"Love Lives On" Analysis

Mallary Hope is an up and coming country singer who has a lot of potential and the key elements to make it in the world of country music. She has been singing since she was a little girl and she has always been very passionate about her career. At 17 her family uprooted and moved to the Music City to pursue her dream. At 21, Hope signed with MCA Records, and her debut single "Love Lives On" was released in 2009. Mallary has climbed from being a small town girl with big dreams to a sensational singer, songwriter. She developed the lyrics to "Love Lives On" from a conversation that she had with her sister, who's husband is in the Army and was deployed to Iraq in 2009. At the rate she's at, Hope's career should sky-rocket. The deep emotion and feelings that she evokes in her songs are real and can potentially touch a lot of people who can relate to what she's singing about. Not to mention, Mallary adds numerous poetic devices in her music which only makes the song even better.

In "Love Lives On", Hope depicts the struggle and heartbreak of losing a loved one and the constant battle to cope. She uses a woman who loses her husband to show the pain and suffering loss can have on someone and the raw emotion that it evokes. On the other hand, she uses their daughter to cope and learn to move on, but never forget. Right off the bat, Mallary uses alliteration in the title; "Love Lives On". Hope actually uses a lot of alliteration in this song; whether intentional or unintentional. For example, "Cry like crazy", "Same story", "Thankful for the time". She uses first person point of view to evoke deep emotion, which makes it easy for the people listening to the song to put themselves in the woman's shoes. Hope also uses imagery and symbolism. In the first couple lines of the song, you can actually picture a woman waking up and reaching for her loved one on the other side of the bed and the expression on their face when they come to realization that no one's there. It is also easy and heartbreaking to picture a woman sitting at a table all alone in the morning pouring two cups of coffee, talking to an imaginary person who she thinks is or should be there. This imagery makes us feel for the woman and it's easy for us to feel her pain and sorrow. At the end of the song, Hope uses the little girl (their daughter) as a symbol of their love and the beautiful man that she once knew. She sees her lost love in her daughter, which to her makes his presence last. Mallary Hope's use of poetic devices in her song help us feel the pain and hurt of the woman, which makes the song effective and significant to many.

In conclusion, Hope uses her knowledge of music and songwriting in creating this song which depicts the raw pain and hurt of losing someone very dear to you. By using poetic devices such as point of view and imagery, the listeners can envision what the woman is going through and how it can sometimes feel virtually impossible to cope with the immense lose. In life, we come across problems and struggles that we have to learn to overcome and rise above. In "Love Lives On", Hope shows us that even when you feel like it's impossible to get through and prevail, there is always something that brings us to realization that life will go on and there is no use in constantly dwelling over the past and things that we just cannot change.