On Song Lyrics

In high school English class, the teacher once gave us an assignment to select a song and analyze it like we would a poem. The goal was to make obscure poetry terms like “apostrophe” and “consonance” more relatable by studying their usage in a familiar work. I picked “Invisible” by Hunter Hayes for my presentation and talked about the dual nature of invisibility in the song, among other ideas. Though it’s been a few years now, I find myself thinking more critically about the lyrics of the songs I listen to because of this exercise.

People tend to find this weird, but I really like sad music. Not because I’m a sad person—if anything, I think I’m quite the opposite—but because I feel like sad songs lend themselves especially well to this kind of poetic analysis. They speak to emotions that we don’t like to talk about very often. They present interesting conflicts and the better ones even teach us life lessons. Sad songs tell stories, and I love a good story.

In this post, I thought I’d share a couple of my favorite sad-song lyrics, along with my thoughts on each one. This list is by no means complete, but I really do think each song has something interesting to offer, even if it doesn’t immediately come across as poetic.

1. “Apologize” by One Republic

I loved you with a fire red, now it’s turning blue

I could write a whole essay on the symbolism of fire in love (and break-up) songs; it’s such a common motif. This lyric, however, is by far my favorite of all the pyromaniacal verses.

I used to interpret the fire’s changing color from red to blue as meaning that the singer himself now feels “blue,” or sad. After all, in art, red is a warm color that makes you think of passion and love, while blue is a cold tone, associated with the opposite qualities.

A couple years back, however, I decided to look up this lyric on the app “Rap Genius” to see if the artist had released any statement on its meaning or if anyone else had ideas. I was mostly expecting to find confirmation of my own interpretation, but instead discovered an analysis I had never considered. An anonymous contributor pointed out that, from a physics point-of-view, there’s more energy in a wave of blue light than there is in red light. In other words, blue flames actually burn hotter than red ones.

This interpretation introduces an interesting complication to the song as a whole. The singer talks about how he can’t accept his lover’s apologies anymore because he knows she will just hurt him again. Yet, somehow this realization only makes his love, or fire, for her stronger and hotter. Getting over someone, the lyric seems to imply, is more than just objectively recognizing that they are wrong for us. This complex mess of contradictory emotions makes the song all the more realistic and compelling.

2. “Red” by Taylor Swift

Faster than the wind, passionate as sin, ending so suddenly

I love the phrase “passionate as sin.” It implies so much without actually saying a whole lot. There’s generally a negative religious connotation to the word sin, but paired with “passionate,” the word takes on a different feeling. There’s an excitement to the sin Taylor is committing: she might get caught, but she’s doing it wholeheartedly. The specific sin Taylor commits is left ambiguous. Is the sin driving over the speed limit in the “new Maserati” she sings about in a previous verse? Is it loving the wrong person? The beauty of the lyric is that there’s so much room for interpretation.

The lyric’s structure parallels the pacing of the relationship Taylor sings about. Each phrase is a short, incomplete sentence, transitioning quickly from one thought to the next. Just like how Taylor’s romance ended suddenly, the phrases themselves also end suddenly. If you listen to the song, you can hardly register what each phrase is saying before Taylor is already singing the next. Perhaps this is how Taylor felt in the relationship, constantly moving from one emotion to the next and never truly having the time to understand what she’s feeling until it’s all over.

The rhyme scheme is also worth noting. The first two phrases are a near-rhyme with one another (“wind” and “sin”), while the third phrase does not rhyme at all. The use of a near-rhyme creates a feeling of uneasiness—it almost sounds so good, but there’s just something a little off because the rhyme is imperfect. This is a similar feeling to the one Taylor sings about in the rest of the song. Her relationship is new and exciting, and on the surface seems like everything she wants, but there is ultimately an underlying imperfection to it that causes the love to fall apart so soon. Just as quickly as the attempt at rhyming ends by the third phrase of the lyric, so too does Taylor’s relationship.

3. “Piano Man” by Billy Joel

Yes, they’re sharing a drink they call loneliness

But it’s better than drinkin’ alone.

The lyric above has always intrigued me because of the inversion of the words loneliness/alone and drinking/drink. I’ve actually been trying to figure out for quite some time if there’s a literary term for what Billy Joel does here, but I haven’t had much luck finding one. Either way, the lyric introduces some interesting themes.

I used to think it was a contradiction to say that these people are lonely if they’re drinking together; clearly they have someone in their life. The more I’ve listened to this song, however, the more I’ve come to realize that it’s actually not a contradiction at all. The lyric highlights that one can be lonely even in a group by distinguishing between “sharing a drink” of loneliness (i.e., both feeling lonely) from physically being alone.

It’s interesting too that the loneliness is described as a drink rather than a feeling. You can share a drink easily—just pass the cup from one hand to another—but it’s not always easy to share emotions because they’re not so simple to describe. The metaphor emphasizes how naturally these complete strangers are able to commiserate with one another because they’ve all come to see the piano man for a similar reason: “to forget about life”—and how lonely it can be—“for a while.”

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There you have it! These are just a few of my ideas on some songs that I believe have particularly poignant lyrics. Of course, there’s lots of amazing songs out there, including really well-written upbeat songs, but these three are ones that I personally come back to time and again, and thought were worth sharing. If you have thoughts about the lyrics or my interpretations, message me or comment below! Literary analysis, after all, is more fun when you get to discuss it with other people.