This document provides instructions for an assignment to write a personal essay about the meaning and significance of a song. Students are asked to choose a song that was personally meaningful, discuss its history and cultural context, and connect it to a specific time or experience in their own life. The essay should be no more than 750 words and use narrative techniques like sensory details to convey the song's personal and cultural importance. Students are provided tips on brainstorming, researching the song's production and cultural context, and crafting an engaging narrative essay that meets the learning objectives of conveying personal and cultural significance of music and gaining deeper understanding.

1. ENGL 208 Personal & Exploratory Writing 1
Assignment 4:
Writing
About a
Song
Description of Assignment
In this assignment you will write a personal essay about a song, connecting its
personal meaning for you to its history and cultural relevance. Use the readings
posted on BbLearn as inspiration for your essay: Chuck Klosterman on Van Halen’s
“Jump,” McSweeney’s “Short Essays on Favorite Songs,” and Carl Wilson’s essay on
Celine Dion. Note how each author not only talks about the musical and lyrical
details (and sometimes cultural context and history) of the song itself, but also shows
its significance to their own life.
The essay should be no more than 750 words.
Tips for Writing the Essay
Choose a song. Start by brainstorming a list of all the songs that have been personally
meaningful to you at some point in your life. Then choose one that connects most to
a time or experience that you most want to write about.
Taking inspiration from the essays assigned for the week, remember that the point is to
tell us a story about the song – i.e., give us an emotional insight and a piece of
wisdom about it, and about your relation to it. Include a few lines of lyrics from the
song in your essay and a description of its sound. Use scene, dialogue, concrete,
sensory details and other narrative techniques that we’ve discussed to invoke a
strong sense of time and place as you discuss the song.
Research the song’s history and cultural significance. The history includes things like
when the song was released, anything of relevance or interest about the singer/band
that released it, if it was connected to any particular historical or cultural event, etc.
“Cultural significance” is relative, and can mean anything from the song’s popularity
(was it very popular? very obscure?), to the genre of the song and the people who
tended to listen to that genre (for instance, Joy Division was a favorite band among
Goths in the 1990s), to the publicity that it may have garnered (imagine a visibly
drugged-up Britney Spears literally stumbling through her performance of “Gimme
More” at the 2007 VMAs, for instance – how does that image influence how the song
might affect you?).

2. ENGL 208 Personal & Exploratory Writing 2
Because this is a popular writing genre, we’ll be using informal citation – that is, if you
directly quote someone, you’ll need to provide some context about where you got
the quote, but you won’t use formal citation methods like parentheses or footnotes.
Invention/Brainstorming
• Answer these questions: Why did you choose this song? What does the song
mean to you personally? For example, is it a personal anthem, a reminder of
an important time in your life, or something else? Just like with our previous
essays, use scene and sensory details to show the personal significance of the
song.
• Describe some of the musical qualities that you like or find important about the
song, such as its genre (country, rap, classical, rock, soul, gospel, jazz, ballad,
etc.), its vocal and/or instrumental performance, the lyrics, etc.
• Find out details about the song’s production: when was it written and
released? Who wrote it and who recorded it? Find out what inspired the song –
why was it created?
• What was happening in American culture when it was released? What does it
say, or what can you infer it is saying, about American culture? How does the
persona of the recording artist influence the song was received or what it
meant, culturally?
An excellent essay will do the following:
1. Have an engaging title.
2. Use sensory details that let the reader see, hear, and feel the story associated
with the song.
3. Include details (based on research) about the song’s historical and cultural as
well as personal significance.
4. Be no more than 1000 words long.
5. Contain no proofreading errors. Points will be deducted for any grammatical,
punctuation or spelling errors.
Learning Objectives. After completing this assignment, you should be
able to:
• Convey to readers a sense of the personal and cultural importance of a song.
• Gain a deeper understanding of a song that was important to your life.
• Effectively use sensory details and description.