Counting Stars Analysis

Link to Lyrics: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/onerepublic/countingstars.html

Name of Song: Counting Stars

Artist: One Republic

     I chose to analyze the song Counting Stars by One Republic because I feel it has a different meaning than what it appears to do, and I just really like the song. In the chorus we see a rhyme scene of ABCDDD, and verse one has a scheme of AAAAABBBBBCDDDEE. In each section of the song the rhyme scene changes but it always has end-line rhymes and has at least two sets of repetition. In the chorus we also see a continuing theme of the "s/sh" sound which means it has sibilance.

     We see an example of a paradox in the bridge line , "Everything that kills me makes me feel alive". Another example of something in the figurative language category is diction, words chosen to make a certain effect. In the song it talks about things that were chosen based on their word choice. For instance when it says, "take that money watch it burn. Sing in the rivers the lessons I've learned." It doesn't make greed sound so bad, it actually makes it sound fun. We see this occur again in verse one when it says, "Baby I've been losing sleep dreaming about the things we could be." because you can't dream unless your sleeping, so we see another example of a paradox. In that we have so many paradoxes that you could say paradoxes in this song are also a symbol that in life people wish to copy the way poor people were able to get famous and get super rich.