Dawes Rolls

The genre that was once a threat to the established social order did not scare anybody anymore. Furthermore, rock and roll did not necessarily have a center. Icons like The Beatles were separating; other icons like Bob Dylan produced records that did not have the effect the artists’ previous albums had. Rock and roll was no longer a lifestyle; it was simply a form of entertainment. As a result, rock music lost its unified effect and diffused into copious subgenres…

Societal Change in Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’ In response to the rising tensions in the many political movements and events of the 1960’s, such as the civil rights movement, cold war and space race, and the infamous Vietnam War, Bob Dylan wrote one of the most influential and popular songs of all time, “The Times They Are A-Changin’”. Using only his vocals, the guitar, and the harmonica, Bob Dylan shook the world with poetic and eye-opening lyrics during an uneasy time of stress and…

Presley a man of great dedication, was later on to be known as “The King of Rock and Roll”. He had such an effect on society that he is still very well known today, 41 years after his death. Elvis Presley’s significant effects on Rock and Roll helped to ease racial segregation and created a new youth generation. Elvis Presley first started off his career with pop music, until he moved on to expand Rock and Roll. He was very inspired by African American music and decided to combine it with his…

Contemporary rock band Imagine Dragons sang the line “It’s a revolution, I suppose…” in their Grammy Award-winning song “Radioactive”. Surprisingly, Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson, the main character in the book The Titan’s Curse, can relate to this line, as well as the rest of the song. Although The Titan’s Curse is a fiction book based on Ancient Greek Mythology, it shares the same theme with Radioactive, a popular rock song. Both pieces of literature show the reader that you can you can…

Compare and Contrast Goldfinger (1964); Musical Score by John Barry vs Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981); Musical Score by John Williams During the 1960s, popular music played an important role in filmmaking, garnering larger audiences due to the appeal of this genre but also due to the fact that psychologically, people tend to associate the music they are hearing with real life events or emotions. From 1960-1967, film scores began to change. No longer would we see the traditions of the 50s, where…

The song “Faithfully” from 1983, performed by the band Journey on their album Frontiers is thought to be one of many iconic rock songs from the 1980s that has left a legacy for decades and generations. It mixes many different instrumental parts with the concept of the 1980s rock song, having sounds similar to the well known power ballads and the genre of arena rock. “Faithfully”, tells a story as any other song does, using lyrics and the general progression of the music throughout the song to…

The Blues in Sonny’s Life When it comes to blues music we relate it to the sorrow, or hardships that the musician is going through. Blues music reflects on the dark times in the musician’s life. From reading the brief bio on James Baldwin we can see that his life could be a typical blues song. Through his character Sonny the blues is portrayed through Sonny’s life and music. In James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” we see several examples of symbolism, but the two that enriches the story the…

The song “Paradise” is originally an English pop song by Coldplay, a British rock band. It was released on 12th September 2011 while the cover version of this song, “Peponi” was released 3 years later on 9th January 2012 by a crossover band - The Piano Guys. The Piano Guys had included some African folk-like elements into the original version of “Paradise” by adding some African traditional instruments, costumes and the language. I observed that The Piano Guys and Alex Boye have utilized their…

My Guitar Early one Christmas morning in 1976 towards the end of Elvis’s life, career, I was gifted my very first acoustic guitar. Maybe it was because I was born in Tupelo, Mississippi some thirty-six years after Elvis Presley, that made me suited to play and sing with a guitar. Or perhaps because I was born on the same day as the legendary Johnny Cash, exactly thirty- nine years later, to the day, that I would inherit the intense desire to play, write, and sing with a guitar. After an…

“Almost Home” Some days, dreaming of the past is easier than living in the present. “Almost Home” is co-written and recorded by American country music singer Craig Morgan. This was the first top ten hit on the US country music charts for Morgan. He also received a Song of the Year award and earned a Songwriter’s Achievement Award from the Nashville Songwriters' Association International. “Almost Home” explores the struggles of homelessness, the complexities that life brings us, and the freedom…