Analysis of Music: Part 2

The song I have chosen this week will be familiar. Almost everyone knows this song, or they at least know the chorus to it, as it is always played at roller-skating rinks and some school assemblies. It begins with "just a small town girl..." and if you could not guess, it is "Don't Stop Believin'" by the band Journey. This is a very popular song with, in my opinion, a surprisingly deep message. I believe, however, that it has become so overplayed that many people have lost sight of this message. Most people nowadays see it as a good song to sing along to or roller-skate to, but the song has slightly more depth than that.

At first glance, this song appears to be something of a love story. It is between two people that met by chance in a bar of some sort, and this is their first and last meeting. All they appear to want is to get away from their lives for a while, whether they be in a big city or a small town.

What if these people are concepts, though? Perhaps the girl from the small town is our desire as humans to escape the confines of a tightly knit community and the constant scrutiny of others. The boy from the big city could be our desire for this close relationship to other people. These contradicting feelings have to meet in the middle, which is represented by the smokey room, and come up with a compromise. A human's desires are balanced out through this. In the song it says "some will win, some will lose, some were born to sing the blues." This means that through this internal harmony that we must find, we will go on to do the things we are destined to do.

We are also reminded, throughout the song, to hold onto our feelings. This means that we must not give up on our emotions. We must use these to guide us and help us on our way through life. We will always have ups and downs, but these experiences shape us and give us perspectives as human beings. They make us unique and give us character.

Perhaps this is not what the songwriter intended the song to mean. Maybe this song really was just supposed to be a party song. This was my interpretation of what the song meant, however, and I hope it gives you something to think about this week.