Should Music Be Analyzed?

            I think that analyzing music can be either a good or bad thing. Sometimes to completely understand a song you need to really listen and hear all the words. Try to figure out what the artist is trying to say in the song by going through the lyrics and see if they use any metaphors or anything in the song. Other times if you analyze a song to much it could start to lose any meaning. If a song has a simple meaning and you try to analyze it you can over think it and be looking for a greater meaning which there may not be in the song.

            A song that I think is better understood when you really listen and break down the lyrics is” The House That Built Me” by Miranda Lambert. In the song she talks about going to the house she grew up in to look around. She said she is not there to take anything to just get a memory. She says that she is trying to fix the brokenness inside her. What she means in the song is that she has lost who she is and thinks that maybe if she went back to this house it will remind her of who she is. The first time you listen to this song you may not really understand what she is talking about but once you really listen I think most people can relate to the way she feels.

            An example of a song that I think the listener can over analyze is “If I Die Young” by The Band Perry. With many reviews of the song people say that they don’t understand what the artist is trying to say. A review from the9531.com said “By the second half of the first verse, Kimberly employs such strong language that it’s hard to tell whether or not the song is meant to ponder the hypothetical or to speak prophetically”. This is what most people think, but the artist actually based this song on a poem called “The Lady of Shalott” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. So while some people think that the meaning of this song is that the artist is thinking about dying young, really it is just a tribute to a classic poem.

            There are many songs that can go either way. They may have a simple meaning or really no meaning to them so when someone tries to analyze the song they may end up more confused than before. Some songs can even just be for comedy purposes and really have no meaning to them at all. Other songs have a deeper meaning that it may take you a while to understand. I think to decide whether or not you should analyze a song you need to listen to it a few times and see if you can get a simple meaning from what the song says. If you can not figure out the meaning then maybe you should read the lyrics and really try to decipher what the artists is trying to say.