For this last post, I’d like to talk about two specific songs by a band that has a pretty significant impact on my life. The band is called Shinedown. They were formed in Jacksonville, Florida in 2001 and are considered part of the hard rock/alternative metal/post-grunge genre. However, the two songs I will be discussing in this post seem like the furthest things from these genre labels.

The first song is called “Second Chance”. The song lyrics deal with the idea of being trapped in a place and coming out of that form of ‘prison’. It is about identifying as oneself and developing a personality, though sometimes an especially moving experience is needed to prove this to oneself and to others. I will use myself as an example to describe the plot of the song. As a child and teenager, I felt like I was trapped in my home. I was an only child, and my parents were especially protective, strict, and had high expectations of me. I had high expectations of myself, but I knew that I couldn’t stay in that house or town for my whole life. I knew that I was different and needed to experience something different from what I was living with for the past 15 or so years of my life. In high school, I discovered that I was very good with languages, and so I took the small leap of living in Ecuador for 5 weeks during the summer of 2012. I instantly realized that I had a passion for traveling, though my parents were heartbroken due to my leaving. The town that I come from is very provincial, in nearly every aspect of the word, so for me to break out and do this was very significant not only to me and my parents, but to many people in my community. After staying with a host family in Quito, Ecuador, I realized that I needed to do more. I needed to see more. I needed to experience more. So upon returning to Pennsylvania, I immediately began the application process for studying abroad for a year. I was accepted to study in Phetchaburi, Thailand for a school year, and this was one of the most difficult things that I or my parents had ever done up to that point. However, as the lyrics of the  song state, “Sometimes goodbye is a second chance.” I went out, traveled to Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and lived as a student in Thailand with customs that my wildest dreams never could have designed. I lived, I traveled, I did what I needed to do. But I realized the moment that I got home and saw my parents again, I was changed, and I experienced everything I needed to in order to find myself as a person and to prove to my parents that I’m destined to do more. The first step is to take that initial leap of faith.

The next song I’d like to discuss is called “I’ll Follow You”. I consider myself to  be a very loyal person when it comes to friends and relationships. This song stresses the importance of being faithful and persevering for those you care about. My boyfriend and I began listening to this song together at the very beginning of our relationship, and this song helps us to keep our eyes on what is important in a relationship if it is to last. And just to be sentimental, he plays this song at the beginning of his radio show every Friday night on WIUP FM.

This band has many other songs that are very inspiring, motivating, and moving, and so I highly recommend them. Thank you for your time, and I hope you enjoyed these blogs.