ITS MORE THAN JUST MUSIC

F U S I O N

Featuring Stories From:Shannon Miller, Catherine Meadors, & Cassidy Fishman

OUR MESSAGE IS SIMPLE:WHERE OUR MUSIC IS WELCOMEWE WILL PLAY IT LOUDWHERE OUR MUSIC IS CHALLENGEDWE WILL PLAY IT LOUDER

“Love the Way You Lie”Eminem & Rihanna

Written By: Shannon Miller

“Abusive relationships are like being addicted to a bad drug. You know

it’s bad for you but you have a really hard time escaping from it”

-Anonymous

As the chorus melody plays in the background, the shaky video cam-era focuses in on an alluring, young, female adult with long, wavy, bru-nette hair. She is sitting crisscrossed on the floor in a caliginous-lighted room while wearing a grey tank top, jean shorts, and tall black combat boots. The blinds in the background are slightly opened, allowing nomi-nal sunlight to enter the room along with brightening the wood panel walls. The couch, covered in blood red pillows, directly behind the young female, and two old fashioned lamps on each side of it help provide a gratifying frame for the despon-dent looking girl. With her finger nails painted black as night, she stares into the palms of her hands,

which are holding a flaming ball of fire that aluminates her face. This fire does not seem to burn her in any way but she sits infatuated by it and doesn’t look away once. The camera suddenly cuts to a different scene and the first verse of the rap begins to beat with new images dancing across the screen.In today’s world, media has an iniq-uitous habit of finding its way into people’s personal lives; whether it be through television, pictures, videos, or music. However, with personal lives comes personal problems; but what better way is there to find an answer to an issue other than listen-ing to a fan favorite artist sing about it or a famous celebrity act it out? Media knows how to string people along and bait them just like one would do with a fish. The catch being that every decent song on the radio today is built around social issues, because without it people would be, in the simplest term…bored. Society craves those songs about their per-fect love life, their recent break ups, their partying rituals, and of course their religion. One social issue that can be focused on and analyzed through

media is the problem with abusive relationships. This sad but true predicament is more common than people want to believe and it is often swept under the rug due to the sen-sitivity of the subject. For someone to be in a relationship where they are constantly being abused, physi-cally or emotionally, it is often much easier to hide it from the world and let it happen rather than run and seek help. People tend to be full of shame and embarrassment in these types of situations or it’s likely they deny the pain because they convince themselves so hard that their love is stronger than the fists being thrown and that the smiles are worth the bruises at the end of the night. With the countless songs in every genre played on the radio that have the same reoccurring theme of re-lationships that turn sour from clenched hands and invidious lan-guage, the one song that stands out and will be investigated further is Rihanna and Eminem’s “Love the Way You Lie”. This song not only emphasizes the parts of an abusive relationship but in fact shows both sides of the couple being abused. Both partners in this video express hatred to one another but they also express love which is an interesting

contrast to view and dissect. Listening to this song for the first time, the beginning melody sung by Rihanna with the words spoken so softly saying “Just gon-na stand there and watch me burn, Well that’s alright because I like the way it hurts” portrays a women who finds herself in a situation where the man in her life watches as she is in pain from the things he has done to her, but at the same time she enjoys the thrill that comes with the fighting. It continues with “Just gonna stand there and hear me cry, Well that’s alright because I love the way you lie. I love the way you lie.” That last verse is intriguing to most listeners because the convention-al response to anyone lying would not be love and it exemplifies that this women’s love for this man goes deeper than just the average cou-ple. Normally, women do not tend to love when a man is lying to her, however, this memorable chorus is repeated four times throughout the song and it creates a break between each rap verse sung by Eminem. After the opening melody, Eminem begins his rap which starts to tell the story of a madly-in-love couple who fight constantly and they express their hate as well as

their love both physically and vio-lently. The line “She fuckin hates me, and I love it” carries so much irony because, like the line sung by Rihan-na, the man enjoys that his girlfriend can’t stand the things he does but he still does it to purposely get under her skin. Despite doing these awful things he still loves her and doesn’t want her to leave. In a twisted way, his violence is his way of showing her that he cares. Typically, people viewing this relationship from the outside looking in would take one look at this couple being rapped about and automatically assume they are crazy and insane and that they aren’t right together, however, to the couple’s point of view they believe that the violence is accept-able. People who are abusive in rela-tionships yearn for power and control over the other person and frequently characterize their abuse as love. Eminem raps “You swore you’d never hit ‘em, never do noth-ing to hurt ‘em. Now you’re in each other’s face spewing venom in your words when you spit ‘em.” This is an important line because it proves that not all abusive relationships begin with abuse. In most cases they start out like the typical ‘I love you’ sap-

py romances and then as one part-ner begins to feel the need to be in control more and more it is likely to take a turn for the worst. There is an expected cycle when dealing with foul relationships. First, the calm phase, generally the beginning.

Second, the tension building phase, when everything begins to be bottled up and partners get on each other’s nerves. The abusive incident soon follows and then lastly the reconcili-ation phase. Repeat. In the song, the lines “Now I know we said things, did things that we didn’t mean. And

we fall back into the same patterns, same routines. But your temper’s just as bad as mine is, you’re the same as me, But when it comes to love, you’re just as blinded” talk about the pattern that is occurring and how they don’t notice the pain

because they believe it’s real love. “Maybe our relationship isn’t as crazy as it seems. Maybe that’s what happens when a tornado meets a volcano. All I know is I love you too much to walk away though.” The irony of these words being sung is that if they truly loved each other

too much to walk away than why would they spend so much time fighting? These words are examples of how they are blinded by one an-other.Throughout the whole song the lyrics “Watch me burn” are repeat-

ed numerous times and while listening to the song play its course it isn’t until the very last rap line that reads “If she ever tries to fuckin’ leave again, I’ma tie her to the bed and set this house on fire” that actual fire is ever brought up to the listener’s attention. The frightening reality of that line is that in some real life situa-tions that deal with this social issue, things end up going to that extent of death and the song seems to bring it up so casually. Switching from just listening to the lyrics of the song “Love the Way You Lie” to watching

the music video, the visual images help paint a picture and continue to analyze the social issue of abusive relationships. The very first scene in the music video is a close up of Rihanna’s face singing the chorus. Her hair is died bright red and her finger nails are painted to match it.

She is wearing a black leather jacket with a hood that contrasts with her hair along with the bright orange and yellow flames shooting out from a house in the background. She sings to the camera and makes an emotional connection to the viewer with tears in her eyes. Between these close shots of Rihanna, the camera jumps back to the young, female adult sitting on the living room floor. As soon as Em-inem begins his rap and the beat drops, the video spirals into the couple fighting immediately. Jump-ing off of a bed, they start hitting one another and throwing each other around. Swinging punches, spitting at one another, and pushing each other into the walls, the couple never quits fighting. That is until Rihanna begins to sing the chorus again and video jumps to the couple making

out against the wall and saying they love one another. These polar oppo-sites help illustrate the extremes of the relationship and a viewer can feel the love they share even though they also hurt their partner so much. As the song carries on, so does the abusive actions from the couple in the video. Breaking walls, beer bot-

tles, mir-rors, and doors, the man in the video takes out his anger physical-ly rath-er than mentally. The sad eyed, beautiful

brunette stays with him regardless of the abuse she is being put through and the camera continues to project images of the couple making up and showing their happy, loving sides. Towards the end of the video, visual images of a house being set on fire start to be shown more and more and the viewer watches as lamp shades, bed posts, doors, windows, and more

house hold items go up in flame. At last it shows both characters with flames coming up their bodies, how-ever they show no pain while star-ring directly into the camera. As the chorus melody plays in the background, the shaky video cam-era focuses in on an alluring, young, female adult with long, wavy, bru-nette hair. She is sitting crisscrossed on the floor in a caliginous-lighted room while wearing a grey tank top, jean shorts, and tall black combat boots. The blinds in the background are slightly opened, allowing nom-inal sunlight to enter the room along with brightening the wood panel walls. The couch, covered in blood red pillows, directly behind the young female, and two old fash-ioned lamps on each side of it help provide a gratifying frame for the despondent looking girl. With her finger nails painted black as night, she stares into the palms of her hands, which are holding a flaming ball of fire that aluminates her face. This fire does not seem to burn her in any way but she sits infatuated by it. The camera slowly zooms into her face and she slaps her hands closed and the fire ball disappears into the palms of her hands. At this same moment she looks up and stares

blankly into the camera. Camera cuts to black.With media using music to express social issues in today’s society, it takes both great lyrics and great vi-sual art to produce a song and video with such a relatable issue. The idea focused on throughout Rihanna and Eminem’s “Love the Way You Lie” provides a new way for people to learn about this issue and become more aware of it as a person. It takes talented musicians and directors to create such an entertaining outlook on such a serious situation.

“Run For Your Life” The Fray

Written By: Catherine Meadors

“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the

imagination, and life to everything” –Anonymous.

Feelings are influential. Feelings are overwhelming pulses of emotion thriving in the depth of everyone’s heart. Sometimes this pulse can be controlled. Sometimes this pulse of emotion is unleashed without any control at all. Feelings are powerful in a sense that they control the body of their owner, but how are these feelings coped with? How does so-ciety control these feelings they ex-perience? Every person is different. There are a range of emotions and a long list of memories that people experience in their life, but think about this. Some of these memories and feelings are good, some of them are bad. Some feelings make peo-ple hit their knees, shaking, crying out for forgiveness, or hope. Some people experience happiness or joy.

Some joy which is so intense they are jumping, screaming out for the world to know how happy they are because the emotions are too pow-erful to hold in. But how can one world, full of so many people with so many different backgrounds come together? How can a world of people experiencing these multiple emotions at all different times come together and connect? What makes this world of people stand still? The beauty of emotion lies within a beat, a rhythm, a melody, the beau-ty of emotion lies within the way it is expressed, and that is through music. Music, in this world, is com-manding. It grabs the listener’s at-tention because it is a moment in time when each listener is connected with that particular song and that particular artist at that time. They are connected to nothing else, ex-cept for what they feel in that song at that exact moment. Music comes in multiple forms, some music has no words, and other music has only words and no instruments. Music holds control in this world because no matter who someone is, they can feel the pulse in their entire body, they can feel the rhythm bleeding their hearts, and they can feel thou-sands of emotions and be connected to thousands of people at the same

time. Holding the power inside the music is the connection. One song might mean a lot of different things to a variety of different people, but the power is that no matter what dif-ferent connections are being felt, they are all connected through the song. This connection needs to be depicted. To understand how people can have multiple connections and inferences to one song, there needs to be an illustration, and The Fray is a perfect example. The Fray is an alternative band. They write melodies and they pull in their listeners with potent lyrics. This band comes together and writes music which can be interpreted in a vari-ety of ways, but mostly the lyrics are viewed in a Christian light. Everyone can agree that Christianity is one of the biggest religions in the world, mixed with a million sub-categories. Some sub-categories would be unde-nominational, Catholic, etc. When referring to Christianity in the way that The Fray seems to refer to it, it is simple. They are basically referring to God. Just God and how His presence is felt. The songs are relatable in mul-tiple ways to multiple people because of the story lines. These lyrics and the way they are sang and put into videos can hit home to the listeners in differ-ent ways, depending on what they are

going through in that specific time in their life. The Fray has come out with many albums, but the main song that will be focused on is a song from their new album, titled Scars & Stories. The song being investigated is called Run for your Life. It is really easy to feel the Christian vibe throughout every song in this album. One song is called Heartbeat, in which lyrics are stated, “If you can love somebody, love them all the same; you gotta love somebody, love them all the same.” In the bible it states, “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, ex-pecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil” -Luke 6:27-35. At first someone would say that this could be interpreted, but it becomes more obvious when al-most each song contains lyrics that can directly relate back to the bible.

Another song, The Fighter, talks of the battle of love in a fighters view point. Explaining how the fighter keeps going into the ring fighting and fighting and the chorus is say-ing that “maybe we don’t have to be lonely, lonely; loneliness has always been with me, maybe we don’t have to be all alone.” They talk about a girl on the side of the line, begging him to come back, that he doesn’t have to be alone. This is a moving song because every time someone is experiencing something bad or they feel like they are all alone, they hit their knees. They start thinking they have nothing left, but maybe they don’t have to be lonely in the end. God is there, which in the song God is portrayed as someone on the outside of the ring, or the fighter’s lover, crying out the fighter’s name. Screaming you don’t have to do this alone. The bible states, “I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you” –John 14-18. Someone who is not a Christian might still not be convinced, but that is why music is beautiful, be-cause it can be interpreted in many ways. Before moving into the song Run for your Life, one song that really hit home for me was the song from this album called Be Still. The

chorus goes as such, “Be still and know that I’m with you, be still and know that I am here. Be still and know that I’m with you, be still, be still and know.” I can’t put into words the power of emotion that surged through me. The music was so soft, there was a slight piano play-ing in the background with a side touch of a soft violin and then the lead singers voice. It was beautifully written with such grace that anyone listening to it would remain still. The harmony in the background was so soft and humbling, almost as if the listener was feeling someone next to them, rubbing their back, whispering to them that everything will be okay, to be still and know that they aren’t alone, this making the listener not want to move be-cause they don’t want the comfort-ing to stop. The connection is made clear for the listener when reading in the bible, “Be still and know that I am God” –Psalm 46:10. This was a wonderful expression of faith and a song that can truly stick to anyone’s heart. Run for your Life is another song on The Fray’s new album which also has a video along with it. The listen-er is most likely going to hear the lyrics before they ever see the video,

so deciphering the lyrics is an im-portant part in finding the meaning to the song in the listener’s own way. The basic story line to this song is the story of two sisters, one of the sisters dies and the story is about the one sister who lived. Obviously the other sister is going through a horrible time in her life, losing her best friend and her other half. When Christians go through a rough time, they tend to lose sight of their faith and this song can be in-terpret-ed as a girl with is trying to find her healing place in herself and her faith. A breakdown of the lyrics start with the first verse, “Seventeen years by her side, broke the same bread, wore the same clothes and we said, we’re sisters with nothing between, if one of us fall, the other will soon be fol-lowing.” This can be interpreted as a girl who had a healthy, stable life, she trusted in God, but tragedy has

hit. She lost her sister and losing her sister makes her feel like she is about to lose herself. The song continues, “Both of you fell the same day, you don’t know why, one of you never woke up, and you laid your body down on the floor, you’re desperate to hear her footsteps again, but this house is on fire, we need to go.” This is when the actual crisis hits and the

break-down begins. The girl is obviously laying in the floor, begging and won-dering why this had to happen,

just wanting to hear her sister come down the hall, her feelings over-whelming her as she hits the floor. This death, this evil feeling, being a Christian just doesn’t feel as happy, and as promising. She feels alone, maybe as though God has left her side. She is losing sight of her faith, confiding in God to help her. It is as though she is sending out a cry for help. And it seems as though God

answers in the next verse, “Oh, you don’t have to go it alone, go it alone. Run for your life, my love, run and you don’t give up, with all that you are, all that you want; I will be close behind, run for your life.” the chorus is God’s way of saying run for your life, run to Him and He will comfort you. Abandon all this evil and all this pain, look to me, run to me and do not give in. The chorus can be seen as God saying He will stand next to her and fight for her if she just runs to Him, into His arms. “She had a fire inside, and that terrified you, you swore that you’d never lose your control, baby, let yourself go ‘cause part of you hides, and I know the hunger inside of you is strong, and you can only hold back the river so long.” This verse can be read as she had a fire, a passion, or anger inside of her that she can only hold in for so long. Soon this fire will explode and God is saying you can only hold back the river so long, He is saying to let it out, let me take care of you. It is God’s way of saying that she doesn’t have to hold in her pain and that He can take it for her. That this pain will bring out the worst in her and that is not what He wants. When the lyr-ics say “I know the hunger inside of you grows,” that can also be seen as

God knows that underneath all of this pain and hurt, she still has the will to fight and love. And the chorus

follows in beautifully here, as God is again reminding her, yes, you can breakdown but remember “you don’t have to go it alone, run for your life,” you don’t have to be alone, drop this pain and suffering and run to me. Feel the freedom my love has to offer and forget the rest. The video is the most influential part of the whole interpretation into the song Run for your Life. The video is really a twist to how the song is interpreted. The video begins with a multitude of people, all different ages and races, including the band members, looking at the sky. All of the people have a straight face. There is an empty stare on their faces. The video shows each person in a dif-ferent place, one of them in a base-ball field looking down, grabbing the dirt, as if something used to be

there, as if he was reminiscing on old memories. As the camera is flashing back and forth showing the various people, you see each person begin to look at the sky. Each person is stand-ing in their own place, either a neigh-borhood or an empty street. One of them is in a coffee shop. In all of these places, each of them is alone. There are no people around, nothing else is moving, there is no life around them expect for them, in that moment. You then see the lead singer signing the song in the desert. Then as the cho-rus develops, they show each person starting to look up to the sky, then you see a scene where birds are sitting on a wire in an empty city and they start to fly. All of the people then begin running through their empty surroundings. In one of the scenes, you see a girl run-ning and the birds are flying next to her. After showing some of the peo-ple running, they show some of the people walking, hesitant, standing in their places, not moving, one of them walking and looking at their shad-ow in front of them. The scenes cut to show more people, looking up to the sky, pacing back and forth, rais-ing their hands up to their head as if trying to make a decision. The cho-rus plays again and then you see the people who were hesitating and just

looking to the sky, not sure of what to do, these people begin to run. Now everyone in the video is running from where they were once standing. They show one specific guy standing in the dark in a tunnel, looking at the light at the end of the tunnel, and you then see him begin to run to the light. A girl is then shown, standing inside of a house and she begins to see the oth-er people running, wondering what they are doing, almost eager to join. The camera then shows the lead sing-er in the desert and how he begins to run as well. Then there is a very important scene where you see all of the people who have begun to run all end up coming to the same place, the place where the lead singer is and the all start running together. The camera cuts to a shot where all you see is the sunset and band is running coming from the left side of the screen, and if you were to pause the video at the exact point, where all you see is the band running, I mid stride through the desert, that is the picture of the album cover for Scars and Stories. The video is ended by showing every-body running in the desert, laughing and smiling altogether, with the band leading the way.There is so much meaning and in-terpretation behind this video. First there is what the person watching

the video could interpret, and then there is what the video actually meant, coming from The Fray’s point of view. Immediately watching the video, you notice that each person is different. Some are young, some are middle aged, and some are old. There are boys and girls, black and white. This is a clue that God ac-cepts everyone and calls to everyone, there is no one specific that does not receive God’s love. Each of them is standing in a certain place. Some are in neighborhoods, some in a city, on a bridge, at home, or in a coffee shop, one is also in a baseball field. This could be the place where something big in their lives happened. It could also just be the place where they broke down, or where they feel they are stuck in life. Each of the people shown in the video is looking up. They are looking up to heaven, for a sense of hope. This could also be interpreted as praying. They people start walking looking up and looking down, trying to make a decision on whether to run, or to stay, wondering how or what to do with their lives, maybe trying to make the choice on whether or not to follow Jesus. The people eventually begin to run, and you see relief on their faces, smiling as if they know that now everything

will be okay, no matter what hap-pens. A very important part of the video is when they show a girl inside of a house, looking at the other peo-ple running, such as a non-believer looking at a believer, living with hope, happiness, and freedom. You can connect freedom to this video and the message in the video because of the running. Running is a form of freedom, the people in the video were finally free to run and roam where ever they wanted to. Maybe that is why they were running in a desert, a free and open environment with no distrac-tions, or problems, no obstacles in the way, stopping them from run-ning. It was just them and their faith. This can also be seen when the guy is staring at the light in the tunnel, he is looking to the light and run-ning towards it. The light signifies hope, faith, freedom, and happiness. I think it is clear when at the end of the video. The band is leading the way of the runners, the runners end up running to the desert, where the lead singer was signing. It can be inferred that the lead singer, who is already a Christian, is singing to the non-believers, telling them “this house is on fire and we need to go,” the world is crazy with no hope of Je-

sus, follow Him and “you don’t have to go it alone,” you do not have to face your problems alone. Then they become believers and follow them running in the desert. The connections from the video to the lyrics can be made because in the song, the band is singing about how a girl just lost her sister, and she is upset. You see the people in the video start off upset and confused, looking up for hope, such as the girl in the song. The viewer can see that maybe the some of the people in the video are losing sight of their faith because a tragedy has hap-pened, such as the girl in the lyrics, and maybe some of them just now realizing that they have Jesus as a choice. They have the choice to be-come a believer and have a sense of hope when it feels like everything is going wrong. This all relates back to the artist connection involving the album cover as well. Once the viewer has seen the video and sees why the band is running in the desert and how they got to that point and how the other people are following them, the viewer can then make the con-nection that the picture of them run-ning in the desert is the album cover. The viewer might think maybe this is the album cover because what The

Fray is trying to tell the world is that this album is a story of this band, their scars, and what they have been through. Maybe this is a story of how the band has overcome those trage-dies with the help of Jesus and how the world should run with them, be a believer of Christ, and have the sense of hope and grace that they have by being a follower of Jesus.The main point of The Fray and their songs was really to see the Christian message indirectly through their videos, lyrics, and artwork. The Fray is not only addressing Christianity as a whole, but the events in people’s lives that bring them to God. For instance, a majority of society would agree that Christians tend to have a happier outlook on life. They feel a sense of protection and hope when things go wrong in their life and they also feel that hope when things go right for them. Christians have a security of a higher being that is indirectly guiding them and watch-ing over them. In our society, God is brought up a lot when things tend to go wrong, but rarely is He ever brought up when things go right. The run for your life video addresses this issue in society, by pointing out and showing when the various peo-ple had nothing, they then chose to

look up to the sky. Christianity is a very touching subject in our society. The Fray does a great job of address-ing this, especially when it comes to teenagers and young adults. When approaching a teenager or young adult very aggressively about a reli-gion, any religion, they tend to back away. They are at point in their lives where all they do is mess up and they don’t like knowing that messing up might make them feel like less of a person. Most of the time, society ap-proaches religion with an aggressive manor, such as you are perfect or you are not. The Fray takes a differ-ent approach. They take Christianity and put it into a song, a story line, something the young generation can relate to, and that is how they pull the young generations in. The Fray speak in their songs about how they sometimes felt like God forgot about them, or how God maybe wasn’t there in a time of need, but at the end of the day God is there and does have a plan, He is just waiting for the okay to help. In our society, it is not what you are trying to say, but how you are saying it. Reaching out to the youth, in any society, is important because they are the future. THE FRAY

“Wide Awake”Katy Perry

Written By: Cassidy Fishman

“WAH WAH WAH!” That noise of an alarm clock usually causes people to become wide-awake in the morning. To Katy Perry, other factors cause her to become wide-awake too. This paper is about what the underlying mes-sage is in the music video and lyrics to “Wide Awake” by Katy Perry. This song covers the topic of how stars feel like they are constantly being stalked and don’t have any room for mistakes. Many different interpretations can be made about this song. The main theme is how fame and other aspects in people’s lives aren’t really as they seem. Anyone can wear a smile but how many people are truly happy? People can put on an act but at some point it just gets to be too much and they hit their breaking point. Per-ry goes through her breaking point during this song and music video.In the music video, it is mainly fairy-tale themed, in which Katy Perry’s interactions with a little girl help her to overcome the perils of fame. In the beginning when it shows Katy sing-

ing alone it almost appears as if she is gothic. The effect of the snow makes it seem almost even more mythical or magical. Katy uses the little girl to symbolize her when she was young-er. The little girl is courageous in the video and stands up to the villains and this shows how Katy wishes that she were that brave and stood up for herself earlier in life, or it could also be symbolizing her inner self. During the first half of the music video it is hard to tell if the little girl is Katy when she was younger or just a little girl that she meets during her journey in the music video; people just prob-ably assume it was a younger Katy. At the end it shows the little girl riding off on her bike with a nameplate that says ‘Katheryn’. This is the confir-mation that it was definitely Katy as a younger girl the whole time. The little Katy waves goodbye to the big Katy and then rides off as if showing that her job is done there. Also in the music video everything is dark and gloomy at first but then there is just one bright red strawberry and when she eats it, it gives her powers. This is symbolizing how people should not be afraid of the beautiful and vibrant things in life, even if they appear for-eign, because they can never be sure of what can come from them. The walls start to cave in Katy while she

is singing but then with just one bite she has the power to push them away. This is also showing how stars some-times feel like they are being caved in by society because they never have any privacy or room to screw up every once in a while.During Katy’s weakest part in the mu-sic video she’s in a wheel chair, hold-ing the strawberry and shaking but once she overcomes it, the strawberry disappears. This incident occurs right after she’s stuck in a dark hallway with a random man taking pictures of her from outside a glass wall. This part in the music video is por-traying how the pa-parazzi always wants to catch celeb-rities at their weak-est points; this is the reason why stars look so bad in magazines sometimes because no one can look complete-ly flawless and perfect all the time. Being famous and knowing that ev-

eryone is constantly watching you is probably so stressful and overwhelm-ing that many stars have breakdowns; take Britney Spears as an example. She shaved her head just to get atten-tion. Demi Lovato started cutting her wrists and becoming depressed be-cause she couldn’t handle the pressure of being famous.Perry states in the song, “I wish I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t dive in, wouldn’t bow down”. She is expressing how she regrets something and that she should’ve been more cautious when she was

young-er and how she wishes that she had the knowl-edge that she has now. This feeling usual-

ly occurs to people after they’ve been hurt or lied too so that they could have prevented themselves from ex-periencing agonizing heartache. It’s a natural feeling one has after being

manipulated to the point of no for-giveness, where people put a wall up to protect themselves. Towards the end of the music video you see her prince charming come galloping in on his high horse like he is her knight in shining armor, but then it shows him crossing his fingers behind his back when he says something to Katy and as a result, she punches him in the face. This is an example of how she’s keeping her guard up now and staying strong and not falling for guys who are just trying to play games and hurt-ing her. In the end everything turns bright and colorful, like she had over-come her inner battle, and then in the last few scenes it flashes back to Katy back in her dressing room getting ready for her show. This draws the il-lusion that the whole music video was just a daydream.At the beginning of Katy’s concert she opens her hand and the butterfly that she had found in her daydream, or music video, appears in her hand. This part in the video goes to show that she really learned something from her dream. The butterfly served as the symbol to remind her of the in-ner little innocent Katy and what she learned in her daydream. She repeats the phrase ‘I’m wide awake’ many times throughout this song to repre-sent how she now sees things differ-

ently and from a new perspective. In the very beginning of the music video, it starts off with Katy singing Califor-nia Girls and she seems very uninter-ested in it, like she just wants to get it over with; but at the end of the music video, after her daydream, when she sings Teenage Dream at her concert she seems very brave and confident. The theme of the song correlates very well with the music video and really helps the audience understand what the song is about. Katy says in the first verse “and now it’s clear to me that everything you see ain’t always what it seems, yeah I was dreaming for so long”. This explains how things can be different than what they seem and if you believe in something it can ap-pear as the way you see it but not for what it is in reality. That mental alarm clock finally went off in Katy’s head and woke her up from her dream and now she’s starting to see things from another perspective.This song appeals to Pathos because throughout the course of the song it really becomes clear how Katy is feel-ing and how she is tired of being hurt and constantly put down and criti-cized and she expresses how she needs to protect herself more. She puts a lot of passion into this song and it really shines through by watching the music video. Katy Perry always expresses

her songs with music videos that are different or out of the ordinary, but that’s just her style and she earns a lot of respect from her fans for it. Some-times her songs are harder to under-stand though because they are always very unique and imaginative. Katy Perry also loves kitties; she uses a kitty in her music videos commonly. In this music video she uses a cat whose eyes spin in her garden. This is not rele-vant at all to the song but that’s one of the greatest things about being a big time performer, Katy Perry can do whatever she pleases in her music vid-eos. Two years ago, Katy’s whole con-cert tour was centered on finding her lost kitty the entire time. This song and music video really pulls the audi-ence in because it is significantly dif-ferent than most of her other songs. A lot of her songs like California Girls or Teenage Dream are just cutesy lit-tle songs but this song actually has a deeper meaning to it. Even in the very beginning of her music video, when she’s done singing California Girls, she playfully screams at the director “another one in the can” as if it is a chore for her to record those types of music videos because she’s not really expressing herself.This song has more of a negative vibe to it because she’s singing about “thunder rumbling, and castles crum-

bling” and the scene in the music video is a castle crumbling and that is not something that people are usually thrilled about. The next verse is where the whole song changes attitude; Perry sings, “God knows that I tried seeing the bright side, I’m not blind anymore”. This is showing a change in Katy because she is admitting a change in herself, which is an issue that she had trouble with because she did not believe she was strong enough to change for so long. At this point the whole mood of the music video changes to a more positive vibe. Katy grew up with two very religious par-ents, and many of Katy’s decisions her parents did not agree with, for ex-ample, her hit song, “I Kissed a Girl”, but seeing how Katy brings God up in this song really emphasizes how important and serious this song is to her. When she says, “I picked up every piece and landed on my feet” this is saying that she put herself back together and she’s doing better now. According to thefreedictionary.com Cloud Nine means a state of elation or great happiness. Katy Perry sings about how she’s falling from Cloud Nine in the chorus, which means she’s coming down from that place of hap-piness; this makes sense because her next line is “crashing from the high”. Katy wears exotic colored wigs and

makeup on a normal basis, it seems as if she uses it as a mask to cover up who she really is. In her concerts and music videos she always has a risky and wild side to her but rarely in a few of her songs her real personality shines through and she stops trying to put on that crazy girl act. Obviously Katy struggled with a lot of the issues in this music video, but she’s not alone at all. Especially child stars go through these issues because they never have a normal life and peo-ple are always looking up to them and depending on them to be the perfect role model. Katy is setting an example for her audience in this music video because if she can overcome her strug-

gles and find a way to cope and move on with her life then so can the peo-ple watching her video. It gives them motivation to look at life through a different perspective.

FUSION PRODUCTIONS.