Live Your Own Life, Not Someone Else's by Stella McGinn

The plain fields went on for miles. As we drove from valley to valley you could see where a fire had burnt trees to the ground and turned the grass black. On a road trip down to Los Angeles, my dad and I played a game as my mom looked out the window with her feet on the dashboard. My dad would choose a song from his endless playlists and I would guess the artist and the title of the song.

“They tried to make me go to rehab / I said no, no, no,”(“Rehab”1-2).

“Rehab? By Amy Winehouse?” I guessed from the backseat, nestled in with my pillow and teddy bear. I had even tucked a blanket up against the window to block light.

“Yep, good job!” my dad said from the driver's seat, while keeping his eyes on the grey road ahead of him.

“I ain't got the time / And if my daddy thinks I’m fine,” I sang, watching out the opposite window looking for deer as the sun was setting. The song had been ingrained into my brain from years of listening. I had memorized the words without realizing it.

Amy Winehouse, born on September 14th, 1983, hit London’s music scene at the age of 16, when a classmate passed along one of her demo tapes to a company, according to Biography.com. Amy was surrounded with jazz growing up; many of her uncles were professional jazz musicians. According to “Amy” a biography and documentary directed by Asif Kapadia, she was influenced by Billie Holiday and Erykah Badu, famous R&B and jazz artists. Most of her life, she was in a poisonous relationship with drugs and alcohol. According to the movie, her management team wanted her to go to rehab for alcohol abuse, but instead she dropped the company and wrote “Rehab” to capture her experience. “Rehab” part of her Back to Black album, was released in 2006. The song won three Grammys and many other awards, it was on the Top 10 hit list in the UK and in the US. The song discusses her experience with the people around her and what was going through her mind when this event happened in her life. She tragically died on July 23rd, 2011 at the age of 27 due to alcohol poisoning. Amy Winehouse uses repetition, rhyme, and symbolism to reveal the message that you should not let other people make decisions for you.

One powerful way Amy describes the theme that you should not let other people make decisions for you is by using repetition. In the intro of the song, Winehouse introduces the topic of the  song, her experience with rehab. She describes how her management wanted her to seek treatment at a rehabilitation clinic for alcohol abuse, but instead she left the company. In the chorus she sings, “They tried to make me go to rehab/ I said no, no, no,”(“Rehab”1-2). Amy uses the work “no” repeatedly, to convey her frustrated and annoyed attitude towards the people in her life trying to make her go to rehab, when she believed that she didn’t need help. This conveys the theme that you should not let other people make your decisions by emphasizing her frustration with other people trying to make decisions for her and her life. It also implies the helplessness that you feel when people think they know what is best for you, compared to yourself and you own opinions. It makes you feel as if you are being attacked, like everyone is trying to control your life.

In “Rehab”, rhyme is a common component for Amy to describe that you need to make your own choices. Whereas in the intro she describes her annoyance towards all of the people around her, this verse describes her feelings on going to rehab and her actual opinions on the matter of getting help or not. Near the end of the songs she sings, “And it’s not just my pride/ it’s just til these tears have dried,”(“Rehab”37-38). By rhyming “just my pride” with “tears have dried”, Amy is connecting how people think she doesn't want to go to rehab because she is too proud to, with her actual belief that once she is happy again she will stop drinking and she would stop her substance abuse. This reveals the theme that others cannot know what it is to walk in her shoes and cannot understand why she refused their help.

Another way Amy describes the message that you should not let other people make decisions for you, in “Rehab” was by using symbolism. In the second and third verse she talks about why she doesn't want to go to a rehabilitation clinic, and how she feels that it would be useless to her. In the third verse she sings,“But I know we don’t come in a shot glass,”(“Rehab”14). Winehouse uses the symbol of the shot glass to represent her drinking problem. It also represents how she knows fixing her drinking problem will not  be like taking a shot, it will take time and work. This reveals the theme that you should not let other people make decisions for you by showing that Amy acknowledged her drinking problem and believed that she didn't need to go to rehab, which was her decision. She also believed that if she went it would take too much time and it would not be a quick fix, like taking a shot; quick and easy, which is what she wanted.

The most effective aspect of “Rehab” is the way the happy upbeat tempo drags in listeners, even though the song is talking about rehabilitation centers and alcohol which isn't really a happy topic. For example, when the hook is repeated, behind it is an upbeat tempo with a strong drum beat. This tempo is in happier songs or songs talking about happier topics. This strengthens the song by drawing in more listeners spreading her message to a wider audience. A particular weakness of this song is the message, even though it is portrayed to powerfully. For instance, in the hook she says, “I ain't got the time/ And if my daddy thinks I’m fine,”(“Rehab”5-6). The message conveyed throughout the song was that you should not let other people make decisions for you. In some cases you may be able to make decisions for yourself but at the time Amy was not. She might have made the decision of not going to rehab to get help, but in the end she died due to alcohol poisoning. Also, her dad was didn't want her to go to rehab, since he was financially benefiting from her success. Proving that the theme was not portrayed well enough, to understand that she believed that you should not let others make decisions for you, while that was exactly what she was letting her dad do for her.

“Rehab” is a critically acclaimed song that communicates the theme that you should not let others make decisions for you, through the use of repetition, rhyme, and symbolism. This is an important topic because people have to be responsible for their choices and their life. No one can live your life for you, so you have to make your own decisions and be ready for the consequences. When Amy made the choice not to go to rehab, she knew death could have been a consequence, even though she strongly believed that she would get better. Making your own decisions is relevant to today's youth because many teens are making life threatening choices due to peer pressure, such as smoking, doing drugs and drinking.

A similar theme can be heard in Eminem’s 2010 album “Recovery”. Eminem raps about his pill addiction that nearly killed him. Like Amy he admitted his problem and did what he thought was best for him. Which in his case, was to finding help. “Why do I act like I’m all high and mighty/ When inside I’m dying, I’m finally realizing I need help,”(“Recovery”9-10). This makes me wonder if Amy didn't die, would she have gotten help? We should live our lives to the fullest extent and make you own decisions, unless you are unfit to make healthy choices on your own. Live the life you want to live, not the one people tell you to live.