Personification is a literary and poetic technique in which animals, concepts, and inanimate objects are given human characteristics. Personification plays a similar role in music as it does in poetry and literature. It’s a device that describes the unknown in human terms, making it understandable. It can be used to create a dramatic effect or a beautiful image. At other times, it makes a comment on a facet of human nature.
Personification, also known as anthropomorphism, is a literary technique that may have its origins in animism, a spiritual belief held by many primitive cultures. Animism is the belief that animals and inanimate objects contain spirits with human-like will and intelligence. Animals and natural forces like the wind were given human characteristics by ancient storytellers like Aesop and Homer. In the centuries that followed, this became a popular literary device. This technique is still used by poets and writers today, including the use of personification in songs.
Giving the concept of death human characteristics is a common practice in art and literature. This includes the American folk song “Oh Death,” which was one of the first songs to use personification. The song’s narrator begs Death to spare him, and Death himself says in another verse that similar pleas are common. “Oh Death” is a traditional song with an unknown author that dates back to the 1920s. Personification is a technique for giving a concept that is essentially unknowable human motives and sympathies.
In songs, personification can be used to express a complex concept or emotion. Bruce Springsteen’s song “Hungry Heart” is really about unfulfilled desire, which everyone has felt at some point in their lives. To represent this desire, he borrows Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s concept of the “hungry heart.” Former Beatle George Harrison sings about the sadness of watching the world change in another classic rock song. He named the song “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” after transferring this emotion to his instrument.
Personification is sometimes used in songs for no other reason than to create a beautiful or poetic image. The wind is given a voice and a faulty memory in Jimi Hendrix’s song “The Wind Cries Mary.” In his lyrics, Hendrix was a master at conjuring up bizarre but memorable images and phrases. With lines like “there she goes again/pulsing through my veins,” the pop song “There She Goes” has long been thought to personify heroin, with lines like “there she goes again/pulsing through my veins.” The authors of the song dispute this interpretation, but make no suggestions as to who or what the song’s title might be referring to.