Alyssa Lies By Jason Michael Carroll: Song Analysis

In today’s society, music controls the way we live our lives. The influence that music has on society has broadened throughout the years and with social media being one of the world’s top priority, the fan base and spectrum for music in general has expanded significantly. Music is used to express feelings, moods, circumstances, experiences, knowledge, and so much more. With this being the case, the lyrics of any song can be interpreted differently by each and every listener. Many song lyrics give positive messages, promoting well-being, whiles others give negative messages, promoting violence, criminal behaviors, sexual contents, and disrespect towards others. With this being said, music reflects what the public demands, and in many cases the negative messages are often times what sells more than those music giving positive messages.

They costume domestic violence by using beautiful Fox and passionate love making, to turn the violence into something almost resulting from too strong of love. Too many young men and women will find this all provocatively sexy. The video portrays the woman looking beautiful, even while being choked; the man tortured by his rage, longing for love and peace, and believing that if only the woman would behave, then the man would retreat to serenity (Meyers). This however is not the real perception people should be seeing, imagining, or believing. Abuse is not love in any shape or form, but to subjective people who don’t completely analyze the situation, it almost makes it look like in this case domestic violence can be tolerated and justified. This is not the message we should be sending to people in these types of situations or to some who may be faced with them later in life. Domestic violence is already a huge problem in today’s society. This song is not to blame for all of it, but I’m sure it add’s to the numbers involved.

Most audiences view music as a form of entertainment only, so society tends to overlook the messages behind the music. Some artists use music to promote their beliefs or inform their listeners about unnoticed issues. Music can spread awareness about misfortunes in the world, and Martina McBride uses her celebrity status to promote her own concerns about child abuse. In 2002, Martina McBride recorded a song titled “Concrete Angel” to spread awareness about child abuse. Her song addresses the general population, consisting of bystanders, because most people are aware of tragedies such as child abuse, but they ignore the problem. Through emotional appeals, characterization, imagery, and foreshadowing, “Concrete Angel” illustrates the story of a young girl’s abuse in order to call the bystanders to awareness of the societal problem.

This song is a wakeup call for America to set a better example for the next generation. People are hurting other people. Some are paranoid of what will happen next. Life should not be scary, but there are people afraid to walk out and be among the chaos. Everybody is against one another, and they are not willing to compromise. “It’s time we stop” and look at what we are doing and what has become of us. There are wars for ignorant reasons, there are people hurting, there are innocent children watching, WAKE UP AMERICA! The riots and wars are not worth all of this pain and suffering.

Most of the time, when we listen to a song, we don’t listen to the words, or what message they are trying to give us. Each song out there has a message in the lyrics somewhere. For this assignment, we were to analyze a song and the lyrics and find the thesis of that song. With thesis, I mean what the message within the song is trying to tell us. The song “I hope you dance” by Lee Ann Womack has a good thesis in some ways, but the thesis could also be argumentative also.

The song I picked for this homework assignment is called Runaway Love by Ludacris and Mary J. Blige. The song is describing the hardships of three young girls and their struggle to survive. Finally, the girls are fed up with the lives they are forced to live and decide to pack up their things and run away. I think this song can relate to many aspects of sociology that we have learned in class. Some examples shown through the song are poverty, education, healthcare, marriage and family. All three girls’ different stories and struggles they face.

Songs have been portraying society as far back in history as we can research. A song that exemplifies society in a positive way is the song “Straight Outta Vagina” by Pussy Riot on the album XXX. This song portrays women as strong and independent, it also outlines some of the amazing things women have done throughout history. This is shown though the imagery of women portrayed as vaginas. Throughout the song, there are many examples of how Pussy Riot defies gender stereotypes, fights gender norms, exemplifies gender performance, power, and violence.

This song is about hating someone. It relate to the eleventh amendment because they not allow to sue citizens from other state they can hate them.

This song implies that individual’s are violating the norms and values of society. They start the song with a verse that expresses

     The song continues to venture into the theme of justice and injustice. Although all the evidence supports the Hurricane’s innocence, the community as a whole acts to ensure that injustice is served.

In this song, the author puts heavy emphasis on the pathos of his claims. A notable example is found in the beginning when the author says “on the other side of a street a knew/Stood a girl that looked like you” this is an effective use of pathos because it lets the audience know that the author has had this woman on his mind for so long that he begins the way see her everywhere. This in a way contributes to his ethos because it shows that he is being sincere. This effectively reaches “us” as the audience because it appeals to the emotional side of the argument by letting us know that he does care about this

In the introduction of the song the culprit questions his life and the choices he has made. But the truth is that we cannot close our eyes and forget about our actions; evil or good. We must deal with the consequences

This appeal is the one that is most prevalent and is shown through Aristotle’s three criteria to stimulate emotions from the audience. This song does an amazing job of connecting with the audience on an emotional level and it also touches the audience in some way or other. After I thoroughly read the lyrics I realized that it makes you want to make a change and get involved. I know that after I hear this song I want to go out and do something better for this world and make it a better place. Every day on the news we hear and see the horrible things that are happening and we stop and say well what can you do about it? But once this song is heard it’s like you want to start the change and make a difference in some way. “Can you practice what you preach and would you turn the other cheek” this really struck me hard when I first sat down and took it in. Can you really just walk away from all the horrible things that are going on or can you make that difference that is talked about all the time? Aristotle mentions the 3 criteria’s which are understanding the state of mind of the audience, who can excite the emotions, and understanding the reasons why people become emotional. These 3 can be seen in the line “people killin, people dyin’, children hurt and you hear them crying.” This line is so captive and immensely strong just the thought of what is being said makes you think the

Looking back at when I was assigned to write this Rhetorical Analysis, I was excited. I was given the option of picking two articles or two songs to write about. Being a big lover of music, I took the opportunity to analyze and put into conversation two songs of my choosing. After contemplating over which songs I would be analyzing, I finally chose two and began to brainstorm. However, as I was brainstorming, I realized that one of the songs I chose, did not seem to be very fitting for the message I wanted to talk about. So, after a little more contemplating I chose a different one. The two songs that my Rhetorical Analysis introduce are “Roar” by Katy Perry and “Brave” by Sara Bareilles. I chose these songs because they do a fantastic job at sending out a strong message of self-empowerment. This is a topic that I feel strongly about.

Don't look at me is the first line of Christina Aguilera's song "Beautiful." This instant whisper from the voice of Aguilera creates an ashamed vibe for the song. It is spoken quietly and without any musical instrumentation. As the music softly and brilliantly builds up to the first verse listener's already have a misinterpretation of the lyrics. The audience presumes that the song will be about depression or shame and disgrace because one would associate not wanting people to look at you with shame. However, once they read more into the lyrics they notice that the meaning of the song is much deeper than shame and actually has an opposite message. When the audience hears the title of the song they could