PM
4/4/14
English H
Poetry in Modern Music
In a world full of Lonely Islands and Rebecca Blacks, it can be hard to imagine that modern music
contains even an ounce of poetry in its true form. Poetry is supposed to say more than words, and say it
more intensely. It is not only supposed to tell a story, but show it through word choices and details that
prove true to the experience. You don’t seem to get that out of, “Friday, Friday, got to get down on
Friday.” However, in an imperfect world full of imperfect music and ugly forms of expression, poetry
shines through in some of the best of us. An artist who I consider to be exceptional, Ed Sheeran,
produces musical forms of poetry. One of his best examples of this is the song “The A Team.”
Sheeran produced this song after performing at a women’s shelter at the age of 18. The stories
of prostitution and drug addiction that he heard from the women inspired him to write a song about
their experiences. His purpose was to inconspicuously expose the difficult lives of these women and the
struggles that they face from day to day because of their addictions, as well as show the connection
between these unfortunate women and the average human being. He accomplishes this through his
word choices, which not only suggest the purpose but also create vivid images. From burnt lungs to
ripped clothes, the song allows the listener to create a more detailed mental image of these women.
“The A Team” is full of figurative language and symbols, the most obvious of which being the
comparison of angels to the women who sell themselves for drugs. These poetic devices are all present
in “The A Team,” making it a modern example of musical poetry.
The first indication that “The A Team” is poetry would have to be the careful choices in
vocabulary. Sheeran uses simple words to communicate a huge, pressing topic so that other people
might be able to understand the lives of female drug addicts. Also, his words are chosen based off of
their specific meanings as well as their connotations. Even the title of the song, “The A Team,” has a
meaning specific to the song. The song uses examples of drug addiction specific to crack/cocaine, which
is considered a “Class A” drug. That one simple meaning gives a much clearer understanding of what the
song is about. It also allows the other connotations to be understood more immediately. For example,
when Sheeran says “Go mad for a couple grams,” the literal meaning is grams of cocaine. When he says
“We’ll fade out tonight / Straight down the line,” it is understood that he means “We’ll get high snorting
a line of cocaine.” The connotations, or emotions, that these reference bring to the surface include
insanity, anger, and worthlessness. Society sees drug addicts as crazy, untrustworthy, broken people
who have wasted their potential, instead putting their effort and resources toward feeding a bottomless
addiction. This makes both the user and society feel angry and useless. The individual gets angry at
his/her inability to make something better of their life, while members of society are angered by the fact
that fewer people are able to contribute to society, and they cannot help abusers any more than
abusers can help themselves. These connotations give the listener a sense of what the drug abuser and
those around her must be feeling. More importantly, instead of telling his audience that the woman was
a drug abuser, Sheeran allows the listeners to infer that due their various connotations of prostitutes
which he triggers throughout the song. However, the woman’s drug abuse is not the only thing that
Sheeran alludes to through connotation.
In addition to the word usage surrounding drug abuse, Sheeran finds ways to communicate that
the woman has turned to prostitution to feed her addiction without ever saying the word “prostitute.”
He does this through associations we make due to his indirect references, which exemplify poetic
connotations. By basing his word choices off of the associations and feelings that he knows have been
made about prostitutes, Sheeran uses people’s general connotations and definitions of prostitutes to
explain the fact that the woman in the song is a prostitute, but in not as many words. This includes one
of the chorus lines, “Or [she] sells love to another man.” “Selling love,” due to our culture and
upbringing, isn’t associated with the actual selling of one’s “love.” Rather, it has to do with selling sexual
pleasure, giving up one’s body to another for money, prostitution. Throughout the song, there are
various other indications of the female being a prostitute. This includes the line “Long nights, strange
men,” because a prostitute’s job is primarily at night, and she is always with yet another man who is a
stranger to her. In the song, Sheeran never states “She’s a prostitute” or “She’s addicted to drugs,” but
through his use of poetic devices, namely connotation and denotation, he leaves it to the audience to
decide what he’s talking about. In this way he avoids negative connotations that come along with the
word “prostitute,” such as disgust. Instead, his descriptions of both the drug use and prostitution
conjure sympathetic connotations for the women because instead of pointing out the wrong in what
they do, he points out the wrong that life is doing to them. He achieves his purpose of exposing the lives
of these “crack-whores” by using their actions to describe them instead of labels, which would bring
about more negative connotations. This aspect of “The A Team” is one that truly identifies the poetic
excellence of this song.
Yet another way Sheeran uses his words in “The A Team” is to create vivid images. “The A Team”
is almost entirely composed of imagery, painting a picture of the woman in her everyday life by using
image upon image to convey her personal reality. Each verse gives a new picture to be added onto the
last. For example, when Sheeran sings, “Ripped gloves, rain coat,” it calls for the mental picture of a
woman standing on a street in the rain, trying to keep dry under her rugged, worn clothes. In the next
verse, he says, “Loose change, bank notes / Weary-eyed, dry throat / Call girl, no phone.” These lines tell
the story that the woman is trying to make her living, but is barely scraping by with her meager earnings.
She’s too poor to even afford a phone to pick up her next night of work. The lyrics present her as
exhausted, sick either from the lack of sleep, standing outside waiting for her next “customer,” or drug
withdrawal symptoms. Her throat is dry from her crack smoking habit. She is not in a good place in her
life, and the lyrics identify that. The chorus also shows her physical and emotional instability with the
lyrics, “But lately her face seems / Slowly sinking, wasting.” While the drugs are eating away at the
essence of her body, her hope is diminishing in similar way to the diminishing hope and optimism of
someone falling into depression. In both cases, the lights in their lives are dimming and the things which
made them happy begin to fail (that’s what drugs will do to you. . .). These images all combine to show a
woman who is hurting economically, mentally, and physically, and they take us on her journey. Most
people can identify with some of these feelings. At one point in our lives, we all feel like we are barely
scraping by, or like the world is pitting against us and winning. Lost jobs, sudden deaths, personal
addictions, bad habits, depression – these experiences all make us feel low, and by conjuring images of a
woman who appears to be in that low state, Sheeran successfully coaxes us to connect withn and look
into the lives of this woman. He catalyzes our imagination towards their life experiences, indeed fulfilling
the purpose of the song along with presenting detailed imagery that classifies it as true excellent poetry.
The continuation of strong language choices is discernible through Sheeran’s uses of figurative
language and symbolism. These specific poetic devices not only help enhance the imagery that Sheeran
uses, but also give deeper meaning to the words on the surface. The one simile that Sheeran uses in the
song gives great insight on the woman’s physical and emotional state. With the line, “Her face seems /
Slowly sinking, wasting / Crumbling like pastries,” the listener envisions someone whose deep, purple
circles beneath her blank eyes grow deeper each day. Someone who’s entire life is falling apart around
her, and she is breaking down right along with it. This is exactly the case of a woman whose body is
deteriorating due to her drug abuse and whose life is falling apart in attempt to feed that addiction. The
case of a woman who spends sleepless nights in bed with strange men in order to afford to live. By
pulling the listeners so far into this woman’s true emotions, Sheeran not only exposes them to the types
of struggles these types of women go through; he also compels listeners to feel the way they feel and
empathize with them, which leads to a deeper level of understanding. Many people immediately write
off prostitutes and drug abusers because of what they do, but they don’t see the people hurting on the
inside. Sheeran exposes that, which more than accomplishes his purpose. He further does this through
his different symbolic images.
There are quite a few symbols that remain constant throughout “The A Team.” For instance, one
of the first symbols used is “snowflakes.” When Sheeran sings, “Breathing in snowflakes,” he doesn’t
mean actual frozen precipitation. “Snowflakes” is symbolic for crack, the drug that the woman in the
song is addicted to. He makes this clear in the next line when he says, “Burnt lungs, sour taste.” Literal
snow doesn’t burn your lungs or leave a sour taste in your mouth after you eat it (if the actual snow
you’re consuming is sour, I would highly suggest choosing snow from a different area). From this point,
we can be sure that “snowflakes” is referring to drugs. This helps progress the song later on when
Sheeran says “An angel will die / covered in white.” In a way, white is a synecdoche for snow. Therefore
it is understood that the addict dies covered in/high on crack. This brings up the other dominant symbol
used in “The A Team” – an angel. In the repetitive lines, “It’s too cold outside / for angels to fly,”
Sheeran could mean a number of things, but all include the “angel” being symbolic of the “crackwhore.” I interpreted this to mean that the world is too cruel for people who made the wrong choices to
be able to turn their lives around and succeed. This contributes to the purpose because it shows that
one of the struggles in a drug addict/prostitute’s life is that opportunities to turn their lives around are
slim and laborious. This notion is not uncommon among people and is a theme that applies to all of
mankind.
The symbolic idea of the world being too harsh for people to improve themselves broadens the
meaning behind the poem. The statement stands true for various other situations, such as colleges
wanting too much from a student in order for the student to be accepted, or tragic things occurring
constantly in the life of someone who is desperate in their attempt to escape depression. Symbolism
opens up the theme from one woman’s story and manifests it into a universal theme that anyone can
empathize with. Therefore the purpose of this song is not only to inform people of the struggle of the
lives of drug-abusing prostitutes. Its purpose is also to cause people to empathize with women like this
and gain a true understanding for what they are going through. Its purpose is to connect the lives of
prostitutes and drug addicts with lives of average people and show that they are not so different if you
look underneath the surface. In the very last chorus, Sheeran changes the lines to prove this point.
Instead of singing “And we’re just under the upper hand,” he sings, “And we’re all under the upper
hand,” (emphasis on the ALL). Throughout the rest of the final chorus, Sheeran replaces “she” with “we”
to further the comparison and make his purpose clear. Though just a slight change, the song transitions
from focusing on the prostitutes to relating his ideas to all people. The meaning of the phrase “under
the upper hand’ – that we are all oppressed by forces trying to suppress us – stands true for everyone.
There’s always a greater force lying on our destiny – some person who is accepted instead of us into the
college of our dreams, some coach who decided to cut us from the sports team, some jerk who drove
through the puddle while we were walking on the side of the street. There will always be negative
occurrences that happen in each individual person’s life, and Sheeran uses that reality to show that the
privileged suburbanites and upper-class citizens do, in fact, have something in common with the people
we defame as “crack-whores.”
Despite the rich language, vivid images, and universal symbols presented in “The A Team,” some
may attempt to argue that this song is not an example of true poetry due to supposed uses of
sentimentality, rhetorical verse, or didactic verse. None of these, however, are materialized in “The A
Team.” Sentimentality, which would be the most arguable prospective problem with this song as an
example of poetic excellence, is not developed within the song. Sentimentality is defined as the
indulgence in emotion simply for the stimulation of emotion. In the right situation, this song may stir a
tear or two out of the corner of my eye, but that does not make it sentimental. The words of this song
are not aimed at making people feel any certain emotion. It is the strong images to which the listener
reacts in their own way, and it is the images and the meaning that are able to move people. It is meant
to allow the listeners to apprehend and experience the way the prostitutes feel, not create new,
unnecessary emotion. For example, I tend to feel a little spiritual around the lines I was referring to
earlier, “And we’re all under the upper hand,” and “But lately her face seems / Slowly sinking, wasting /
Crumbling like pastries.” This is because of the mental images I get of seeing another person in that kind
of mental state and situation, as well as my own acquired connotations with these phrases. In the
context and the way Sheeran emphasizes the words really cut through all clutter and reveal his meaning.
It is such a powerful notion that it can move people to feel strong emotions, but creating that emotion is
not its central purpose.
Unlike sentimentality, there is not even the slightest possibility that this song is rhetorical.
Rhetorical poetry involves using language more “glittery” and “high-flowing” than the substance
material allows. “The A Team” is actually the complete opposite – it carries the load of an enormous,
complex, and burdensome topic, yet communicates it with simple words and short phrases. One
instance of this would be the lines, “Breathing in the snowflakes / Burnt lungs, sour taste.” This is
possibly the simplest way to say “She’s smoking cocaine, while damaging her lungs and turning them
black while a sour, undesirable taste begins to collect from the drugs,” while still retaining the full
meaning. Sheeran’s simplicity is much more effective and definitely not the over exaggeration that
rhetorical poetry implies. There is not one word in the entire song that is too pretentious for what the
story is about. By avoiding rhetorical verse, this song passes yet another evaluation of whether or not it
is poetic.
In a similar way, there is no possible justification to categorize “The A Team” as an example of
didactic poetry. According to Perrine’s Elements of Poetry, in a didactic verse the main purpose is to
teach or preach. A didactic poem solely communicates information or moral instruction without a
specific situation, diction, imagery, figurative language, and “poetic freshness.” After listening to the
song, or even just reading the first body paragraph of this essay, it immediately becomes evident that
“The A Team” holds no didactic elements. For one, the purpose of the song isn’t to preach at its listeners
or teach certain information, the purpose is to show what the life of a woman addicted to crack is like,
and to show that even people at such a low point in their lives have something in common with the
more fortunate people across the world. Also, the song is talking about a mix of the woman’s everyday
life as well as one specific situation. This is made clear in the chorus line, “And she don’t want to go
outside tonight,” because, though it probably occurs nightly, Sheeran is only referencing one night when
she doesn’t want to go out into the cold and “do her job.” The meaning and situation in the song, along
with all of the imagery and figurative language I referred to earlier, are solid confirmation that “The A
Team” could in no way represent a didactic verse.
Although finding real poetry in modern music can be as laborious and painstaking as finding a
needle in a haystack, the satisfaction of finding the needle is worth the time. In a world full of music
made to preach, made to inform, made to evoke emotion, made in a superficial way, made to just be
average and simple, and made to communicate only the words in the lyrics with no significant meaning,
finding one song that surpasses the usual barriers and dives deep into poetical verse and meaning is one
of the greatest feats one can accomplish. I found this in Ed Sheeran’s, “The A Team.” Through his word
choice and use of connotations and denotations, poetic devices, symbolism, and figurative language,
Sheeran creates a poetic song with a deep, meaningful purpose that can be applied to the universal
human condition. In his example of true poetry, Sheeran overcomes the stereotypical characteristic of
modern music lacking poetry to create his own new standard of poetry in music.