Jordan
Drazen
11/7/12
The
song I chose is Dogs by Pink Floyd. It is from the album Animals, released in
1977. The album is a concept album; this means that there is a story or central
theme that connects all the songs together. The song Dogs is 17 minutes long. The
song is written by Roger Waters and David Gilmour.
The idea for the album Animals is that there are three
different animals; Pigs, Dogs, and sheep. Each animal represents a different
social class. The pigs represent the careless people who don’t care about
anything, the dogs represent the controlling and violent government, and the
sheep represent the mindless followers who believe anything they are told.
For the literary terms, starting off is the song title. The
whole album personifies these animals as classes in society, so the Dogs are an
example of personification. An example of assonance is towards the end of the
song. There are eleven lines of the song in a row that start with the word “Who”.
Every verse of the song is pretty much a metaphor. For example, the first
verse, starting with “You gotta be crazy” and ending with “..when the moment is
right without thinking”, that whole verse is saying how you have to adapt to
society, and the outside world to survive, everyone is hunting you, and you are
hunting everyone.
As with every Pink Floyd song, the music is a huge part
of the song. It’s 17 minutes for a reason; most of it is instrumental with amazing
guitar solos by David Gilmour. Without the instrumentation, the song would
still make an amazing poem, as the meaning behind it is very powerful. However,
the instruments really drive it over the top and give it a lot more emotion.
The song starts out with an acoustic guitar tuned down a whole step and is
played in E minor which makes it sound like it’s in D minor. The strumming
pattern starts pretty aggressive. There are also synthesizers playing in the
background. The vocals come in shortly after the intro section. In between
certain verses there is usually a guitar solo. The solos add so much feeling
into the song. Restating what I said earlier, the instrumentation and lyrics
are both amazing in their own right, but together, they form the masterpiece known
as Dogs.
I could go on forever about the songs off of this albums
because it’s my second favorite album by Pink Floyd, the first being The Wall.
When Roger Waters writes songs about government, religion, business, or pretty
much anything that is a very serious part of modern life, he uses a lot of
metaphors. He sings about the serious matters in a very direct way, but
describes everything differently. Going off topic, anything by Pink Floyd is
good.
(Don't let the 17 minute label scare you from listening to the whole thing. When listening to Pink Floyd time flies by due to awesomeness)
