Metaphors in Musicals

 

Happy November! 🍁

It’s been such a long time since I wrote a post because I have been thinking a lot about what I want my writing on this blog to look like in the future. I’ve been taking some awesome college classes this year that have really opened my eyes about music (and they aren’t even all music classes!) I’ve been learning that the world of Broadway doesn't just live in New York, and it’s not just about musicals. 

Did you know that we have the Sony Walkman to thank for our Broadway Playlists? (More on that coming soon!) Or that writers use an insanely subliminal amount of rhetoric, not just in school papers where they’re forced too, but in stories, music and theatre? Why do you think a trailer or a song is appealing to a certain person? 

The most recent thing I’ve been learning about is metaphors. What is a metaphor? When you use a metaphor, you use one thing to describe something else. For example, from where I’m sitting, writing this right now, I can look out my window and see that it’s raining cats and dogs. Are cocker spaniels and calicos really falling from the sky? No, but that would be a metaphor.

This difference between a simile and a metaphor is that similes use the words “like” or “as”. As I heard a TedTalk put it, similes admit that they’re comparisons, metaphors do not. 

Metaphors are all over music, and ALL over Broadway. Take ‘Everything's Golden’ from Tuck Everlasting. The very first line is, 🎶 “Look who has a spring in his step!”🎶 Does the man in the yellow suit really have a spring in his step? No, he’s just happy. It’s not supposed to be taken literally. 

I’m sure there are songs without metaphors in them, but they’re much rarer. To be honest, it’s just harder to rhyme when you're using all literal phrases! And it sounds weird.

On the other hand, some songs are one big metaphor. Take ‘Running Up That Hill’ by Kate Bush, which is a 🔥🔥 song. If you haven’t listened to it, CHECK IT OUT. The song is peppered (Haha! A metaphor!) with metaphors, and the whole song is a metaphor in itself. As a whole, Kate Bush is singing about how, if she could, she would make a deal with God and ask him to trade the places of a man and woman. Then they could know how it feels to be one another, and hopefully understand each other better. With that deeper understanding and relationship with each other, we could easily “run up that hill”, or overcome the hard things in life.

The second verse is filled with metaphors as well. 🎶“See how deep the bullet lies”, “tearing you asunder”, “thunder in our hearts”. 🎶 Kate doesn’t have a bullet wound, there’s no thunder in her heart, and she is by no means tearing ANYONE asunder. She is talking about how she has been wounded by this man that she wants to swap places with, hurt by the misunderstandings they have faced. “Unaware, I’m tearing you asunder” - the man doesn’t know that Kate is making this deal. The thunder in her heart is the emotion, energy, and rebellion she feels.

Kate also sings “Let me steal this moment from you now” and “let’s exchange the experience”. You can’t physically steal moments or exchange experiences. She is speaking about how she wants to trade places, and maybe if we can experience each other's lives, we can understand each other better. 

Finally, the title of the song is ‘Running Up That Hill’, and the most famous part goes, 

🎶“Running up that road,

Running up that hill,

Running up that building”🎶

Nobody is physically running up the side of a building. Kate is not Spiderman. BUT, life is an uphill battle, and the best way to solve problems is by striving to understand each other so you can work together. That is the metaphor behind this incredible song. Once we reach that deeper, equal level of understanding, we will be running up that hill, with no problems. 

It’s so incredible how people use words that mean one thing to mean something totally different, and we as readers and listeners still manage to understand them. Sometimes stories are telescopic metaphors, where the entire plot is one elongated metaphor that builds on itself over and over. 

Like I said previously, metaphors are ever-present in musicals. Johanna is not really a bird locked in a cage, but she feels like one, thus, ‘Green Finch and Linnet Bird’ from Sweeney Todd. King George’s entire character arc is a metaphor! When I first saw Hamilton at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle, Wa, I thought George was singing ‘You’ll be Back’ to Eliza. Yeah, I was not clued in. When I discovered how the song was a metaphor about America - MIND BLOWN. How cool is that? And how freaking clever is Lin-Manuel Miranda????

Thank you for letting the word-nerd and theatre geek in me collide today. I just think it’s so incredible how vast the world of theatre is. As Shakespeare famously put it, “All the world’s a stage”, and, well, he was right. And he used a metaphor! 

Make sure to stop and smell the roses! Curtain up!

Rosie