Typically, when I think of "the romantic," beyond dating and relationships, my thoughts drift to music. I lack any musical ability, but I love listening to music. So, I chose to look at the song "You Had Me At Hello" by A Day to Remember, one of my favorite bands. I attached a link with a lyric video for this song. I am not the best at identifying music genres, so in honor of our impending project, Wikipedia defines their style as a combination of "metalcore and pop punk." This implies that the majority of their songs are more fast paced, which I like, but this song is a nice change because it is much more slow, soft, and romantic. Not exactly the type of music that you would expect from a band that has been culturally labeled with "metalcore and pop punk."
As you can guess from simply reading the title of the song, the lyrics are a bit cliché, but I still find it adorable and love it. Even though we tend to groan at cheesiness, I still think that the structure of feeling in this song still evokes a positive, happy, romantic feeling for those of us that don't let the cheesiness dominate our impression of the song. It is of course impossible to have one universal reaction, but I believe that these are the feelings that the band intended to induce. I feel that this all ties back to the result of "cultural construction" as well as the "ideological position" that we have had engrained into our heads: romantic = cute, romantic = happy, and so on. Of course, going back to the lack of universalism in any structure of feeling, there are always those that will assert their opinion that "the romantic" is stupid, doesn't exist, is a lie, and whatever other negativities they throw around. Lyrics such as "I'm missing you so much," "None of that ever seems to matter when I'm holding you," "I've never seen a smile that can light the room like yours," "You gave me butterflies," and "Would it be ok if I took your breath away?" contribute to the overall romantic feel of this song.
Looking at "The Romantic - a short list" included in the posting assignment, I believe that this song, especially its lyrics, can be looked at both with the "feelings or emotions over reason or fact" and "intuition over learning or knowledge." The song centering around the line "you had me at hello" constructs it to be about the feeling, or myth (depending on your opinion), of love at first sight. This feeling tends to be only that, a feeling. Because is it "first sight," one does not know the person they are "falling in love with," implying that there is little knowledge or fact to rationalize this feeling.
I would just like to say, A Day to Remember is an amazing band!! I really enjoy when band like A Day to Remember, take time to slow things down and do some acoustic stuff.
ReplyDeleteI agree that aside from dating and relationships, music is the next thing to come to mind when thinking of "romantic." This song does provokes many feelings, based around happiness. This song definitely falls under "feelings or emotions over reason or fact." You can tell right from the name that the song is going to be about a strong feeling towards someone from the moment they met.
Just music in itself is romantic, I mean it's adding melody to words and making it flow, but adding in romantic phrases definitely creates an image in your mind and makes you feel a certain way. I think that the way a song creates a story in your mind also makes it easier for us to fall in love with the song because it allows us to put ourselves into it.
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