Eminem Love The Way You Lie Analysis

When talking about love, many people think that it is mysterious and full of surprises, but sometimes love could also become dangerous and violent due to inappropriate relationships. The theme of the song, “Love the way you lie”, is focusing on abusive relationship and domestic violence created by improper or extreme loves. Eminem, the writer and singer of this song, put his personal experience into the music to make it feel deeper and more real to the audiences. There are several instruments that are displayed in this song. At the beginning the music, Rihanna sings over a piano. Then the song comes to the rap part; Eminem's verses are accompanied by an electric guitar, violin and drums. When the song comes to chorus part again, the piano, electric guitars and drums support Rihanna. According to Sachs-Hornbostel system, the electric guitar is a type of electrophone, violin and piano are chordophones and

The melody shares the same pattern for the chorus 2 and chorus 3. For rap part, generally speaking, the melody has a flat shape. Although there are some ascending or descending pitches, they are negligible compared to the overall pitches. Therefore, the melody is generally flat during the verse parts. Furthermore, the melody of this piece is legato, the pitches are connected and musical notes are played and sung smoothly from each other, especially for the chorus part. Moreover, the melody is a mixture of conjunct and disjunct motion. The intervals are quite long during verse part, which can be counted as a disjunct part. However, the melody in the rap part is an example of conjunct motion, because of the smaller intervals between two consecutive notes. The melody is repetitive for every chorus part. It is not hard to discover that the three parts sung by Rihanna share the same melody and even same