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| Burn (Ellie Goulding) |
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This catchy song made Ellie Goulding's dream of ever hitting number 1 in the UK top charts. The song was first recorded by Leona Lewis for her third studio album Glassheart, but eventually they decided to omit it from the final track. For some reason, back then, they thought nobody would like this song. Ellie Goulding thought otherwise, and she has proved them all wrong.
We, we don't have to worry 'bout nothing
Cause we got the fire
And we're burning one hell of a something.
They, they gonna see us from outer space,
Outer space.
Light it up like we're the stars of the human race,
Human race.
When the lights turned down,
They don't know what they heard.
Strike the match, play it loud,
Giving love to the world.
We'll be raising our hands,
Shinin' up to the sky.
Cause we got the fire, fire, fire.
Yeah, we got the fire fire fire
And we gonna let it burn burn burn burn
We gonna let it burn burn burn burn
Gonna let it burn burn burn burn
We gonna let it burn burn burn burn
We don't wanna leave, no.
We just wanna be right now, right ri-ri-right now.
And what we see
Is everybody's on the floor
Acting crazy, getting lurker to the lights out.
Music's on, I'm wakin' up,
We stop the vibe and we bump it up.
And it's over now, we got the love.
There's no sleeping now, no sleeping now.
When the lights turned down,
They don't know what they heard.
Strike the match, play it loud,
Giving love to the world.
We'll be raising our hands,
Shinin' up to the sky.
Cause we got the fire, fire, fire.
Yeah, we got the fire fire fire
And we gonna let it burn burn burn burn
We gonna let it burn burn burn burn
Gonna let it burn burn burn burn
We gonna let it burn burn burn burn
When the lights turned down,
They don't know what they heard.
Strike the match, play it loud,
Giving love to the world.
We gonna let it burn burn burn burn burn burn
Burn burn burn burn burn burn
We can light it up up up
So they can't put it out out out
We can light it up up up
So they can't put it out out out
We can light it up up up
So they can't put it out out out
We can light it up up up
So they can't put it out out out
When the lights turned down,
They don't know what they heard.
Strike the match, play it loud,
Giving love to the world.
We'll be raising our hands,
Shinin' up to the sky.
Cause we got the fire, fire, fire.
Yeah, we got the fire fire fire.
And we gonna let it burn burn burn burn
We gonna let it burn burn burn burn
Gonna let it burn burn burn burn
We gonna let it burn burn burn burn
When the lights turned down,
They don't know what they heard.
Strike the match, play it loud,
Giving love to the world.
We'll be raising our hands,
Shinin' up to the sky.
Cause we got the fire, fire, fire.
Yeah, we got the fire fire fire
And we gonna let it burn
WORRY= /wʌrɪ/
‘BOUT= (coll.) About.
NOTHING= /nʌθɪŋ/ This sentence is a double negative so it’s incorrect. It should be one of these two possibilities:
- We don’t worry about anything
- We worry about nothing
But in colloquial English it’s ok to make a double negative.
CAUSE= (coll.) Because (also: coz, cos in BrE and cuz, cus in AmE)
WE GOT= (coll. esp. AmE) We’ve got, we have.
FIRE= (metaphor) strong energy; life force; passion.
ONE HELL OF A SOMETHING= (coll. figurative, emphatic) Something very big/important.
- It was one hell of a party! = It was a wonderful party
- You’ve got one hell of a car here = I love your car
Often spelled “helluva”:
- He’s a helluva tall boy = That boy is really tall.
WE’RE BURNING ONE HELL OF A SOMETHING= We are creating a big lot of passion.
GONNA= (coll.) are going to.
OUTER SPACE= The universe outside the earth and its atmosphere.
LIGHT IT UP= If you light something up, you bring light or fire to it.
LIKE= (coll.) As if.
He looked at me like he knew me= He looked at me as if he knew me.
HUMAN RACE= Humankind, humanity, the total of all the people in the world.
TURNED DOWN= If a fire or a light turns down, it reduces its intensity (but it is still on).
STRIKE THE MATCH= A match is a little stick with some chemical stuff at one end which produces fire when you scratch it (see picture). If you strike a match, you light it up and make fire (and light).
PLAY IT LOUD= (it = the music). If you play it loud you play the music in a high volume.
FIRE= This word is supposed to be pronounced /faɪə/ (/faɪər/ in AmE), with a triphthong. But what we hear in this song is /fɑ:ə/. This is actually the most common pronunciation now in conversational English both in BrE and in AmE. The triphthongs /aɪə/ and /aʊə/ are both changing into the diphthong /ɑ:ə/. And there is a growing minority who is going even further and pronouncing it as /ɑ:/ (esp. in BrE), so for many people FIRE is /fɑ:/ and FLOWER is /flɑ:/. But some very common words are already pronounced like that by most people, so HOUR and OUR are both usually /ɑ:/, with the old pronunciation /aʊə/ sounding formal or even pedantic in many situations.
WE GONNA LET IT BURN= We are going to make the fire (= our passion/vitality) burn.
WANNA= (coll.) Want to.
RIGHT NOW= We use RIGHT to emphasize expressions of space and time:
- When I saw her she was right there, exactly under that tree.
- I’ll be back here right at three o’clock.
FLOOR= The dance floor = The area in a disco or club where people dance.
ACTING CRAZY= Acting crazily, behaving in a crazy way.
In colloquial English it is very common to use the adjective where we should use an adverb:
- Please, do it slow = do it slowly
- She was moving quick = moving quickly
GETTING LURKER= To lurk is to move slowly and trying to make no sound, as when you don’t want people to know you’re moving, or trying to be there but not wanting to be noticed. If people are getting lurker they are getting more unnoticed (because the lights are out)
LIGHTS OUT= If the lights are out, they are off.
THE VIBE= (coll., short for “vibration”) A vibe is a feeling of something that you specify:
- She gave me a good vibe the moment I met her.
- A gloomy vibe was in the air.
“The vibe” is the feeling there is in the atmosphere at this moment. In this song she refers to that lurking feeling people got in when the lights were out, but the they played the music, people woke up from that feeling and started to dance again.
- (people are) getting lurker to the lights out. Music’s on, I’m waking up. We stop the vibe and we bump it up.
BUMP IT UP= To bump something up is to increase it. In this context, the expression “to bump it up” means to increase the activity, the party, so we expect everybody got up and started dancing like crazy. When the lights were out their level of energy (fire) was low, and now that the music is back on the bump it up.
IT’S OVER= It has finished.
It’s not too clear what is finished here, but we get an answer in the next line, when she says: “There’s no sleeping now”. So what is over is the lurking time when lights out and people resting.
THERE'S NO SLEEPING NOW= This is no time to sleep, you can't sleep now.
LIGHT IT UP= As we said before, to light it up is to make something burn or to bring light to something. In this case, “IT” refers to the fire she’s talking about all the time, their passion.
SO THEY CAN’T= A construction used to express purpose when the subject of the main clause is different from the subject in the subordinate clause:
- Mike opened the window to get some air
Mike opened and Mike got
- Mike opened the window so that Susan could get some air
Mike opened and Susan got
In the negative:
- Lock the door so that they can’t enter.
In colloquial English we often drop THAT:
- Lock the door so they can’t enter.
- We’re gonna light it up so they can’t put it out.
PUT IT OUT= The opposite of LIGHT IT OUT. If you put a fire out, you extinguish it, you make it disappear.
Due to the repeated “burn, burn, burn” of the chorus and the many invocations of fire in the song, many people think this is a song about destruction. That is a mistake, in this song “fire” is metaphorically used in the sense of “passion, vital energy”, which is quite obvious by the context, and so the allusions to burn, light it up and put it out are all referring to this passion, not to a real fire. Another line that helps people think in some kind of revolution is "There's no secret now", but though about 90% of the lyrics on the Internet report this line like that, with "secret", it's easy to notice that what she says is "there's no sleeping now", simply reinforcing the idea of dancing all night long. And the video certainly backs up this interpretation of trivial-cosmic dimensions.
In this song there are two images which are repeated and intertwined all along:
- people dancing in a disco, with a DJ controlling the atmosphere
- the world, humankind
Those people dancing are the ones who have the fire, the vital energy which is also later identified with the love that can save the world. Once you established this connection you can easily get to the silly idea that when the DJ plays the music loud and people start dancing like crazy, the world is a better place because those young people full of passion are sending love out to a dark world.
Well, this will not probably impress any philosopher, but the idea seems to be well designed for an audience that is going to listen to it probably while dancing. Kind of cheesy new age message though, but who cares, as long as the song is catchy and danceable.
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