Friday, October 2, 2015

Rhetorical Analysis 2 - Slaves/Miguel Hey

I chose to do the song Hey by Slaves and covered by Miguel, simply because I am a huge fan of Miguel’s cover.  I listened to the cover before the actual song, so I was shocked to find out how different the two are.  Slaves is described as a garage punk duo, while Miguel is a R&B singer.  From the moment the two songs start, you can tell that they are completely different genres – one being a punk song, and the other being more soulful.  When the artists start singing, Slaves’ version is a lot more rushed and more talky than Miguel’s, who makes the song more melodic.  A key difference in the songs is the chorus, which goes: “They’ll tear you apart, apart, apart, apart.” Miguel draws the ‘apart’s’ out a lot longer than in the original, and he uses falsetto to make the song sound more like his own style.  Slaves’ version is essentially screaming, and hits the listener a lot harder, because of how powerfully the singer sings. 


The song is pretty difficult to try and interpret and understand if the lyrics mean something more complex, but I find it to be about death.  Slaves handles it in a more intense way, kind of threatening.  Miguel makes the subject seem less serious almost, as he is so chill in the way he sings about the subject matter.  The message is conveyed effectively in both songs, but it is the same message told in different ways, though can be taken as meaning the same thing.  Overall, I think that both these songs, while sung very differently, get the point across in a way that can be understood to the listener. 

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