Reflection
This assignment helped me learn how to rhetorically analyze artifacts through practical application through modern modes of rhetoric. While most assignments target books to be rhetorically analyzed people forget that rhetoric exists all around us. Rhetoric gets us to watch movies, to listen to music, to buy from advertisements, and as whole it persuades us to do many things. This assignment allowed me to learn how to identify the rhetoric with in music. The Singer song writer The Weeknd was popularly known for his metaphors and angelic music. People look over his music because they don’t understand his music thus they don’t appreciate it. Within his music, he artistically uses pathos to stir the emotions of his audience. He does this through his vivid lyrics that paint a picture of self-hate, pain, addiction, and an inability to cope with the world. The assignment was hard to collect multiple outlets of rhetoric from. As singers, the only outlets they have to work with are their lyrics, their music videos, their album covers, and their voice. However, I was limited in my ability to reach all forms of his rhetoric, I could only touch on one of his rhetorical artifacts so I had to choose one piece of work, and that was his album House of Balloons. In the end I was able to identify the story that he told in that work and I was able to appreciate him more as an artist because I was able to grasp a full understanding of that individual piece of work.
Project one Final
In the modernist evolution of music there has been a shift in the cultural adaptions to many genres of music. The genre of R&B branches off to disco, doo wop, funk, Motown, neo-soul, and soul. The Cultural Icon which expresses this modernist twist of R&B is The Weeknd. The Weeknd is an alternative R&B artist born in Toronto who expresses his pain and his emotions through his music with his vivid and graphic lyrics. However, The Weeknd’s music is not so black and white, The Weeknd manages to paint a portrait through his angelic voice that harmonizes over a psychedelic and enchanting beat. The Weeknd has become a phenomenon for the way his music entraps those who have the pleasure to hear him. The Weeknd places a story behind music that is hidden behind many rhetorical artifacts to which he expresses his true intent. These artifacts as shown in his album House of Balloons are identified through his lyrics, his voice, and his album artwork. The Weeknd’s music expresses the pain, life, love, addiction, self-hate, low self-esteem, and not being able to mentally cope with the world. His music reaches this generation because the intent to find a self-purpose and the feeling of being accepted or loved is what drives this generation to continue to live.
Within The Weeknd’s lyrics he is able to guide his listeners through a story that is expressed from his thoughts and experiences. In his early career his songs expressed a lot more pain and as he became more successful his lyrics started to paint a picture of his life in a more triumphant and joyful way. The Weeknd’s album House of Balloons is known arguably as the greatest work he has ever created. House of Balloons is his debut mixtape which was released on March 21, 2011. The Weeknd’s album House of Balloons includes electronic and urban genres, such as soul, indie rock, dream pop tones, and R&B as an enchanting yet satisfyingly dark twist to modern music. The album poetically identifies the beginning of his career and foreshadows the success of his future. The album features the songs high for this, what you need, house of balloons/glass tables, the morning, wicked games, the party and the after party, coming down, loft music, the knowing, and twenty eight. His first song on the album is called “High for this”, which is about The Weeknd trying to convince his girl to take ecstasy for the first time. Since she has not done it before she doesn’t know what to expect. This reaches the broader message to his fans who also don’t know what to expect from his music. In his lyrics he writes “You don't know, What's in store, But you know, what you're here for, Close your eyes Lay yourself beside me, Ohh, Hold tight, For this ride, We don't need no protection, Come on love, We don't need attention”. She doesn’t know what to expect but he tells her to lay bedside him and join him on his journey. He is also telling his fans to join him even though they don’t know where his music will take them. When he says that they don’t need protection he is saying that the girl and the fans shouldn’t try to prepare but instead they should accept the journey naturally as it happens as it will give them the best experience. He then says Open your hand “Take a glass, Don't be scared, I'm right here, Even though, You don't roll, Trust me girl, You wanna be high for this”. He is handing her a glass of water so she can take her pill, even though she has never done it before he tells her to trust him and that it will be worth it, she will want to be high for this experience. Throughout the song, he expresses his love as he affectionately guides her through her experience. He tells her that she isn’t going through it alone and he feels it too. He comforts her telling her to breath it will all be ok. The Weeknd is on this journey with his fans, he is the one guiding them through it and they must trust him, they’ll want to be high on his music. Within The Weeknd’s vocal’s he is able to create a great sense of emotion as he enchants his listeners with an twisted yet angelic sounding style of singing. One can’t help but feel his pain as you hear the sadness and defeat sung through his high singing breathy falsetto vocal range that enables him to sound angelic.
It sounds as if the music is drawing you in to realize some hidden dark truth about the world around you. The Weeknd is able to change the mood and meaning of his songs by simply adapting his voice to his mood adding extras personality to different parts of songs. In his live performances, he sometimes sings his songs differently adding extra layers of emotion. The Weeknd is able to create a new song every time his sings the same one. Being as his singing voice is extremely high he still manages to avoid over using his breath and he is able effortlessly control how he exhales. There are emotions that cannot be expressed through words. Organic interactions are formed by the emotions formed by body language, speech, and personality. When The Weeknd sings we listen because he enamors us with his masterful play of his vocal range, using his voice as an instrument whose chords play there very own emotions. It is his emphasis on word choice and his emphasis on his harmonies in the way he sings where it can be shown. In song such as Wicked Games. When he says “Bring your love baby I could bring my shame, Bring the drugs baby I could bring my pain, I got my heart right here, I got my scars right here, Bring the cups baby I could bring the drink, Bring your body baby I could bring you fame”. In these lyrics he puts emphasis on the words Shame, Pain, here, drink, and fame. Those specific words except for shame halt his speech and develop a dreary powerful stop to a thought. When he sings the word “here” he stretches it out as he expresses what is most important to him and the root of his pain. The stretching of “here” signifies how important “here” really is.
First impressions are very important when dealing with album artwork, it dictates whether someone decides to listen or not. However, regardless of the quality of the album cover comes second to the message that the album conveys. That is what separates a great cover from a mediocre one. The album cover to House of balloons shows a woman laying down naked in a bathtub surrounded by balloons. The cover is meant to show the self-destructive nature of partying, drugs, and addiction. The woman represents the result of a self-destructive life style and the absence of the real world. The balloons falling around her represent the world continuing as she remains fixed to the bathtub unconscious. The album cover also lacks color which is meant to highlight the dark tone of The Weeknd’s story. It is also meant to show how black and white the stories being told in the albums are. The contrast in the balloons colors from black and white represent the dark sides of the young man partying lifestyle while the white balloons represent the fun and bright side to the lifestyle. The Weeknd’s music doesn’t romanticize the lifestyle of addiction, love, self-hate or sex instead it identifies the reality of what it’s like to be in his shoes. That is why his music so powerful and why his album’s cover is in black and white. The album shines a light on the woman in the tub to show the purity of the women’s soul. Being passed out in a tub her story remains a mystery, whatever road she took it led her to that bathtub. This is meant to show the innocent lives that are effected by The Weeknd’s lifestyle and further expresses his self-hate for being guilty for hurting the women that have entered his life. On a larger scale it represents his fans who will get caught up in his music. The difference is that fans and his music are the good that come from his lifestyle while the innocent people who are hurt are the bad part.
The Weeknd can create powerful rhetorically effective music through the use of his rhetorical artifacts such as his lyrics, his voice and his album cover. They beautifully combine to represents The Weeknd’s pain. The Weeknd is someone who dropped out of high school, and went down the wrong road as a result he became victim of depression, self-hate, and addiction. His hard life, his inability to cope with reality, his climb to the top, and his relationships guide his music and lyrics to represent life in its purest form. His album House of Balloons, the start to his career is the perfect embodiment of his life and the foreshadow of his success to come as he grows as an individual and as an artist.