‘Stuck With U’ by Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber

One of 2020’s most popular pop that sat at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 after its second week of debut, Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber’s “Stuck With U” is an uplifting, heartfelt, and emotional song that addressed the challenging times that came with the COVID-19 pandemic. In the music video, the 4-minute YouTube video consisted of changing split screens of diverse individuals, including Bieber and Grande, recording themselves candidly inside their homes with their family or pets, slow dancing, or swaying to the music. While it made me feel like I was clicking away in a large Zoom meeting with all the moving rectangular videos, I did acknowledge that it was representative of those times. In the song, it begins with a gentle piano melody that creates almost a sense of a soft comfortable blanket, indicating the song’s lightheartedness. Throughout the song, the lyrics are embedded with various types of figurative language. The most notable ones being repetition such as “I’m stuck with you”, “throw out the key, Can’t fight this no more”, and “Got all this time on my hands, Might as well cancel our plans” made the song memorable, but also communicated the difficult circumstance of being cooped up at home all day for the past year. Both Bieber and Grande beautifully delivered their voices with emotional depth and sincerity, sounding more like a beautiful melody sung by two birds rather than a pop song. Already two phenomenal singers of our generation, what more can we ask for? But there’s more, when their voices blend seamlessly into harmony, it creates a strong tender tone that’s like an entity summoning emotions of unity and resilience. Expressions that songs like “Stuck With U” truly stand as a coping mechanism for challenging times and to uplift our spirits.

When I first encountered this song, it was during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which was practically the theme of the song. I found myself dreadfully stuck indoors for the past year, with my social interactions limited to my siblings and parents. The days would slowly dwindle to feel like minutes, and the only sunlight reaching my face would be the blue light from my laptop. Reflecting on that period, I don’t believe I was significantly different from my current self, but I distinctly remember feeling lonely and desiring to see people besides my intermediate family. Even with FaceTime and texting, it still felt like there was an ocean between me and my friends. The song definitely resonated with me as I was able to relate the lyrics of the song to my feelings of solitude and the repetition of encountering the same individuals repeatedly. Lines like “Got all this time on my hands, Might as well cancel our plans” and “I’m stuck with you, stuck with you” felt incredibly relatable and were catchy. In addition, this was strangely one of the few chart-topping songs that I was aware of that revolved around the pandemic. So, when I first understood the topic of the song, I was pleasantly surprised to have found a song that expressed these feelings of desperation that I and millions of others who listened to the song were enduring.

The song Mimi’s Delivery Service has always been if not my favorite song. The Band “Good Kid” creates songs that are fast paced and tries to motivate listeners into not giving up and not self-doubting themselves. This song is a prime example of these traits, like its lyrics. My favorite lyrics are:
“Every moon that I
See you on the rise
You’re drawn across the sky”

At that time before I didn’t know about the song, it was March 2023 and I was in Boston at a hotel with my Dad. I couldn’t sleep because I had a big day tomorrow so I listened to some of the songs from Good Kid to help me sleep until I saw this song being released 2 weeks ago. I gave it listen, and the first time gave me goosebumps and I was in love with it to the point where I put on loop for a while. I always felt like I self-doubted myself and every time I do, this song just calls my name.
Overall, the song was very fast paced which always gives me adrenaline and the voice felt nice and calm.

Bonfire is a song written by a K-indie band called Wave to Earth consisting of three members. They are a South Korean band whose songs are primarily in English as 2/3 members are fluent. The band consists of Daniel (lead singer, and guitarist), John (bassist), and Donggyu (drummer). The song starts off with a soft beat of the drums, bass, and piano. The song is about accepting change as it comes our way. Daniel describes the environment changing around him as well as his emotions. Nearing the end of the chorus he says “Close your eyes slowly and feel the wind”. He’s suggesting that you should take time to live in the moment and not worry about anything. The lead singer’s voice sounds as if he’s whispering softly. As the song plays you feel as if you’re stuck in an illusion. The song is moving but it feels as if time has slowed down. Once the first chorus is finishing Daniel’s voice starts to fade as if he’s leaving. This matches the lyrics being mentioned “The bonfire is fading out.” This lyric follows the previous one mentioned. I interpreted it as accepting the changes being made in our lives as most are inevitable. It then proceeds to get silent for a second. The beat of the song suddenly changes and becomes more aggressive. He compares the feeling of accepting this change as falling with rain. We start to fall into a new unknown place that we cannot avoid. Accepting change is a bittersweet feeling although it’s scary we let ourselves be carried with the rain and fall.

I first discovered their music during covid in 2021 and became a casual listener. Then I stopped listening to music from September of junior year up until July of this year. During this time I was going through difficult changes that started affecting my daily life. I was in a compromising mental state. I was falling down a never ending I was not ready for the change that was happening rapidly that I was not ready for. I rediscovered their music in July of this year. It felt as if I was discovering for the first time again. I was able to rediscover them as I entered a new stage in my life. I was entering college which was an unknown place. A place I never thought I’d reach. During July is when I first stepped foot on campus. I was able to process that things were going to continue to change rapidly from here. A path of light showed up in front of me surrounded by nothing but a sign indicating to follow. Things were finally starting to change and I was no longer in the same mental state I was in previously. I was ready to move on and continue with whatever came my way.

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The Song “Racing Into The Night” by Yoasobi was an amazing piece because the tone of music doesn’t match the lyrics meaning but if you understand the meaning behind it it’s really deep. The Group generally does pop, rock, and electronic music so it’s really interesting on how they made a sad song somewhat joyful. The song itself is about two lovers commiting suicide while their world falls apart. What is interesting about this song is that the craft moves in this song uses imagery, figurative language, tone, voice, and etc; but you won’t really hear it if you don’t understand the meaning of it. 

How I came to know of this song is that it was popular and at the time I started to get interested in Japanese things. At the time I was just interested in the culture and browsing around listening to music and not understanding it but later I went deeper and found the meaning behind the lyrics. With me digging deeper into the topic it got me more interested in what somethings mean. This opened up how I viewed things as you can’t judge a book by their cover you got to understand the deeper context.

This song affected my life because it got me interested in the genre of things and made me want to know more of it. Even now when I see something in a different language I try to understand what it means. What this song basically did for me is now I view things differently then how I viewed things before. Other music that I found the artist makes is also cheerful but some has its own lore behind it, like one of their newest song “Idol”.

This song is called “LOOK DON’T TOUCH,” by Odetari. Odetari whose real name is Taha Othman Ahmad, was born on 1999 in Texas’s Houston. His fame on TikTok has been growing since 2022, especially as a result of his electro-pop/hyper pop songs like “narcissistic personality disorder,” “GOOD LOYAL THOTS,” and “I <3 LATINAS.” He began recording music in 2021.The song “LOOK DON’T TOUCH”, beats reflect the climactic rhythms of his favorite video games, fusing pitched-up rap hooks, and catchy beats. He stated that this song that he was referring to his “high school experience, most likely directing his maturity and sexuality before the song was released to the public.” He uses metaphor like “Bitch took my heart and froze it”. He also uses sensory details by saying “surrounding by these girls I’m feeling jaded. They see my name and now they gettin’ naked. I’m way too high tonight”.

I recently discovered this song through Tik Tok. It was a cold evening night, and I was trying to find anything interesting. Then I came across this song. I listened to the song, and I fall in love with it, so I put it in my playlist in Spotify. I can see myself listening to the song when gaming, playing sports, or even working out. The song will give you a boost of energy and your adrenaline will start coming at you. The song pumps me up. It pushes me to work harder and relaxes me because of his tone, bold and comfortable. After this song, I favorite a lot more of his work because most his song have a similar theme. The catchy beats and statical like tone. His song probably does the same effect for me as an energy drink.

My song of choice is a song by the name of “No Trust No Love” by a Trinidadian artiste by the name of Rebel Sixx. Kyle George aka Rebel Sixx was well known in Trinidad and Tobago for his popular hits unfortunately, the great potential of this artiste was never achieved as he was subsequently murdered around the making of “No Trust No Love”. For many Trinidadians “Rebel” was the best thing to come out of Trinidad in a long time and through his success the country was able to enter a sort of musical renaissance in which the country started to produce bright young talents able to steer Trinidad out of the shadow of countries with more popular artiste like Jamaica. This song belongs to the reggae and dancehall genre of music and is his second most popular song to date. I believe this song’s popularity can be attributed to its replay value and also the circumstances of the release.

This song for me is the epitome of coping music, not only does it aim to help you deal with your troubles it also serves the purpose of coping with his passing which is why I believe it has stuck with me the most. I felt that at the time this was released, my life in sorts was going up in flames and the passing of my favorite artist only added fuel to the fire, it felt like the odds were against me and this song really helped me get past that mindset. the riddim of the song is what takes the cake and produces a vibe only worthy of max volume. you can feel and relate to the song without understanding a word. Despite this, I believe people tend to overlook the lyricism, specifically when he states

“Yeah mi tired of games cuh me nuh EA, So much people lef who was to be they
Cus mi find a little form and yuh wa come back”

The figurative language is in my opinion criminally overlooked here, specifically when he compares himself to EA, referencing the gaming company Electronic Arts which is famous for making the FIFA soccer video games. He then follows this up by saying “Cus mi find a little form”, in this he is using the soccer term “form” to portray that he is experiencing success which relates beautifully to his previous bar. The lyricism in combination with the beat and melody defines this song for me making it an irresistible experience.

“I don’t know a single thing” by Leellamarz featuring meenoi is a song released four weeks ago. As I am a big fan of Leellamarz, I played the song with high expectations. However, these expectations were blown out of the water when I heard, not Lellamarz’s part, but meenoi’s part. Her tone of voice was very calming and soothing, making me forget that I was listening to a song, let alone listening to the lyrics. Leellamarz is a South Korean rapper and producer who is known for his music ingenuity. He was a genius violinist before turning to the hip hop community in Korea. Meenoi is an R&B artist who became famous for her covers of multiple hit songs in Korea. Her soothing and calming voice is what attracts most people, including me.

When I gathered myself, I listened to the song again, this time paying attention to the lyrics. The lyrics portray a failed love relationship between two people, and how they both regret not being able to understand each other better. I truly related to these lyrics the second I read them as my past relationship ended because of a lack of understanding It made me reflect on my past actions and how I could’ve possibly been a better partner to said person.

“Through the Wire” by Kanye West. It was the year 2002 and Kanye West got into a almost fatal car accident and made this song while he had wires in his mouth from the accident, hence the name “through the wire.” In one the lines he said, “The doctor said I had blood clots, but I ain’t Jamaican, man.” I found this funny and it was impressive for a rap song to be not only catchy but also have some humor to it. He referred to “bomba-clot” which is a Jamaican curse word. In another line he says, “I looked like Tom Cruise in Vanilla Sky, it was televised.” This is a reference to the Vanilla Sky movie starring Tom Cruise where he was in a horrible accident and his face was disconfigured. Kanye sampled, “Through the Fire,” by Chaka Khan and used a high pitched version of Chaka saying “Through the fire” and he puts it into the beat at the perfect moments fo the song.

When I first heard this song it was about 12AM on a Saturday night, it was actually last week. I was sitting in a Mcdonald’s parking lot listening to some old r & b and I saw a Kanye song that was suggested and i played it. I immediately started bobbing my head to this masterpiece of a beat. I was in the Mcdonalds parking lot because I wanted a Oreo Frappe but I had to reverse out of the drive thru because the worker said “The machine is down” with a attitude. This made me feel disappointed but after listening to “Through the wire” I quickly feel happy. After this, I had the song on repeat while I headed over to Papa Johns to pick up my pepperoni pie.

Keep the Family Close is a representation of Drake at his strongest artistically: moody, heartbroken, betrayed. The sound of wind and the sudden grand instrument in between verses makes me feel like I’m walking home on the coldest winter night, and I got hit in the face with a chilly gust. Drake’s tone is incredibly distraught, sad, and regretful, and his vocals are incredibly smooth, the song goes through your veins and sends chills through you. He sings about his regret putting trust into friends and romantic partners that were never really there for him at his lows, and that he should’ve invested that time into his family who can’t abandon him because of shared blood. The chorus goes: “All of my ‘let’s just be friends’ are friends I don’t have anymore; How can you not check on me when things go wrong?; Guess I should’ve tried to keep my family closer, much closer.”

This song got me through an extremely painful falling out with former friends, which happened to take place in the winter. In short, my two best friends and I all agreed that the other three members of our friend group didn’t really have our backs or have our best interests in mind. This took months to come to terms with, as these were people that I considered the most important, and pushed other people aside for, including my siblings. What was also painful was how I had been very vulnerable around them, and knowing that they knew so much about me, yet wouldn’t be there to support me, made me feel like I was placed in front of millions of people, expected to give a speech about something I knew nothing about. Keep the Family Close made me feel seen on those cold nights, where I felt hurt, regretful, and naive.

Drake has been a part of my life since I was eight years old. His music has been the soundtrack to my life ever since I can remember, and him having a song I could relate to in my emotional, angsty teenage moments made it all worthwhile. Now, I’ve learned many lessons about friendships since, and as Drake’s career progresses (he just dropped album of the year), it feels wholesome to learn those lessons with him.