Breakeven: Emotional Pain & Heartbreak After a Breakup - Essay Sample

Introduction

Breakeven by The Script is a four minutes music composition about impact pain that people ensure after breaking up from a romantic relationship. The title of the song Breakeven means that people in a relationship end; each person moves on with their life with different levels of emotional pain and heartbreak. The reason for choosing this song is the fact that it elicits an emotion of heartbreak, a feeling that is common in society. When people break up, in most cases, one partner moves on with life as if nothing has happened, while another suffers the pain of the heartbreak, finds it difficult to live a normal life. In Breakeven, the use of rhythm, form, and tone elicits emotion and feeling of heartbrokenness.

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A romantic relationship is a partnership involving individuals sharing similar emotional feelings. However, at the end of the relationship, the emotional impact varies. For one partner, split leads into freedom characterized by peace and happiness. For the other partner, however, the split leads to heartbreak, where the individual experiences pain and misery.

Form, particularly the use of rhythm, played a critical role in eliciting a sense of pain in the song. In music, a form is the physical structure of the song, while a rhythm is a measured flow of phrases or words in prose or verse as determined relation of stressed and unstressed or short and long syllables that create a strong regular repeated pattern. Apart from rhythm, the form of the songs was achieved through rhymes, repetition, diction, and the length of lines.

In the song, the rhyme was used to achieve the rhythm, as well as the theme of grief. In the first verse, there are four lines with relatively equal length, with each line ending with rhyming words: 'breathing,' 'in,' 'freedom' and 'even.' In this first verse of the song, the singer says that he is still alive but barely breathing because of the heartbreak. He is praying to God not to believe what is going on, because his former partner, unlike him, is fine. The emotional effect in the first verse also arises from the diction used, with the last words being stressed. The last rhyming words are such as stressed by pronouncing them for a longer period than the rest of the words in each line. The word 'freedom' stands out as the most stressed word in the first verse. The stressing of the last words in used in the entire song to create tension. In music, tension is a sense of impression, unrest, or instability, indicating more is coming. The tension and stress in the song were achieved through a crescendo in some parts of the song, particularly those meant to elicit emotions. Crescendo is the rise in volume, as well as the intensity of the song.

The structure of the second and third verses is similar to the first stanza. The last rhyming words in the verses elicit emotion: In the second verse, the latest words in the first three lines are 'worst,' 'first,' 'sleeping.' The word 'sleeping' is stressed to show that after separation, one partner finds it difficult to sleep while the other has no problem sleeping. The verse also contrasts the emotional status of two people after separation by stating that the best days of one individual are the worst for another. The equal length of the lines in verse creates a rhythm associated with pain. In the two verses, the tone of the song depicts pain. The tone induces the emotion that the singer is experiencing great suffering and discomfort. Besides, the singers sing the lyrics as if they are screaming. Although, the pitch of the song is high, as typically used in celebration happy compositions, the pitch used by the Script in their song is more crying or screaming because of pain as opposed to celebrating.

The rhythms of the chorus also suggest that the singer is heartbroken. In the chorus, the singer indicates that he is helpless about the situation. He does not know what to do because the partner was his best part. Besides, he does not know what to do because, while his former partner is okay, the singer is chocked up. The rhythm in the first two lines of the chorus is created by the repetition of the phrase "what am I supposed to," while in the last phrase, "I'm falling to pieces" is repeated twice. The repetition of these phrases adds more weight to the emotional consequence of separation. However, what elicits emotion the most in the chorus is the energy, pitch, tone, rhythm, and diction of the chorus. The phrase "I'm falling to pieces" is sung with a lot of energy to stress that the singer is in grief. The tone in words is serious but depressing at the same time.

The song also managed to elicit a negative emotion with high pitches. High pitches often are used in happy songs, while low tones are used in sad and somber music. While pronouncing the word "pieces" in the chorus, the crescendo is used, where the voice gets louder all of a sudden, with the resulting tension quickly released. Besides, the repetition of the line "I'm falling to pieces" also form a crescendo, where the volume and the intensity increase from one line to another, creating a painful tension. In the sixth verse, a combination of crescendo and accelerando. Accelerando is the rise in intensity as a result of singing faster. For example, the fifth line in the sixth verse: "No, it don't break" is sung faster than the rest of the lines. It creates a feeling of urgency and disbelief as a result of pain that the singer finds it uncomfortable to speak about and would rather speak it faster than dwelling on it.

From the above discussion, it is evident that the song Breakeven is by the Script is an emotional composition that elicits a feeling of heartbreak and pain. The composers have used a variety of techniques to induce emotions. These techniques include rhythm, rhyme, form, diction, and tonal variation.

Reference

The Script. (2009, October 25). The Script - Breakeven [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzCLLHscMOw