iMedia: Self Destruction

As do many of the videos on youtube, this one comes from an ordinary person not unlike the rest of us. As Mr. Allen stated today in class, youtube is one of the best things on the internet. It allows us to share a part of ourselves with the world in a way we never were capable of. In this clip a teenage girl, Melissa Rice, sings a short song that she wrote about her opinion of this world. The lyrics and tone of the piece really demonstrate how music has the ability to express emotions and convey ideas.

With music, Melissa expresses how she sees humans, as a whole, as self destructive in nature. Through her lyrics, she explains a couple key ideas that I really agree with. Melissa sings about how we "divide the world up in sections", which I believe represents how we group ourselves in classes based on our regions, our socioeconomic status, our race, our gender, our religion, our political status, and numerous other factors, and we fight one another to get to the top. When she says, "Let's chop down some trees and we'll print out a bunch of money" it's to convey our reckless greed, and how a lot of the time we either do not care about, or ignore the consequences.

Through her lyrics, Melissa also expresses how in this world if you don't have what's required, which is usually money, you wont get very far in this world, or at least not easily. Apart from the messages she's conveying, I'm also really interested in her use of religion in the end of the song. It's a uniting factor that connects a vast portion of the population, and because of that it brings power to the message.

Not only is this song beautiful because of Melissa's amazing voice, but the idea behind it as well. The idea, and the creative way it is expressed through brings us a truth that we must face if we are to better the world.