Meaning Of The Song 'Radioactive'

In Billy Joel’s hit song, “We Didn’t Start The Fire”, he sings about the major headlines and influences on his generation. If you compare these allusions to the headlines today, you’ll see that our society’s issues and interests haven’t changed much. Political scandals, the race to space, pop culture, and best-selling novels; all crucial to the shaping of our society. Even though the 60’s and today’s world are decades apart, there are many similarities between society then and society now that suggest the more things change, the more they stay the same.

The song concludes by referencing George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel “1984” with the lines “Who controls the past now controls the future / Who controls the present now controls the past” (lines 49-51),

Listening to the lyrics of your favorite song you automatically start to have a connection with that song. Then the song starts to represent you and your life because of the lyrics. Some songs show about being a fighter,having freedom, or just being you. There's a billion of songs out there and there's a billion of people who connect with those songs. Usually the most common reason why some songs represent people is by their past experience. For me some songs represent me because I decided to follow my dreams,living in the moment, and get right back up.

The first simile we are introduced to in the song is line 8. A simile is using the words ‘like’ or ‘as’ to compare to unlike things. In this case, he raps ‘I’m as black as the moon’. After listening, one may think ‘but the moon isn’t black’. In this lyric, he’s comparing blackness to the side of the moon never seen, the back part of the moon that is unlit by the sun and therefore invisible to humans on Earth. Later in the same line, he uses a metaphor. A metaphor is a figure of speech that implies comparison between two unlike entities. The metaphor is ‘came from the bottom of mankind’. This metaphor of ‘bottom’ refers to either an evolution of people from Africa or the meaning of his ethnicity being treated unfairly throughout history. The next metaphor is displayed in line 13: ‘Reciprocation of freedom only live in your eyes.’ This is a metaphor type similar to what we discussed in class. People use parts of the body to represent other things. In this line, he is referring to an ideal of freedom living in the eyes. Eyes are what we use to view and see the world therefore this line represents something that can be seen but maybe not used or felt to the person or persons at

This theme is brought through the song by showing multiple literary devices. Such as “I'm the one at sail, I’m the master of my sea”. This metaphor shows the realization and empowerment that oneself can give in a depressing situation. This simile “Falling like ashes to the ground, Hoping my feelings they would drown” compares his feeling of sadness and depression to ashes, and wanting them to drown and vanish, from his life. This line, “All the hate that you’ve heard has turned your spirit to a dove” explains how all of the hate that he has experienced and gone through has turned his feelings around, and decided to look on the bright side of things. Personally I think this is a great

The refrain goes like this, “When I look into your eyes / There’s just devils and dust”. Eyes are often used in poetry and in popular culture as a path to see what somebody really feels and how that person is really like in the inside. If in a person’s eyes “there’s just devils and dust” it shows that that person is troubled, haunted, and desolated. The visual image of “devils and dust” illustrates a godforsaken place, which is what that person’s soul has become. Following that the speaker tells his friend, Bobby, how they are a “long, long way from home”. These verses can have two meanings: they can refer to a soldier in a war (thus the relation with the Iraq War) or they could mean that we have strayed so far away from our values, from what we were founded upon, that this is no longer home, it is now a strange place. Many people argue, and with some justification, that the United States in the past years is becoming less and less like the country it was founded to be. The verse, “I feel a dirty wind blowing” once more takes us to the Iraq War since it evokes the image of a desert. It also relates, together with the “finger on the trigger”, to the Wild West, which seems to be where Springsteen has gotten most of the imagery for his CD (as it can be seen in songs with titles such as “Black Cowboys” and “The Hitter”). The Wild West used to be a treacherous place, which relates with the

The chorus goes as following, “Through the wind and the rain/She stands hard as a stone/In a world that she can't rise above/But her dreams give her wings/And she flies to a place where she's loved/Concrete angel”. The first two lines are a simile and represent logos because wind is normally interpreted as something sad that moves things. Rain is also interpreted as sad and depressing because when it rains it is normally gloomy and the sky is grey and simply makes people feel down. The simile is saying that Angela is acting like a hard stone, one that doesn’t move and is up fighting against the harsh wind and rain that is pouring down on her. Also, the last four lines demonstrate that in the abusive situation that Angela is in and can’t seem to get out, affects her want of receiving love and admiration by someone and causes her to rise above and go to heaven where she will receive the love that she

Popular music is often one of the best lenses we have through which to view our own cultural orientation. Many of the artistic and experimental shifts in popular music have mirrored changes in our own society. For instance, the emergence of Elvis Presley as a public figure would signal the start of a sexual revolution and the growth in visibility of a rebellious youth culture. Similarly, the folk and psychedelic music of the 1960s was closely entangled with the Civil Rights, anti-war and social protest movements. In this regard, we can view popular music as an artifact through which to better understand the time and place in which it is produced. In light of this, the state of popular music today may suggest troubling things about our society.

This song is concentrated on the social construction of reality, which talks about about how “Ideas about reality also change over time” (Newman, 53). We can see this expressed in lines 32-33 in the song : “It just ain't the same, old ways have changed/New days are strange, is the world insane…” (lines 32-33) The band states how the world’s views and attitudes have changed and how there is uncertainly for the future. The band is questioning the values that they once lived up to. “Yo', whatever happened to the values of humanity/Whatever happened to the fairness in equality/ Instead of spreading love we're spreading animosity/ Lack of understanding, leading lives away from unity…” (lines 71-74). They imply that individuals are swaying away from their values, as a result changing their reality.

So why would the band choose to illustrate such a serious stage of personal development with the nursery rhyme-like style of the song's chorus? Before we get to that, the song's emotional and psychological message must first be examined.

Music is a universal way in which people connect, and it does this through its use of literary devices to make the songs meaningful while still appealing. The song, “Wait and See,” uses literary devices like similes and metaphors to contribute to the theme of society’s mistakes and their impacts on the

First of all, “biting the dust” means that someone dies. There is no direct evidence to the number of casualties the Dust Bowl, but the number is probably around 7,000. Another reason this song relates to the Dust Bowl is the lyrics, “another one bites the dust.” Many people suffered internal damage, especially in their lungs, by the dust particles. Dust Pneumonia was caused by breathing in the dust filled air. The dust kept building up over time, causing problems internally. The problem was so bad that the Red Cross started handing out filters to keep the dust out. The last thing in the song that relates to the Dust Bowl is the lyrics “You took me for everything that I had and kicked me out on my own.” The dust bowl took everything from farmers like their crops, belongings, and fertile land. Also, many people left their homes. Many people ditched Oklahoma for California, and they were called “Okies.” Okies took jobs and settled in Californian’s homes. These times were justified by these lyrics: “How do you think I'm going to get along without you when you're gone?” The people living in California were ready to get rid of the Okies, and the lyrics are like a person telling a Okie they can get along without

Dylan explained his 1965 transition in an interview that same year, explaining to reporter Charles Champlin that “songs aren’t gonna save the world.” He goes on to dispel the notion that he is a teacher or a leader, even going so far as to reject labels like ‘poet.’ Frustrated with pop-culture’s “simple minded political commitment,” he “makes a shambles of it.” “Desolation Row” demands listeners question the significance of which side one is on, when we are all sitting aboard the sinking Titanic. No longer enacting change through his art, Dylan now satirizes any who are naive enough to believe they can save the world.

Do you ever wonder what is the meaning behind what you so proudly sing whenever you hear it? Music is an art form of culture which organizes sound with times It first came around in prehistoric times, however, as times passes, music is drastically changing. As a result, in the last decades music has experienced drastic changes in the themes they are talking about. These changes are due to the generations and what they are living, political and social actions of the time. For example, the decade of the 80s was the rise of hip-hop and rap music from a local phenomenon to a worldwide known genre of music. Previously, a crack cocaine epidemic had stroke major cities in the USA and it coincided with the rise of hip-hop in black communities as these

The basis for the song was inspired by the destruction of the Roman town “Pompeii” in AD 79 by the eruption of the Mount Vesuvius. Through the eruption the city almost entirely destroyed and cloaked with 4 to 6 metes or volcanic ash (Wikipedia, Pompeii). To put the destruction into perspective, the power behind the blast was estimated to be one hundred times that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima (History, 2016). The band and especially lead singer where specifically inspired by the images that were uncovered when the city was dug up. Bodies were uncovered cloaked in the volcanic ash and made into sort of statue like bodies of the pose held when the person eventually died. The people of Pompeii chose not to flee the city, but instead chose to close their eyes and suffocate and die along with the city (Quora, 2013). Bastille wrote the song as a conversation between two people that decided to die along side their city; perhaps the line, “But if you close your eyes Does it almost feel like nothing’s changed at all?” embodies the story of the people of Pompeii and the mission of the song the best. It is interesting how the depressing and sad motive behind the lyrics is contradicted by the upbeat and uplifting groove of the