Personal Life Experience Shown in Irony: A Song Analysis

International Journal of English Linguistics, Literature, and Education (IJELLE) Vol. 5, No. 1, June 2023, pp. 1-15 ISSN 2686-0120 (print), 2686-5106 (online) 1 http://journal.univetbantara.ac.id/index.php/ijelle/index Personal Life Experience Shown in Irony: A Song Analysis Theresia Arianti a Faculty of Business and Education, MNC University, Jakarta 11520, Indonesia * * Theresia Arianti 1 Received 28 April 2023; accepted 5 June 2021; published 30 June 2023 KEYWORDS ABSTRACT As songs are a means of conveying a message; thus, it is important to understand the lyrics of a song correctly. Irony is one way to embed a hidden message in a song. This study aims to investigate the irony contained in four songs: Welcome to Paradise, Welcome to My Life, Jesus of Suburbia, and Won’t be Home for Christmas. It also aims to examine what personal life struggle is shown in the irony contained. The findings show that three out of four songs examined represent the song writers’ personal life struggle related to childhood trauma. It is suggested that future studies do triangulation to this study to confirm the accuracy of the interpretation drawn. Irony_1 Song Analysis_2 Personal Life Experience_3 Irony in Songs_4 This is an openaccess article under the CC–BY-SA license 1. Introduction A song has long been known to be the representation of the writer’s feelings, ideas, and stands. There are many ways to put one’s personal thoughts into a song, one of them is through the use of irony. Wilson and Sperber (2004) stated that irony happens when an utterance’s meaning is the opposite of the literal word. Since a song is a multi-interpretative form of art, it is important to know the song writer’s true message in order to obtain the correct idea of the song. This way, the message contained in a song would be correctly perceived by the listener; thus, enabling them to get the right impact from the song. Many writers, including song writers, deliver their life stories in a song through irony. This irony is used to share a message that might be sensitive (family-related message); thus, an irony is used to make the message more implicit. Songs that contain a “dark” message are usually the ones composed by rock or punck-rock bands. The members of these bands often include their “dark” life stories through their music. Some of these bands are Green Day, Blink 182 and Simple Plan. Therefore, this study examines songs written by these three bands, as follow: Table 1 Songs Analyzed No. 1. 2. 3. 4. Title Welcome to Paradise Jesus of Suburbia Won’t be Home for Christmas Green Day Green Day Blink 182 Welcome to My Life Simple Plan doi :10.32585/ijelle.v5i1.3706 Band Song Writer Billie Joe Billie Joe Mark Hoppus, Scott Raynor & Tom Delonge Pierre Bouvier& Chuck Comeau 2 International Journal of English Linguistics, Literature, and Education (IJELLE) Vol. 5., No. 1, June 2023, pp. 1-15 ISSN 2686-0120 (print), 2686-5106 (online) There are two research questions raised in this current study, they are: 1. What irony is used in Green Day’s, Blink 182’s and Simple Plan’s songs? 2. How does the irony show the song writer’s personal life struggle? Therefore, this study aims: 1. To investigate the irony used in Green Day’s, Blink 182’s and Simple Plan’s songs. 2. To examine the personal life struggle of the song writer shown by the irony used. The said songs above are chosen since they contain ‘dark’ narrative in the lyrics which would be a great source of irony leading to the revelation of the song writer’s personal life struggle. As stated in Egerdahl’s book Green Day: A Musical Biography (2010), Billie Joe Armstrong, one of the two song writers of Welcome to Paradise, was the youngest of six siblings born in 1972 in Oakland, US. His father, Andy, was a truck driver; while his mother, Ollie, was a waitress. Billie lived happily until one day this family was struck by the news of Andy’s esophageal cancer. He died in September 1982, four months later, bringing the youngest, Billie, into deep sorrow. Ollie was later remarried with a man whom none of her children liked. Blink 182’s members have a similar childhood and teenage hood struggle to Billie. According to AAE Speakers (2022), Mark Hoppus, one of the members of Blink 182, was born on March 15, 1972 in California, USA. His parents were divorced when he was in his third grade. He then lived with his dad and sister. This event has affected him greatly. Another Blink 182’s member, Scott Raynor, the original drummer of Blink 182, was born on 23 May 1978 in California, US. He was later replaced by Travis Braker, due to his drinking issues, making the band to cut him loose (Blink 182-Bio, n.d.). Out of the three bands analyzed in this study, Simple Plan, seems to have the least childhood trauma. According to IMDB (2022), Pierre Bouvier, the lead singer, was born on 9 May 1979 in Quebec, Canada. According to Bouvier (as cited in Sound, 2022), he grew up in a bilingual family; his mom’s side speak English while his dad’s speak French. He had a wonderful childhood and had a happy life with his parents and three brothers. According to Allfamous.org (2022), Chuck Comeau, another member of Simple Plan, was born on 17 September 1979 in Quebec, Canada. According to Songfacts (2022), Chuck Comeau’s parents were not supportive towards Chuck’s career choice as a musician. It led the band to write a song ‘Perfect’ which tells a story about a broken father-and-son relationship. Several previous studies have been conducted to examine lyrics of songs. Sihaloho et al. (2021) examined the irony and hyperbole of Bruno Mars’ songs. They found that there are five different types of hyperbole and irony found in the songs. Moreover, Carter (2021) examined Rolling Stones’ songs and found that their songs aimed to criticize wealth and privilege; and also to give the authenticity for the band. Even though some previous studies about songs have been conducted, none has investigated the irony used to show the song writer’s personal life struggle. In order to conduct the analysis of this study, several theories are needed which are the theory of irony and the life story of each song writer analyzed. According to Kreuz (1989) irony is used to show one’s attitude towards something by saying the opposite. For example: (Example 1) Jane : Today would be sunny and warm. Jacob: Let’s go to the beach! Jane and Jacob went to the beach, and it rained heavily. Arianti (Personal Life Experience…) International Journal of English Linguistics, Literature, and Education (IJELLE) Vol. 5, No. 1, June 2023, pp. 1-15 3 ISSN 2686-0120 (print), 2686-5106 (online) Jacob : Today IS sunny and warm. In the example above, Jacob is repeating Jane’s utterance in order to show that what Jane said earlier was wrong. Jacob’s utterance has the opposite meaning from the reality. Moreover, Jacob said the utterance implicitly, which then made it fit to be called irony since it contains imp (...truncated)