Blown away by "Blown Away"

The song that I thought was really fitting as a poem was "Blown Away" by Carrie Underwood. The album that this song is under is "Blown Away". I was blown away by the diction and imagery that she used throughout the song in order to represent the resentfulness the singer had for her father and the damage of the tornado that destroyed the town. I thought that this song closely resembled a poem because it had a strong meaning behind it that is not very direct, yet the song really tells a deep story about a girl whose father abuses her mother, and in the end, her mother and the girl decided to abandon her drunk father while there was a tornado, killing him. I thought that this song was really powerful because it really tells the listener the pain that the singer was going through. Furthermore, the lyric that the singer also uses portrays great imagery, just like how it is in poems. For example, in the chorus, it says:

     Shatter every window 'til it's all blown away,
     Every brick, every board, every slamming door blown away
     'Til there's nothing left standing, nothing left of yesterday
     Every tear-soaked whiskey memory blown away,
     Blown away

This verse shows great imagery to the listener on the significance of the tornado as well as how powerful the tornado was. Instead of making the lyric something like “The tornado crushed the town and killed many people”, it went into details, allowing the reader to really imagine how strong the tornado really was. This is very similar to poetry, where many writers would write in detail so that the reader will be able to clearly visualize what is going on. The singer also adds repetition to the chorus in order to emphasize the damage by continuously saying “blown away”, which is another way that this music is similar to poetry.

The singer was also able to not only portray the disaster that is happening outside, but she was also able to really show the hatred that her and her mother had regarding the abusive and alcoholic father. In the second half of the chorus, the singer says:

     She heard those sirens screaming out
     Her daddy laid there passed out on the couch
     She locked herself in the cellar
     Listened to the screaming of the wind
     Some people call it taking shelter
     She called it sweet revenge

This is similar to the first half of the chorus, but instead of having the listener focus on what is going on on the outside, the singer is shifting the focus from the surroundings to what is going on inside, which is also popular in poetry since there are many shifts in point of view in order to portray greater meaning to the song. Overall, music is very similar to poetry in that there are many literary devices throughout the song as well as having powerful meaning with the words that the singers use.