Roll of Thunder

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…

Asher roth song “ I Love College” reflects the culture of the 2000S as a college anthem. The song is categorized through its melody , texture, and its word-music relationships. The key instruments used in the song are a drum and a gutier, those instruments are really used in pop, country, and rock music.The way asher roth has the guitar playing out throughout the whole song with the amazing beat is wonderfully laid out it's a catching tune that mostly everybody can sing along too, he put so…

Music in general has evolved so much over the years. Interesting enough many different genres of music have been added to the world of music. There have also been quite a few new sub-genres created. Even business in the music industry has changed, in the following document as a reader you will explore how country music has gone from traditional country, to what some now refer to as “Modern Country” or “Bro-Country”. The following document will not only focus on the music itself but also how is…

and my newly acquired family was here to watch my six while I watched theirs. The first couple of months were adrenaline driven. The biggest threat at the time in Iraq was roadside bombs. It was hard to grasp the fact that surviving at times was a roll of the dice. We are trained to react to contact and out “gun” the enemy. With roadside bombs it’s either your day or it’s not. We had sat through hours of training that could help you spot and I.E.D, improvised explosive device. The difference…