Childish Gambino Heartbeat Essay

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Cowritten by Childish Gambino and Ludwig Göransson in 2012 for Childish Gambino’s album Camp, “Heartbeat” narrates a dysfunctional relationship that cannot be salvaged despite the poetic voice’s desire to do so. [con’t] “Heartbeat” is visibly a song full of confusion, which the narrative voice decides to pass on to the reader as well. Instead of offering full insight for the reader, the reader is forced to follow along with the confusion and stress being felt by the poetic voice. With lyrics such as “I wanted you to know” (Childish Gambino 1) and “I read his posts on your wall and I feel sick” (Childish Gambino 61), the usage of the words “you” and “your” makes the reader infer that the song’s audience is meant to be the female subject. With this …show more content…
The poetic voice constantly displays his confusion as well, utilizing questions multiple times throughout the song, such as “Good problems?” (Childish Gambino 48), “Right? (Childish Gambino 49), and “I was wrong, but would you have listened to you?” (Childish Gambino 54) . This constant array of questions immulate the confusion felt and make it so that it is also felt by the reader. The feeling of continuous confusion transcends from being obvious simply within the lyrics and their meanings to ingrained within the composition of the song.
As noted, confusion is a vital portion of “Heartbeat” and becomes essential to the song’s uniqueness. As seen towards the end of the song, the poetic voice asked four questions, “Are we dating? Are we fucking? Are we best friends? Are we something in between that? (Childish Gambino 74-75), which continue the pattern of constant question asking in order to get clarity, however, as the song ends, the questions go unanswered. Additionally, the composition of these questions is meant to

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