Evidence for your interpretation

I was teaching one of my students how to play “Red” by Taylor Swift and I made a comment at the end of the song that it ends on an unresolved chord. The main chord progression is:

| A | C#m | B | B |

This loop is used throughout the song, except during one part of the chorus where the C#m chord is changed to an E major chord. This type of chord loop tonicizes, to my ears at least, the A major chord at the beginning of the loop.

However, the song ends on a B major chord, causing it to sound unresolved at the end.

My student, immediately after I said it ended unresolved, made a comment, sarcastically, saying something similar to:

“The reason it ends on an unresolved chord is to signify the unresolved nature of heartbreak. The song is about a breakup and about heartbreak and heartbreak feels unresolved and unfinished. That ending chord symbolizes this.”

I was immediately proud of how analytical they were being, even though they were saying it sarcastically. They understood that that level of analysis and the idea of using evidence to support your interpretation was a big part of how people discuss music and poetry and literature and many art forms.

But they brought up a good point.

Whatever your interpretation is of a song or other piece of art, it becomes valid when you back it up with evidence. Using evidence from the piece of art to support your claims is what legitimizes an interpretation.

Sometimes this might sound silly, and attributing every single piece of your interpretation to the thought processes of the composers, producers, performers, and creators of the song is beside the point in my opinion.

For example, it doesn’t matter whether Taylor Swift consciously thought about and made a decision to end the song on an unresolved chord. That’s how the song ends. If your interpretation is to say that the song ending on that chord conveys heartbreak more than not ending on that chord, that’s fine. It doesn’t need to be a conscious thought of the creators to be legitimate.

The art is still the same and can still be interpreted the same way, regardless of whether or not the creator(s) thought of every tiny little interpretative detail.

Maybe the creator(s) thought of those things. Maybe they didn’t. But that doesn’t change the art at all. The art stays the same.

However, back to the point of evidence.

Finding evidence for an interpretation can be difficult if you’ve never done it before, but you’re basically looking for ways to legitimize your opinion. Maybe they may sound silly, and they probably will at the start, but keep looking.

Some things to start looking through are the rhythm, melody, harmony, and timbre. Those four aspects of music might help you find a some evidence for an interpretation.

Now, not all songs need to be analyzed this way. Some songs may lend themselves to this type of analysis, others may not. It can be a fun exercise to do if the song is either instrumental or has ambiguous lyrics, but if the lyrics are fairly clear and straightforward then this type of analysis may not be useful.

ISJ