Not only do some artists use the same themes in a song over and over again, many artists use the same themes over and over again in different songs. If you analyze a lot of music, you end up finding many of the same melodic and harmonic patterns repeatedly. Language is similar, we use many of the same words over and over and yet find novel ways to express ourselves. This is what creates style in music.
Lithium is a medication used by western psychiatrists to cure manic-depressive psychosis, also called bipolar psychosis. Mental disease is a problem, and bipolarity, good and evil, top and down, variations in intensity, are in the core of storytelling and the art of drama.
So already as a theme, lithium sounds dramatic. Does it sound obvious? We guess straight away there is irony here — especially because the tone on which it is sung does not sound happy — internal contradiction!
Secondly, that is an expression of emotion and aims at finding empathy in the audience. If so, what will be the future of this new friendship, we wonder?
That might be the dramatic question. This combined with the loneliness makes the real catalyst: The Antagonist becomes obvious: Is it an actantial character?
Is it a lover, a friend, the audience? We can not know — things stay open to interpretation, but those questions raise, at least implicitly. We broke our mirrors This probable metaphor he does not mean it literally, does he? From now, we can consider that technically we are in the Act II, since the catalyst and dramatic question are already past.
Sunday morning is everyday for all I care… Another metaphor: The permanent contradiction inside each couple of verses becomes systematic and imitates the feeling of the bipolar disorder. The author knows that the audience knows him, and that he is not a religious person.
So here again, we can take it as irony. This repeated assertion only asserts the impossibility to assert anything. It sounds like another signal of distress. The lyrics have at the same time very autobiographical elements, and some others that are totally invented.
It is thematically dramatic. The internal contradiction reaches several climaxes. The crescendo in intensity — like, miss, love, killed — leads us to the real climax, a symbolic murder of the other, the friend or lover.
Treating his emotions such a way would lead him straight away to suicide more surely than with any mental disease… Do not follow his great example!
The song then continues repeating the Verse 1, the Chorus 2. No new element is added.Nirvana songwriting analysis essay. Nirvana songwriting analysis essay. Meet Yourself with us Nirvana songwriting analysis essay.
Meditation. Enjoy Your Silence. Inner Peace. About. We work for Spreading Happiness. Meditation Foundation Specializes . "Polly" is a great example of this, and an exception in that it is a more narrative song than most of the Nirvana catalog.
However even though the songs generally lacked an overt agenda they all definitely had a point of view.
Jul 02, · Songwriting Analysis: Mix - Impactful Songwriting #9: Nirvana "About a Girl" YouTube; Mix Analysis: On A Plain by Nirvana Pt. 1/2 - . Everyone knows Nirvana's songs.
Lesser known are the stories behind them. ‘Blew’, the first song on '89 debut ‘Bleach’, is about Cobain’s growing sense of claustrophobia living in. Mar 04, · Nirvana – Lithium – Lyrics analysis and meaning This is one of the song analyses presented in the PDF Songwriting.
Lithium is the 5th track of Nirvana ‘s second studio album Nevermind (DGC Records, ).5/5(10). In my last entry I did a brief, partial melodic/harmonic analysis of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” I may write more on the song at a later date, but for this entry I thought I’d talk more about one of the principles I introduced in the last entry: that of thematic economy.