Bastille is an English alternative rock band founded by the lead vocalist, producer, and songwriter, Dan Smith, in London in 2010. Smith started writing songs when he was 15, and after his studies and returning to London, he decided to form a band and recruited the other members. The band name was derived from Bastille Day, also known as French National Day, celebrated each year on the 14th of July, which is also Smith’s birthday (Bastille Artistfacts). Pompeii was released as the fourth single from the album Bad Blood on January 11th, 2013. It is their most popular song and had reached number 2 on UK Singles Chart, number 5 on the US Billboard Hot 100, and number one on the Alternative Songs chart (Pompeii (Bastille Song)). The song starts of with soft “E e o e o” noises and has a fairly catchy tune. The first lines are “I was left to my own devices / Many days fell away with …show more content…
/ The rubble or our sins?” Although repetition is used often to make the song catchy, he uses it here to repeat these two whole lines, and makes these lines into a quatrain of its own to emphasize the message. The writer is trying to evoke the readers’ thoughts about what to change and fix when things are going wrong, the situation or oneself. Should people try to change how things look and hide their mistakes or attempt to change themselves to not make the same mistakes again? In stanza 4, the writer writes, “We were caught up and lost in all of our vices / In your pose as the dust settles around us.” People are caught up in their wrong doings and the “dust settles around”. Connotation is used for “dust” and it can actually represent evil, devil, or Satan. Both the word “dust” and “darkness” in line 20 uses euphemism. The writer could have substituted these words with words like evil or destruction, yet he chooses not to. Perhaps he wants the readers to still feel hopeful and that they still are able to change