A Song That Touches All the Strings of Your Soul

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Have you ever heard a song that pleads to your soul and the lyrics clinch every inch of your body? I have. I believe everyone has a song that they can relates to one way or another. The song I chose for this essay is titled “Jealous” by Labrinth. Timothy Mckenzie wrote “Jealous” along with Josh Kear and Natalie Hemby. The lyrics of this heart-breaking ballad is what stood out to me the most. Although the actual song is played only by a piano, it truly sets the tone of the singer’s emotions.
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When I first heard this song years ago, I instantly related to it. I learned every single word and sung along to it with the same compassion as the singer himself.
When you listen to the song closely, you may feel as if the song was written for an ex-girlfriend or someone he was truly and deeply in love with. After doing more research on this beautiful song, I learned that the singer wrote it for his father who left him and his family at the age of four.

While listening to the song, you can hear the pain in the singer’s voice, therefore the lyrics stand out over the music. The motif of this song is the word jealous or being jealous of. A motif in a song is usually a melodic/rhythmic/harmonic idea, but the difference is that it serves as an “idea” that appears in different forms throughout a song (Ewer G 2014).

“I’m jealous of the rain. That falls upon your skin. Its closer than my hands have been. I’m jealous of the rain. I’m jealous of the wind. That ripples through your clothes. Its closer than your shadow. Oh, I’m jealous of the wind” (Kear, Hemby, & Mckenzie, 2014). The first verse of the song shows that the songwriters used ABBA rhyme scheme, also known as enclosed rhyme. Here the songwriters rhymed the first and fourth line, and then the second and third line. Figurative or symbolic language was also applied in this verse. Rain creates imagery or metaphor for the natural ability to be able to touch the subject. Also, another metaphor used is him being jealous of the ability to touch the subject which could imply that he is close but far away. “I’m jealous of the rain, that falls upon your skin, its closer than my hands have been”, this is a perfect example of personification.
Verse three of this song is my personal favorite. This verse acts as a bridge in the song. “As I sink in the sand, watch you slip through my hands” (Kear, Hemby, & Mckenzie, 2014). “Sinking” is symbolic in this verse as the songwriters used is it in the sense to describe heading into the wrong direction. Alliteration is also seen here in, ‘As I sink in the sand” (Kear, Hemby, & Mckenzie, 2014). “Watch you slip through my hands” is a metaphor the songwriters use to imply the down fall of the relationship or symbolizing the letting go of the relationship itself. Another metaphor used in verse three is “Cause all I do is cry behind this smile” (Kear, Hemby, & Mckenzie, 2014). This shows that he must put on a “mask” to hide his true emotions, although on the inside he is devastated.

Andrea Newman

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