The song I chose to listen to is Soldier's Joy. When you listen to the songs that instrumental part of the song feels happy and energetic it brings a lot of joy. It sounds like a square dancing song it gives you that feeling of wanting to dance. But just like the song pumped up kicks if you listen deep into the lyrics it is actually a sad song. It talks about how life was as a soldier. When he sings at the end "Twenty-five cents for whiskey, fifteen cents for beer, twenty-five cents for morphine. Get me out of here." He is either about to retire or has been in the army long enough to hate war now and his way of coping with the PTSD from war is to drink is problems away and he just wants to leave. Another line is "Chicken in a bread pan scratching that dough. Granny does your dog bite?" The beginning part of it is talking about how the food that they're having looks like a chicken was screwing up their food. He also asks if the dog bites, he probably was asking that because he wanted to feed it to the dog then eat the horrible-looking food.
I agree that this song has very energetic and uplifting music, but the lyrics are sadder ones. I feel that could maybe have also been a way to cope with the suffering that the war might have brought on. Expressing the sad lyrics in a happy setting of music maybe made it easier to talk about?
ReplyDeleteI like your comparison with pumped up kicks and to songs in general that sound very different to what they are actually talking about. I tend to enjoy those songs a lot because they are fun to listen to but cause one to think deeper when they decide to listen to the content.
ReplyDeleteI too enjoyed listening to this song because it was really upbeat, but also like you wrote there is a deeper meaning to this song then just what he's singing about. I usually wouldn't really enjoy listening to a song with such a long instrumental interlude but because it was so upbeat and fun it was easy to listen to and nod along to.
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