COLORS IN MUSIC

What Is A Yellow Submarine, Anyway? 10 Colorful Songs Explained

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Music is a powerful tool that explicitly evokes all kinds of emotions. Colors, on the other hand, have a more subtle way of arousing feelings. Various theories have been developed to study the psychology behind colors and they all agree that they can be as powerful as music. So imagine what happens when you put those two things together. "Back to black" takes you right to the dark, low moments of life, while "Yellow Submarine" can already make you feel cheerful, doesn’t it?

Join us as we explore ten songs that have used colors to further express their messages.

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The first item in our list not only blends colors and music but also combines multiple music styles: rock, R&B, gospel, and orchestral music. Only Prince could have done it!

Purple Rain is a song from 1984, part of the album of the same name, written and performed by Prince with his backing band, The Revolution.

Now, what does it mean? Prince himself explained that it is a reference to the sky and it represents letting your faith guide you to be with the one you love, even when it seems impossible. Quite a profound start, isn’t it?

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Songs, lyrics, and music are filled with individual interpretations which can vary greatly. Yellow Submarine by The Beatles is quite representative of that. The song, written by the English band as part of their album Revolver in 1966 was subject to opinions and interpretations from the very beginning.

Some deemed it empty of meaning, while teenagers of the time embraced it to create their own chants of protest. And some even take it as a metaphor for how The Beatles perceived themselves as prisoners of their own fame. Whatever we take as the truth, nobody can deny it is a great song.

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Back to Black was written by English singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse in 2006 and instantly became an international success. Considering how short and troubled Winehouse’s life was, critics consider this song the purest expression of her complex mind.

It is her signature song and describes the difficult time she was going through at the time. Black is the color that best reflects how lonely life can get and how devoid of hope a person can get. Even in the most tragic ending, Winehouse still resonates with our society through this iconic song.

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Just another song that belongs in the greater leagues as it’s in the Grammy Hall of Fame, among other achievements.

Released in 1967,Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison describes, naturally, a romance of the past in the most nostalgic way. Innocence, youth, and happy memories are all implied in the lyrics and the upbeat rhythm completes the picture it paints.

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Many songs, like this one, are written specifically for film productions. Blue Hawaii for example, was written in 1937 by Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger for a film called Waikiki Wedding.

However, that is not the only film featuring it, as it was so successful, that it received several covers in the following years. Probably, the most famous one was performed by Elvis Presley in the namesake film of 1961.

The color of the ocean and that dreamy location set the scene in a rather straightforward way and it makes us wish we were there, right?

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It is not uncommon to see hints of autobiographical notes in songs. Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road by Elton John and Bernie Taupin is said to contain elements from the latter’s childhood on the farm in Lincolnshire.

Whatever the truth is, this ballad reflects on the hardship behind fame and how the author longed for a simpler, more genuine life, away from the glamour.

Regarding Elton’s career, many critics go as far as saying this is one of his best songs, and the records it broke prove it!

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You may know Red Red Wine by UB40, but Neil Diamond originally wrote and performed this song in 1967.

Part of his second studio album, Just for You, the lyrics are easily relatable: Haven’t we all gone through a time when we thought a cup of red wine was somehow a way to forget about our troubles? Neil Diamond surely felt that when he wrote this song.

UB40 might have found it appealing as they re-recorded it 20 years later, which ultimately led to an overwhelming success for them.

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We don’t need to describe The Rolling Stones success, an over-40-years career speaks for itself. Among its many hits, Paint It, Black is the one that belongs in our article.

Originally writtenby Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, the song explores themes of grief and despair. It is narrated from the point of view of a person who lost their loved one and wants everything in black to match their mood. It is worth mentioning that, as with most iconic songs, it has received different interpretations. In any case, the topics are universal and the song is a hit still today!

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Musicians don’t always have to resort to black to express intense feelings. When the experience needs to be energetic and powerful, other colors get to play. That was what Bruce Springsteen was thinking when he wrote Pink Cadillac in 1984.

Romantic attraction, desire, escapism, and more topics of the sort have raised some controversy around the meaning, but that wasn’t enough to keep it from the Billboard chart for 14 weeks straight.

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The new millennium brought amazing things and Coldplay the British band was one of them. Included as the second single of their debut album Parachute, the song gave the band its first top-five hit in the United Kingdom.

But that wasn’t it, thanks to this song, Coldplay reached international fame and popularity which only kept growing and growing. More than two decades later, Yellow and the topic of love and devotion still resonate with the crowds.

Tasty idioms

Why is a baker’s dozen 13? These 10 food idioms spiced up our language

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Food idioms have a way of adding flavor to our speech. From "crying over spilled milk" to being accused of "being a couch potato," we have internalized these phrases and no longer notice their edible main characters. What are the origins of these funny lines? Did their meanings evolve over the centuries? Grab a snack and read on to learn the history of food-related idioms that have seasoned our language since as early as 77 A.D.

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You can go ahead and imagine someone trying to staple or nail jelly to the bark. This line applies to tasks that are either challenging or impossible. One of its earliest uses is believed to have been by President Theodore Roosevelt. Legend has it that, over inconclusive talks about the building of the Panama Canal, he said: "Negotiating with those pirates is like trying to nail currant jelly to the wall."

Similar hyperbolic idioms suggest that someone attempting the impossible is trying to "catch the wind" or "herding cats." Also, it may refer to projects that are as difficult as they are useless, just like nailing jelly to a tree.

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Of the list, this is the most modern idiom. It gained popularity in the 2010s via jokes on the internet and social media culture. In a world where tea equals gossip, "spilling the tea", "bringing the tea", or "serving the tea" means to provide juicy, exclusive details about a story. It derives from the shorthand for "Truth": a capital "T". While it’s too soon for the expression to be in every dictionary, the slang is widespread enough to be understood in several countries.

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This saying is recent enough to have a known author. In the 1970s, a man called Tom Iacino improvised this term in a phone call to refer to his lazy friend. From then on, Tom and his close ones adopted the words to laugh about their sedentary habits. The expression soon became used in cartoons and TV shows, and eventually caught on. In an interview many years later, Tom said he couldn’t explain why he had come up with that silly image back then.

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Here’s another idiom that stuck because of the humor in the image it paints. Have you ever stopped to picture someone on the floor, crying over spilled milk? Melodramatic, right? The reason the phrase caught on since early mentions in 17th-century English literature is the mockery implied in it. When someone is told not to cry over spilled milk, they are being consoled by the fact that their mishap is rather irrelevant. It also points out that, however minor, their mistake can’t be undone, like putting the milk back in the jar.

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To be or not to be in a pickle! It was William Shakespeare himself who first penned this idiom in his play The Tempest. He intended it with a different meaning than simply being in trouble, though. In the play, a shipwreck strands two characters on an island with nothing but a barrel of wine. It is their king who finds them later and asks Trinculo, one of them: "How came’st thou in this pickle?," because, by that point, Trinculo is drunk.

Fifty years after Shakespeare’s play, another writer, Samuel Pepys, used the phrase to describe a messy, bothersome, problematic situation. This is the version that stuck through the centuries.

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A baker’s dozen equals 13. Here’s the logic behind that. In medieval England, bakers were subject to strict regulations and often received fines or floggings for shortchanging customers. When you are baking 300 loaves a day in a medieval oven, it is possible that some of them might come out undersized. To avoid conflicts in weighing and counting, bakers adopted the habit of including one or even two extra items in each dozen they sold. This practice was so widespread that by the 16th century, the expression "baker’s dozen" had become a standard term to mean 13.

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The suggestion to "take it with a grain of salt" has ancient origins. It is believed to come from a natural medicine bible written around 77 AD, Pliny the Elder's Naturalis Historia. In it, Pliny recounted a story about the Roman general Pompey, who discovered an antidote for poison that included a grain of salt. This antidote was thought to make one immune to poison if taken regularly. In Classical Latin, Pliny’s words were addito salis grano ("after having added a grain of salt").

Over time, the concept became a metaphor for skepticism. With it, people are advised not to believe everything they hear. Just as a grain of salt could mitigate naïveté.

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We can all agree that pre-sliced bread is a major convenience. Back in the 1920s, when the first automatic bread slicer was invented, sliced bread started being sold under the brand name "Wonder Bread". Their ads read: "The greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped." After that, popularly, people started to admire new, helpful, or groundbreaking inventions as "the greatest thing since sliced bread".

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To "confess the corn", to "own the corn", or even to "acknowledge the malt" all refer to the act of admitting to at least part of the guilt of some crime. According to Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrases and Fable, this one originated in a Congressional debate of 1828. The fable goes that one of the states had previously claimed to be a corn exporter. Representatives then admitted that they exported hogs who had eaten corn, which was exported in that way.

A funnier version sustains that it was first said in a court case in the 19th century, in which a man was accused of stealing horses and a large supply of corn. It is said that aiming to be dismissed from the charge and the terrible penalty for horse thieves, he stood and declared: "I acknowledge the corn."

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What’s the point of having a cake and not being able to eat it? The explanation behind this idiom is that, once you have a cake, you can either store it or eat it (and cease to have it). So, the phrase describes the situation of wanting two mutually exclusive things.

The first historical record of this line appears in print in John Heywood's Proverbs (1546). Back then, cake was considered a luxury item. However, the idiom is timeless because it describes internal conflicts that we all have at some point. Should I watch another episode or get some sleep? Have the cake, or eat it?