Categories: uncategorized
Date: 24 October 2006 14:07:38
I analyzed a song.
While listening to some music with some friends we fell into that old chestnut of a conversation about what it is in music that appeals and what makes some songs special. There was one song in particular that we were discussing, partly because we were thinking about performing it. We agreed it was emotionally powerful and the fact that's it been used in various soundtracks confirms that. But since it has been used in very diverse settings it seemed to me that it couldn't be evoking any very specific emotion, just a general emotional feeling. So I listened a few more times and tried analyzing exactly what it was making me think of. I deliberately tried to ignore the lyrics (something that comes fairly naturally to me anyway) and let the music speak to me. It was interesting. The music was quite cinematic, in that it made me think of what could have been clips from films, except that they are films that haven't been made. That would explain why it's been used so much as soundtrack music, although the fact that it has could of course have shaped my response. The chorus was making me think of someone racing to intervene in a desperate situation. Some loved one - a child or a spouse say - needed urgent action, but they were far away and so there was a prolonged rush towards them. And there was the uncertainty that the person running might arrive in time to avert the disaster, or might arrive too late and find only a corpse. Yet there wasn't a feeling of suspense as there might have been, merely the frantic urgency. The verse was calmer, but in a way that spoke of the runner looking back on the event and being weighed down by sadness. Obviously they hadn't got there in time, and they were looking back with regret and a wish that things had worked out differently. But what was curious was that although the verse resolved the uncertainty that the chorus posed (making it clear what the outcome of the race had been), yet when the chorus came round again there was exactly the same feeling of uncertainty that there had been before. That seemed illogical, but I suppose it was simply the music creating that feeling of uncertainty, and the music of the chorus after the verse was almost exactly the same as the music of the chorus before the verse, so of course my response was the same.