Your job is to pick a love song and post a youtube link on our blog explaining how this particular song perceives love considering how we've discussed the extensive varieties of love throughout our class.
Be sure to explain which song you've selected, how the song depicts love, and how the song compares/contrasts with a particular line in Romeo and Juliet. Be sure to include the Act, Scene, and line of the quote. For example, if you're using line 455 from Act III, Scene VIII, the citation would look as follows: (III.viii, 455). Note how the act is capitalized, the scene is in lower case and followed by a comma, and finally the line's number is presented.
Have fun!
And if you're struggling, I'll put down some of my favorite love songs!
The Cure - Six Different Ways
Radiohead - Lucky
Air - How Does It Make You Feel?
Blur - Tender
Grinderman - The Palaces of Montezuma
"Love Story"
ReplyDeleteby Taylor Swift
First: Yes!! I got the best song because it's about Romeo and Juliet. Ha ha.
Now to the actual EC:
"Love Story" is Taylor Swift’s version of "Romeo and Juliet". It shows the same love-at-first-sight scene as in the play by Shakespeare but ends with a happy ending where Romeo and Juliet get married instead of both killing themselves.
The song portrays love as a rebellious, beautiful, dangerous thing where two people would do anything to be with each other. Love is missing the other person and wanting to run away with them and feeling alone when they are gone. Love is also having faith in the person you are in love with. It is everything. There is not really anything in the song about appearances.
In the play “Romeo and Juliet” all the “love” in the story is mainly about beauty. When Romeo is describing Juliet he says “O, speak again, bright angel! for thou art as glorious to this night, being o'er my head as is a winged messenger of heaven”(II.ii, 29). Romeo tells Juliet how beautiful she is and that he loves her when they just met. They do not yet actually know each other but are supposedly “in love”.
Taylor Swift’s love is more emotional and about real feeling while Shakespeare’s love about beauty, but both are about rebellion and not letting anyone or anything get in the way of love.
here's the link
Deletewww.youtube.com/watch?v=8xg3vE8Ie_E
and lyrics
www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/taylorswift/lovestory.html
"A Thousand Years"
ReplyDeleteChristina Perri
Youtube Music Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtOvBOTyX00
Lyrics: http://www.metrolyrics.com/a-thousand-years-lyrics-christina-perri.html
"A Thousand Years" captures the immortality of love and how it has been a part of our lives since the beginning of humanity. The chorus line, "I have loved you for a thousand years, I'll love you for a thousand more", supports this idea of love being an everlasting thing that will live on even when you die.
The emotions presented in this song are in many ways similar to the mutual feelings that Romeo and Juliet experience upon their first encounter. It depicts a "love-at-first-sight" situation in which you meet someone and feel as though you have known and loved them for a much longer time than you have actually been with them. In Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet", Juliet's eyes contain the best of the universe according to Romeo: "Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven, Having some business, entreat her eyes to twinkle in their spheres till they return" (II, ii, 15). Stars may not live forever like love, but they last many lifetimes which is the message behind "A Thousand Years".
"Like You" <>
ReplyDeleteI used this song for an extra credit before xD
Act V, Scene III, Lines 101-110 (Romeo's dialogue before death)
"Like You" speaks of the pain that comes from living when the one you love is gone because of death. Romeo is willing to kill himself so that Juliet would no longer be alone in death and he would no longer be alone in life. This song also has repeated lines 'Grieving for you, I'm not grieving for you.' This gives across the emotion that the speaker is grieving and filled with the pain, but he/she also knows that the one who he/she is grieving for would not want the singer to grieve. Romeo seems to be the same, he knows that if he were the one lying dead, he would want to see Juliet still living a happy life but he still cannot control his grief. I chose this song because both the lyrics and lines 101-110 of Act V, Scene III show a love so strong that you would kill yourself if the one you loved was dead. No one except the dead know what is after death, but for the sake of love, Romeo and the speaker of "Like You" jump head on into the abyss for their love.
Lemonade
ReplyDeleteJeremy Passion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OqgAywehPQ
"Lemonade" depicts love as someone that is exactly what you need, someone that you fit with perfectly. Jeremy Passion enforces this idea of love by using different metaphors. For example, in the first verse he sings, "Let me tell you what she means to me, like a tall glass of lemonade, when it's burnin' hot on summer days, she's exactly what I need." In these lines, Jeremy uses imagery, such as the heat of a summer's day and the taste and smell of fresh lemonade, to reiterate the concept of someone fulfilling your needs wholly. He also uses the allusion of lemonade in the summer to give a sense of familiarity and intimacy to the lyrics.
When Romeo first sets his eyes on Juliet, he says "It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night, As a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear-, Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear...For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night." (I.v, 52-54). This seems to directly correlate to the part in the song where Jeremy sings, "She takes care of me baby, and she helps me be a better man. She's so beautiful, sometimes I stop to close my eyes." Both of these phrases speak of the beauty of the women these men are fond of. Romeo speaks about how "rich" Juliet's beauty is. Jeremy basically says that the beauty of his lady is so overwhelming he has to "close his eyes". A major difference, though, is the fact that Romeo only talks about Juliet's beauty while Jeremy speaks about his relationship with his lady. This gives the song more substance and makes the love seem real. Romeo's love, however, seems very false and shallow.
By My Side
ReplyDeleteDavid Choi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swWYvpsLr4o
"By My Side" perceives love as something that is all-encompassing. David Choi talks about how he is always thinking about the girl, and wants to spend every moment with her. In the chorus, he says "I just wanna kiss you, I just wanna hold you all my life,[...] I want you here forever right here by my side". In the song, David Choi also says "I've got a stubborn heart for you, call me crazy but it's true, I love you." This explains that true love should not be given up on and should be continuous.
When Romeo first talks to Juliet, he says "My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand, to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss" (I.v,106-107). Romeo's idea is similar to David Choi's, as they both want to kiss the one they love. When Romeo visits Juliet at the balcony, (II.ii, 10) Romeo exclaims, "It is my lady, it is my love!". This compares to "By My Side" because even after Romeo discovers that Juliet is a Capulet, he continues to see her because of his "stubborn heart", and he professes his love to her.
Something
ReplyDeleteThe Beatles
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrW7dlDHH28
Something portrays love as a mysterious, undefinable thing. The singer is attempted to talk about what love is, but can't say anything more than it is "something" and that he doesn't know. It shows how love is this feeling that we can't really explain. The singer talks about how he doesn't want to leave the person that he loves, but other than that, there really isn't anything about the person that the singer can definitively point to and say, "This is love."
In Romeo and Juliet, love is about proclaiming your love for the other person over... and over... and over again. Both Romeo and Juliet know they love each other, but for some reason they need evidence of this love, which exists in the form of various vows. In (II.ii,90-131), Romeo and Juliet proclaim their love and question their love for each other repeatedly. In Something, love is portrayed as this mysterious thing which exists but can't be explained. In Romeo and Juliet, it is this fickle object whose existence must be questioned and proven repeatedly.
Talia Gushchina
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xljo1om9uo
"So This is Love"- Disney's Cinderella
"So This is Love" is very short, much like CInderella and the Prince's relationship together.They dance once with each other and are suddenly singing about how they know all that love is. This song describes love a the "key to heaven", a miracle that they were lucky enough to have found in each other. Also, similar to when Mercutio tells Romeo to "Borrow Cupid's Wings and with them soar above a common bound'( I iv 17-18), in this song Cinderella sings that she has wings and she can now fly into heaven.
In Romeo and Juliet, our title characters seem to be in love with the concept of love, not each other directly. This is blantantly stated by Friar Lawrence when he speaks to Romeo about his falling out of love with Rosaline.
"Romeo: Thou chid'st me oft for loving Rosaline.
Friar Lawrence:For doting, not for loving, pupil mine " (II iii 86-87)When Romeo and Juliet speak to each other they flirt,a lot, but never really get to know each other. This song is very similar- this song is all about how love makes life divine and is miraculous, but not a single mention of any attributes of the two lovers.Also, in CInderella(also as in other early Disney princess movies) the main characters fall in love with and marry a prince within a day, just like in Romeo and Juliet.Fun fact: Snow White is technichally fourteen in the movie, so she is the same age as Juliet is in the book.
"I Love You"
ReplyDeleteAvril Lavigne
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0-omvd2u1s
This song depicts love like what you feel for someone after going through a lot things with that and this is shown when the song goes "and the reason I love you is all that we've been through" which I take it to mean that all the experiences that you've shared with him/her made you love that person. The song goes on to describe all the specific things that the other person does that makes that person so endearing to the singer for example "I like the way you misbehave when we get wasted" but then always adds "but that's not why I love you" which supports the idea that love to the singer is something that happens after time where you get to see all the little details about them.
In "Romeo and Juliet," however, their love is depicted as "love at first sight" where without truly knowing the person, you immediately want to be with that person and would even risk your life to see that person. Romeo seems especially taken with Juliet's beauty alone, not mentioning any other qualities about that person unlike the song. This is emphasized in the line where Romeo says "Did my heart love till now? Foreswear it, sight, For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night" (I.v,59-60) shortly after seeing Juliet for the first time. Romeo already believes that he never loved anyone as much as he does Juliet from simply seeing her beauty. Compared with the love shown in the song, Romeo's love for Juliet is based on the first impression you get from someone's beauty.
“I Knew I Loved You” by Savage Garden
ReplyDeleteYouTube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjnmICxvoVY
Lyrics Link: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/savagegarden/iknewilovedyou.html
(I put the official music video of the song because it further emphasizes the similarity between the scene in which Romeo and Juliet meets and the scene in which Hayes in shown to be “quite” attracted to the stranger sitting across from him in a subway train)
The song, “I Knew I Loved You”, by Savage Garden does an excellent performance in portraying and depicting the “love” or rather the infatuation that both Romeo and Juliet feel for each other (“love at first sight”). Throughout Act 1, Scene 5 (I, v, 51) and Act 2, Scene 2 (II, ii, 69), Romeo is immediately attracted to Juliet and forgets his lamentation and grief over the broken relationship with Rosaline [in Act 1, Scene 1, William Shakespeare displays Romeo overly dramatic and uses elements from Petrarch in which Petrarch’s style of poems often involve a one sided love where a man demonstrates/professes his love towards a woman however such woman doesn’t necessarily return his affections-heavy use of paradoxes…examples: “heavy lightness”, “cold fire” and “feather of lead”]; in the Capulet’s party, Romeo describes Juliet’s physical appearance that rivals any goddess or elements in nature and seemingly her physical attributes is what made Romeo fall for her (Rina mentioned in class as lust) and afterwards, deciding to elope with her in the famous balcony scene. Similarly, the song by Savage Garden captures the concept of idealistic love in which the singer, Hayes, is shown to enter the subway train and immediately fall for a random girl that was on the same train; furthermore, this singer begins to envision the romantic life that they would share together in a relationship and it is also shown that the stranger (girl) is also somewhat attracted to the singer which perfectly depicts the situation that Romeo and Juliet were in the play.
“Endless Love” (Piano Version) by ?
YouTube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIy14j3VnL0
(There aren’t any lyrics to the song…instrumental)
In my perspective, I feel that this song captures the concept of “realistic love”. In class, we discussed our perception of what true love is and many mentioned that true love is about two people who are willing to accept each other despite their flaws/imperfections, to compromise, to sacrifice, etc. This song creates a soothing, calm, and slow [also a tinge of sadness] atmosphere and (to me) brought up this image/picture of two people in love by spending moments together and thus, getting to know each other. I feel that true love is gradual and takes time to grow and develop into this so called passion for each other rather than this instant quick attraction for each other as portrayed in Romeo and Juliet as well as “I Knew I Loved You” by Savage Garden (more so, the idealistic version…love at first sight concept).
This song is actually a song from a Chinese movie called "The Myth" starring Jackie Chan...
DeleteYouTube Link: http://m.youtube.com/index?&desktop_uri=%2F#/watch?v=wQmx9SM_PbM
(BTW: in terms of experience, listening to the actual song is different from the instrumental song)