The two lineages that I find to be most interesting that my songs connect to is the theme of eating disorders or self-love and acceptance and the word choices used. In the song Hunger the word hunger is used to describe either a want for love and acceptance or even a literal hunger. I will be looking for songs that either relate and connect to the theme of eating disorders or rather even songs that sing about eating disorders from personal experience as well as songs that use the word hunger relating to the same way Florence uses it in a way of describing a sort of love.

 

The first song I will be talking about is Strangers by Halsey. Halsey is also a female vocalist who currently is creating new music and is very popular. Halsey’s music speaks a lot to her sexuality and gender. I want to focus on the chorus of this song where it says, “We’re not lovers, we’re just strangers with the same damn hunger to be touched, to be loved, to feel anything at all”. These lyrics I am going to compare to the part in Florence’s song where she says, “You give yourself to strangers You don’t have to be afraid And then it tries to find a home with people, or when I’m alone Picking it apart and staring at your phone We all have hunger”. Both of these songs are using the verbiage of strangers and hunger. I think it’s interesting that both songs are talking about love in a sense, Halsey in a relationship, and Florence with random men. But the similarity is that both feel like they are looking for this love that they want in strangers or people that they thought they knew that they really don’t. Halsey’s speaking to the fact that as humans we all have the desire, or hunger, to be wanted, loved and appreciated. Florence also is saying a similar thing where she says she also wants to fill that desire, or the hunger she has, but how she is doing it by looking for it in wrong people. Both artists are hungry for love. I think it’s interesting that both songs were most likely written for completely different meanings but each of the song’s choruses do relate to one another and could be seen to have this sort of lineage or relation to one another.

 

The next song I will be looking at is Skinny Love by Bon Iver. So, a skinny love is defined as a love to fill an empty void but it is when the people don’t really love each other it’s essentially just something to do or have. I think this skinny love is what Florence is describing. She has this hunger to be loved by men or she thinks that’s what is going to fill her hunger. I am relating this hunger as a void. Love to fill hunger, love to fill a void. Where Bon Iver’s song comes into play is that I think both people see love as a physical thing. Bon Iver did love a woman but the love faded until he felt unwanted by her and then he says, “come on, skinny love, what happened here? Suckle on the hope in light brassiere”. I relate this to when Florence says, “in that pink dress, they’re gonna crucify me…The way you use your body, baby, come on and work it for me”. These lyrics are also talking about the way she looks, the way she’s going to get love or the way she moves that will make men love her. Both have turned love into a physical thing. Both artists also end their songs with a question. In Bon Iver’s song he says, ““Who will love you? Who will fight? Who will fall far behind?” Florence says, “How could anything bad ever happen to you? You make a fool of death with your beauty, and for a moment I forget to worry”. I find this to be important because in each song it’s as if you don’t know if they are asking themselves these questions or if they are asking someone the questions or if they are questions someone has asked them. I think both people seem to be blaming this love that they think they are getting as skinny. Both artists are not getting much back from a partner and it’s like it leaves them just wanting more and wanting more love which leads to in Bon Iver’s case, the breakup and in Florence’s, a hunger or an eating disorder. They’re both starved for love and gratification from another person.

 

The last song I will be discussing is Scars to Your Beautiful by Alessia Cara. I am going to focus on one part of this song that says, she has dreams to be an envy, so she’s starving You know, cover girls eat nothing She says, beauty is pain and there’s beauty in everything What’s a little bit of hunger? I could go a little while longer, she fades away”. This brings us back to this idea of hunger and in this song, it’s a literal sense of hunger. This song is discussing eating disorders and this idea of beauty and how to either achieve this ideal or to maintain it. I find this song to be interesting because it seems as if this song is what Alessia is singing to others as if she’s trying to comfort people struggling or being an advocate whereas Florence does something similar where she to is singing to someone struggling but that person is herself. What I am wondering is if similarly, how Florence’s song is a letter to herself if Alessia’s song could be her singing to maybe a younger version of herself. Both songs explain starving themselves and to feel either beautiful and wanted and loved or just accepted. I think this theme of outwardly calling out an eating disorder is really brave and is usually something people kind of beat around by not directly saying in songs. Many songs may infer about an eating disorder but these songs both talked about the literal fact of starving oneself.