
- Consonance (and alliteration)
- Assonance (and half-rhymes)
- End Rhyme vs. Internal Rhyme
Consonance
Rap rejects my tape deck, ejects projectile / Whether Jew or gentile, I rank top percentile
- Fugees, Zealot
Alliteration
Perfected poem, powerful punch lines
Pummeling petty powder puffs in my prime
- Blackalicious, Alphabet Aerobics
Assonance
Dead in the middle of little Italy little did we know that we riddled some middleman who didn't do diddly.
- Big Pun, Twinz
Slant Rhyme
And be prosperous, though we live dangerous
Cops could just arrest me, blamin’ us, we’re held like hostages
- Nas, NY State of Mind
End Rhyme
Now, what you hear is not a test, I'm rapping to the beat.
And me, the groove, and my friends are gonna try to move your feet.
- Sugar Hill Gang, Rapper's Delight
Internal Rhyme
The attractive assassin,
blastin the devil trespassin
Master gettin cash in an
orderly fashion.
- The Roots, Respond/React
Eminem - Renegade
Simile and Double Entendre
Double Entendre
If I sell a brick I can buy a house
If they find the key they might lock me up
- Logic, Gang Related
When I come back like Jordan, wearing the 45
It ain't to play games with you... probably mame you.
- Jay Z, Encore
I don’t half-step on the ‘caine
- Jay Z, Hello Brooklyn 2.0
Simile
You stopping us is preposterous
like an androgynous misogynist
- Talib Kweli - Twice Inna Lifetime
I refugee from Guantanamo Bay
Dance around the border like I'm Cassius Clay
- Praz, Ready Or Not
My rhymes are like shot clocks,
interstate cops
and blood clots,
my point is your flow gets stopped.
- Talib Kweli - Hater Players
Rhyme Scheme
& Dialect
Jay Z - Moment of Clarity
On Simple Rhymes:
Music business hate me ‘cause the industry ain't make me
Hustlers and boosters embrace me and the music I be making
I dumbed down for my audience to double my dollars
They criticized me for it, yet they all yell "holla"
If skills sold, truth be told, I'd probably be lyrically Talib Kweli
Truthfully I wanna rhyme like Common Sense
But I did 5 mill' – I ain't been rhyming like Common since
When your cents got that much in common
And you been hustling since your inception
Fuck perception! Go with what makes sense
Wu Tang - Triumph
Complex Rhymes & Dialect
I bomb atomically, Socrates' philosophies and hypotheses
Can't define how I be dropping these mockeries
Lyrically perform armed robbery
Flee with the lottery, possibly they spotted me
Battle-scarred Shogun, explosion when my pen hits tremendous
Ultraviolet shine blind forensics
I inspect you, through the future see millennium
Killer Beez sold fifty gold, sixty platinum
Shackling the masses with drastic rap tactics
Graphic displays melt the steel like blacksmiths
Big L - Ebonics
Dialect
A radio is a box, a razor blade is a ox
Fat diamonds is rocks and jakes is cops
And if you got robbed, you got stuck
If you got shot, you got bucked
And if you got double-crossed, you got fucked
Your bankroll is your poke, a choke hold is a yoke
A kite is a note, a con is a okey doke...
I know you like the way I'm freaking it
I talk with slang and I'mma never stop speaking it
That's just the way that I talk, yo
Immersive Storytelling
Children's Story
Once upon a time not long ago
When people wore pajamas and lived life slow
When laws were stern and justice stood
And people were behavin' like they ought ta good
There lived a lil' boy who was misled
By another lil' boy and this is what he said:
"Me and you, Ty, we gonna make some cash
Robbin' old folks and makin' tha dash"
They did the job, money came with ease
But one couldn't stop, it's like he had a disease
Gimme The Loot
My man Inf left a Tec and a 9 at my crib
Turned his self in, he had to do a bid
A 1-to-3, he be home the end of '93
I'm ready to get this paper, G: you with me?
Motherfucking right, my pockets looking kinda tight
And I'm stressed
Yo, Biggie let me get the vest
No need for that, just grab the fucking gat
The first pocket that's fat, the Tec is to his back
Word is bond, I'mma smoke him, yo, don't fake no moves
Treat it like boxing, stick and move, stick and move
you ain't got to explain shit
I've been robbing motherfuckas since the slave ships
With the same clip and the same .45
99 Problems
So I, pull over to the side of the road, I heard:
"Son do you know why I'm stopping you for?"
"Cause I'm young and I'm black and my hat's real low
Do I look like a mind reader sir, I don't know
Am I under arrest or should I guess some more?"
"Well you was doing fifty-five in a fifty-four
License and registration and step out of the car
Are you carrying a weapon on you? I know a lot of you are"
"I ain't stepping out of shit, all my paper's legit."
"Well, do you mind if I look around the car a little bit?"
"Well, my glove compartment is locked, so is the trunk in the back
And I know my rights, so you gon' need a warrant for that"
"Aren't you sharp as a tack..."
Questions?
Renegade Rhyme Scheme:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nVjRwaz-Z2oig8ouSNNuvOQDBa860WoPXh9tQ1J9cV0/pubhtml?gid=0&single=true
Spotify Playlist:
https://open.spotify.com/user/12991911/playlist/4ZnhBqfITU6CkxYCrkbG5R
Now That's What I Call Analyzing Song Lyrics Vol. 2
By mikesherov
