I spend a great deal of time trying to find the message in situations and texts. When I listen to a song on the radio, it is not enough for me to know that it is pleasant to listen to. I want to know what it means. First, as in any text, I want to read the words and see the narrative and surface level of the text. Then I want to examine the song for any sort of connections to other songs and references to other works of art or literature. Most songs have a fairly distinctive set of lyrics that offers at least some entrance into an examination of the meaning and significance of the work, and this is as it should be. That said, at times there are songs that defy attempts to understand what they mean and therefore leave their message very ambiguous to the point of being incomprehensible.

Sometimes a song that would otherwise be very good is so difficult to understand it is impossible to get a message out of it. Such is the case with the song “Red Eyes” by the band The War on Drugs. The music is driving and hooky, but any attempt to figure out the message of the song is greatly hindered by the fact that no one (perhaps not even the band itself) knows exactly what is being sung [1]. To be sure, the lyrics are dark and mysterious, but I would consider it a bad sign for anything I wrote to be compared to Donnie Darko. I am aware that not everyone has the same problem with incoherence that I do, but coherence should be a starting point.

There are all kinds of factors that make it difficult to understand a message. For one, one has to recognize a signal in the first place. In a song, vocal levels that are too low that they cannot rise above the noise of reverb or the instrumental mix would hinder the ability to understand what is being sung. Signal to noise ratio is a problem in communication in general. Even when one knows a message is being sent, though, it is not always easy to know what to make of it or what to do about it. There are many times where I know, because of the continual repetition of certain situations over and over again, that some message is being sent. Yet at times it is impossible to understand what it is I am supposed to do about it, since there appears to be no resolution, only endless repetition to mock me without end. Hopefully there is a happy ending to all this, to put everything else in its proper context.

[1] http://www.songlyrics.com/the-war-on-drugs/red-eyes-lyrics/