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Saturday, February 15, 2014

Stairway to Heaven Lyrical Analysis

Stairway to Heaven is song written and preformed by Led Zeppelin and appeared in the album Led Zeppelin IV.  It begins slow and melodic. There is no drums or heavy electric guitar as is characteristic of Led Zeppelin's music. This atmosphere deepens the meaning of the song which can be interpreted to represents the path to heaven in a series of indirect descriptions. The beginning expresses some aspects of euphony as well as in the chorus. This is expressed in words like "gold", "know", "wonder" and even the sounds added in the chorus such as "ooh". The diction of the song is light and, well, heavenly in many words like glitter and gold. Phrases form pictures of happiness and peace up until the end when the hard rock Led Zeppelin appears in all its glory.

In this song, only 2 basic lines are repeated once or twice in the nearly 8 minute long song. Led Zeppelin's song is more like a poem than anything. Alliteration and other literary devices are found throughout the piece in the choruses and verses. The words of the song as well as the pauses form together to create a poem with line-breaks, stanzas, and end-stopped lines like a written poem would. Stairway to Heaven is artfully crafted to give the listener a sense of what their imagining with not only with what's said but what's done. The singers and songwriters of this style and era had much of the same aspects as found in the Doors and Pink Floyd.

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/ledzeppelin/stairwaytoheaven.html 
   

1 comment:

  1. First of all, fantastic song. Led Zeppelin is great. I wouldn't have though at the pauses as line breaks or stanzas but now that you say that it makes sense, though not sure Robert Plant sat around considering his lyrics as poetry but who knows.

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