Analyzing A Song Need Help

[rosebud18]

Okay i heard this song by the band Head and the heart called cats and dogs, i am wondering what technigues they used to write it, such as a rhyming pattern. http://lyrics.wikia.com/The_Head_And_The_Heart:Cats_And_Dogs

[BlackhawkFan]

The sung lyrics sound almost Appachian. The rest of the work sounds like a clever melding of several styles. That's about the extent of the help/impediment that I can offer.

The tune kept me interested with the poetry, orchestration, and lots of twists and turns superimposed over a seemingly stodgy 4/4 beat.

I can see why you're curious about this piece. I am as well.

Cho

[MikeRobinson]

One thing that I sense in this lyric is a use of (what I think is called) juxtaposition. In other words, the use of a familiar simile in an unexpected and revealing way.

For instance: "Somewhere underneath the floorboard, I will sweep my garden." Nothing underneath a floorboard can be reached. Floorboards are swept, but only to get rid of dust bunnies. But earth, the basis of any garden, is "underneath the floorboard." You don't sweep a garden, an act which implies trying to get rid of something you don't want, but you do tend one, an act of preservation and nurturing.

Later on, a garden certainly would be "in the backyard," and there would be "roots" there. You might be "diggin' in the backyard" to tend your garden.

The word "underneath" appears both in reference to the garden, and to the mouse, who is not running away to escape the broom but rather is "discovering" (an odd thing for a mouse to do) and discovering that "there is nothing there." There is an obvious connection between that singer, that garden, and that mouse.

Raindrops, "falling from the sky," are "in my eyes." She is "digging" for something, while crying, but she "don't know where they are."

You get a clear picture, albeit indirectly, that the singer/lyricist is painting word-pictures for you through this juxtaposition of images. These are images that "belong together, and yet they obviously don't." Each word-picture that the lyricist conjures up is vivid, yet conveyed with a sparse collection of rhymes and prosody. The lyrics don't make the meaning entirely clear, leaving you to wonder about it. Leaving you to fill-in meanings from your own life experience.