Showing posts with label Break Away. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Break Away. Show all posts

Monday, April 22, 2019

"Break Away"

In "Break Away," the end of the line "Where the shackles never hold me down" is sung to a descending phrase, musically giving a sense of that "hold[ing] down."  When I figured out the specific notes, I discovered that it's an arpeggiation of an A minor chord (E C A), so there's also a musical feeling of sadness linked with "the shackles" and their "hold[ing] me down."

I think it's also important to note that compared to the earlier iteration of the chorus ("I can break away from that lonely life / And I can do what I wanna do..."), the melody here is different, apparently to accommodate that descending melody for "hold me down."