Carrie Underwood is an extremely talented artist who enhances her compositions by applying literary and poetic devices into her pieces. Underwood’s song, Wasted, hit number one on the Billboard Hot Country Songs in April 2007, and was a track on the fastest selling album debut in Nielsen Sound Scan history. Some literary and poetic devices Carrie Underwood incorporates into her song Wasted include similes, alliteration, diction, imagery, allusion, and ambiguity.
Alliteration, several words with the reoccurring same consonants, is present multiple times throughout this song. For instance, “she said sometimes love slips away… for one split second… so she took another step and said” all has an alliteration with the letter ‘s’. A southern, twangy diction is also evident with the way words are sung. Such as “wanna’, gotta, gonna’, cause’, ain’t, and drivin’”. Instead of saying the endings and prefixes Underwood illustrates her southern drawl by changing the way the words are pronounced. Similes, a comparison of two things using the words like or as, are also portrayed in Wasted. One example is in the first stanza: “one tear hit the hard wood, it fell like broken glass”. Underwood compares a tear drop falling from one’s face to a glass falling and breaking on the floor. The simile also symbolizes the pain and heartbreak the narrator is feeling. Another simile appears in the second stanza: “For one split second she almost turned around, but that would be like pouring rain drops back into a cloud”. The simile is basically proving that it would be pointless or improbable to go back. Imagery is briefly apparent when Underwood sings about the drunk, loved one. For example, “so he stumbles to the sink and pours it down the drain”. One can vividly picture this drunken man tumbling to the sink and finally ending his drunken habits. “He looked in the mirror and his eyes were clear for the first time in a while” alludes to the fact that the man no longer drinks and he is sober for the first time in a long time. The song title, Wasted, is also a use of ambiguity because it can mean that the singer does not want to waste their life, and it could also be referring to the drunken man who spend most of his life wasted and no longer wanted to waste his life being drunk.
In conclusion, Underwood’s educational use of literary devices and mastery vocals in her song Wasted is only a few of the main reasons why her songs are hitting the top billboard records all over the nation.
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1 comment:
That was a fascinating look at a popular song LauraR.
I appreciated the informative evaluation of the meaning behind her lyrics.
So often we hear the words of a song, yet not the depth of meaning within them.
I will listen to the song now with an improved comprehension thanks to you.
Thank you.
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