Paint it Black by The Rolling Stones

Rocking the music world in 1966, The Rolling Stones’ hit single Paint it Black, from their fourth album Aftermath, reached the top of the charts in both the United States and United Kingdom. The song attempts to give the listener a glimpse into a lover’s agony as he deals with his lover’s untimely death. To him, his life is no longer worth living because happiness is no longer complete with out his lover. Unable to fill the void, he becomes dedicated to stick himself into a deep depression in hopes to forget his pain.

Color becomes a reoccurring motif throughout the piece as the speaker makes it clear that he wants to paint everything black. He repeats the lines, “I see a red door and I want it painted black/ No colors anymore I want them to turn black,” to enforce the idea that everything lively and vivacious in his life, symbolized as the color red, needs to be covered up and wiped away. More color is introduced with the verse, “No more will my green sea go turn a deeper blue/ I could not foresee this thing happening to you.” Although the man accepts his lover’s death, her death has cause him to revolt against anything and everything that has made him happy; thus, it is important to note that colors to him are now repulsion. The intensity of his needs are realized at the closing stanza, “I wanna see it tainted, tainted black/ Black as night, black as coal/ I wanna see the sun blotted out from the sky/ I wanna see it tainted, tainted, tainted, tainted black.” With the use of smiles and repetition of words, the speaker begins to appear wrapped up in his misery without any sense of reality to hold on to any longer.

To set the scene, the speaker illustrates a funeral setting which creates a daunting and morose mood. Describing the scene as if he was at a distance, the speaker voices, “I see a line of cars and they’re all painted black/ With flowers and my love both never to come back.” With a sense of judgment towards the fickleness of human nature, the speaker then continues more profoundly, “I see people turn their heads and quickly look away/ Like a new born baby it just happens everyday.” Both a simile and an understatement, the last statement compares both death and birth and emphasizes the extent of the speaker’s grief without stating it outright. It is through the use of personal pronouns that this song begins to claim new meaning and seriousness to the speaker’s depression. The song begins with the verse, “I see a red door and I want to paint it black,” which exposes the speaker’s wishes to forget, yet with the statement later, “I look inside myself and see my heart is black/ I see my red door and must have painted it black,” he suggests that he had found a solution to his dilemma. When faced with that much despair, such a solution would suggest thoughts about suicide especially when the next two verses express, “Maybe then I’ll fade away and not have to face the facts/ It’s not easy facin’ up when your whole world is black.” With the death of his lover, the speaker’s world collapsed bringing him to the brink of madness because he can not deal with his heartbreak.

Though the song offers a soulful account of a grieving lover’s thoughts, Paint it Black only attempts to scratch into such emotions. Not much action occurs throughout the song, yet the nature and almost insanity of a man in absolute despair proves to create an immaculate piece of music. Moving and heartbreaking, the Rolling Stones’ Paint it Black remains deep and intuitive to audiences everywhere.

Black by Pearl Jam

As one of the key bands of the grunge movement during the 1990s, Pearl Jam entered the music world with their debut album Ten. Although faced with growing popularity, the band, refused to make a music video for Ten’s fifth track Black because they sincerely believed that music videos robbed the listener of developing their own interpretations. As lead vocalist Eddie Vedder puts it, “Before music videos first came out, you’d listen to a song with headphones on, sitting in a beanbag chair with your eyes closed, and you’d come up with your own visions, these things that came from within.” In this spirit, Black, through lyrics and song alone, reveals a story of a despairing man left to pick up the pieces of his own broken heart.

In a general sense, young love is symbolized by purity, perfection and beauty, but as portrayed in Pearl Jam’s Black, this young love has the potential to be shattered and destroyed. Using an extended metaphor for this love, “Sheets of empty canvas/ Untouched sheets of clay/ Were laid spread out before me/ As her body once did,” emphasizes the fact that their love was the picture of purity, the sculpture of perfection because it has remained unscathed. Continuing with the use of artistic metaphors and motifs, the speaker describes in anguish how, “All the pictures had/ All been washed in black/ Tattooed everything/ All the love gone bad/ Turned my world to black.” With the literal meanings of his words, pictures that had been a thriving image of color and life are now uselessly lifeless; skin that had been a personal masterpiece is now marked forever with ink. Shattered, the speaker sees that their love is forever tainted.

To express his despair further, the speaker uses symbolism to reflect on his lover and declare her the center of his life which, in turn, intensifies the fact that he loses her in the end. With the use of another extended metaphor, the speaker depicts his lover as the sun, “All five horizons/ Revolved around her soul/ As the earth to the sun.” As their love begins to crumble, the atmosphere and mood literally and figuratively changes towards a feeling of sorrow, “And now my bitter hands/ Chafe beneath the clouds/ Of what was everything.” In a cry of desperation, “now my bitter hands/ Cradle broken glass,” the speaker is left with only the shattered pieces of love and the knowledge that his lover has moved on, “I know that someday/ you’ll have a beautiful life/ I know you’ll be a sun/ In somebody else’s sky.”

Told from the perspective of a heartbroken man, Black by Pearl Jam demonstrates the impression of grief and despair not only through their lyrics but also through stressed and unstressed words through song. Listening to the original Black, written and sung by vocalist Eddie Vedder, the word “everything” is stressed consistently throughout the song which strongly suggests the anguish of the speaker and his loss of the love of his life. The passion of the vocalist becomes more intense as he sings, “Turned my world to black/ Tattooed all I see/ All that I am/ All I’ll be…” which further suggests the desperation of a grief-stricken man in cry for a lost love.

Declaration

I recieved my inspiration for my theme-genre, Grief in Modern Rock, after a near car accident a few weeks ago. I have always loved Rock music, so while I was driving down Route 123 on my way home from work, I was listening to one of my favorite mixed CDs. Going 40 to 45 mph, I was driving over the overpass when another car's brakes failed causing him to overshoot the stop at the off-ramp. As he glided to a stop in front of my car, I swerved. My headlights reflected off of his maroon siding and bounced off his glasses as my car avoided impact. Shaken, considering how close I had come to killing a man, I continued down Route 123. Not long after the incident, my mixed CD switched over to the next song, "Last Kiss" by Pearl Jam. This song describes in depth a devestating car accident that leaves a beloved woman dead, so I decided to dedicate my theme-genre to that song. Here is Grief in Modern Rock.