Blackbird

"Blackbird" by the Beatles is from their album The Beatles, or The White Album which came out in 1968. Paul McCartney performed it and later claimed that the Civil Rights Movement inspired the lyrics. McCartney also used Johann Sebastian Bach's piece, "Bourree in E minor" throughout the song.

McCartney employs positive verbs paired with negative nouns in order to show the experience of using what you have for good and turning around the disappointments in life.  For instance, he uses joyful verbs like "singing" but places them in "the dead of night" which seems like an odd, dark place to be singing. Then, he describes "broken wings" but says to nevertheless, "learn to fly." He repeats this significant phrase but in a slightly different context, using "sunken eyes" and "learn to see." He attempts to communicate the desire to do the best with what you have and to redeem negative aspects of your life by thriving in spite of them.

Furthermore, McCartney uses antonyms and contradictory words in the same phrase to emphasize a shift that occurs throughout the song: taking bad things and making them good. He sings, "Blackbird fly, Blackbird fly/ into the light of the dark black night" twice. Clearly, there is some light in the dark black night. What is this light? Where does it come from? This juxtaposition in his diction clearly shows how McCartney is saying that there is always something benevolent in an unfortunate situation or a mean person.

In addition, the poem shifts point of view, pointing to the possibility of symbolism. The speaker starts out describing a scene about a blackbird. The first few lines are easy to take literally as the blackbird has broken wings and can fly. However, McCartney then shifts to second person when he states, "All your life/ You were only waiting for this moment to arise." Does McCartney start talking to the blackbird? Or, is the audience now being compared to the blackbird? Or, has the audience been the blackbird all along? This possibility is supported further when in the next stanza McCartney describes the speaker as having "sunken eyes." After eyeing internet pictures of blackbirds, I can conclude that they do not have sunken eyes. So the blackbirds are a symbol for McCartney's audience. But who is his audience? McCartney later says that in light of tense race relations in the United States around this time following the Civil Rights Movement, black birds are black women because "bird" is British slang for "girl." McCartney may be bringing awareness to the disadvantages people of color face through systemic, often indirect racism but also their persistence and success when faced with these challenges.

I believe that "Blackbird" by the Beatles is poetry.