Connor Rouillard
11/20/12
POS
Song comparison
The two songs “Need” and “Don’t Need” are complete opposites but have similar themes, but almost opposite language usage, and point of view. Even though the songs do not sound remotely similar, they both deal with how society views and judges everyone. “Need” is much angrier and panicked, talking about terrorist and the failing economy. On the other hand “Don’t Need” is all about escaping from the harsh views of society and doing what you want to do and not letting other people control you.
In the songs, they both have similar themes of fitting the norm of society; one is panicky, trying to be the best person possible, while the other is accepting the fact that no one can be perfect. In “Need” he takes the roll of the average hypochondriac, trying to find symptoms that he might happen to have. In “Don’t Need” he talks about swinging on a playground swing and how all the people walking by stare at him and judge him, but he doesn’t care he “is comfortably numb.” Both of these scenes are what real life is like for some people, either constantly worrying about what people think, but everyone should live like the speaker in “Don’t Need” because he “just (does his) thing.”
In both of the songs his language uses have similarities and differences even though they convey different messages. In the different songs he assumes the rolls of two completely different people, and just goes through what their life might be like. In “Don’t Need” he alludes to both Superman and DreamWorks Studios. These allusions are very fitting because Superman is nearly indestructible, much like the speaker’s attitude. His reference to DreamWorks is also an important part of the song because they make children’s movies and things always workout for the characters, in comparison to real life where that rarely happens.
In both “Need” and “Don’t Need” the point of views are very dissimilar, they both deal with shared topics but in different ways. Both of the songs deal with necessity of material things, in “Need” at one point he says “Aw… I need all this… too!” after seeing a late night infomercial on his television. In contrast in “Don’t Need” he says “I don’t need no palace paved with gold. Don’t need more cash than banks can hold.” They both deal with how people judge you on a day-to-day basis. In “Need” he is a hypochondriac, probably from being judged, and he tries to get more medication so try and be more perfect than he can be. While in “Don’t Need” people “often color (him) dumb, but I don’t care man I’m comfortably numb.” Which shows he was probably just as worried before but came to the realization that he couldn’t change how people thought of him because he is what he is.
Even though the songs are very different they deal with a lot of the same stuff, but from very different people. And as one breaks down and panics, the other speaker just sits back and lets people go and drone on about their made up problems. As the speaker in “Need” gets more and more worried the speaker in “Don’t Need” stays as mellow as he was at the start.
