English Task | All You Need To Know About Allusion - A Brief Explanation, Examples in Songs, etc.

Allusion in general :

Allusion is a brief and indirect reference to a person, place, thing, or the idea of historical, cultural, literary or political substance. It doesn't express the person or the thing which it refers in particular. It is just a passing comment that has relation to what the writer refers to and the writer expects the reader to possess enough knowledge to spot the allusion and grasp its importance in a text.

There are 4 types of Allusion :

• Religion
• Pop Culture
• Literature
• Mythology

Example in songs :

There are couple of songs that have Allusion to make the connoisseurs can understand the substance of the text better, some might have language that's not nice. Therefore, I'm deeply sorry for those songs that I've attached.

     1. Eminem – Rap God

The lyric that I quote in this song :

“You’re pointless as Rapunzel with fuckin’ cornrows”

Before we dive deep down into the allusion and it’s meaning I want to say sorry for the language that was used in that line. Unfortunately enough it is the only allusion that I have found in this song.

This line refers to Rapunzel which is a fairy tale (and also a character) where there’s a princess who has a very long hair thus a prince can climb up her hair to save her and then marry her. As for the cornrows part it is a hairstyle that’s usually towards short styled hair, and if we combine between Rapunzel and the cornrows hairstyle it would undermine the key characteristic of the character Rapunzel itself (which is that long hair).

Here he points out how useless of a person that he’s quipping and analogize it with Rapunzel combined with cornrows.

2. Cuco – Lover Is a Day

   

      The lyric that I quote in this song :

“At light speed like the Falcon from the original Star Wars trilogy”

The Falcon refers to the Millenium Falcon space ship that had a hyperdrive engine among the fastest in the whole universe. This ship has gone through many battles and destroys many ships as in the famous ‘Kessel Run’ it is used to cut the route in half on Maw Black Hole.

In this line, the term “Falcon” is used to depict how fast the information that was received from the girl that he liked, and also it could portray that his feelings for the girl and the ‘information’ she was giving was also bringing him extremely close to annihilation despite he liked it so much. 

3. Drake - God's Plan

The lyric that I quote in this song :

"    "I've been me since Scarlett Road, ayy, road, ayy"

     Scarlett Road is one of Drake's memorable childhood place back then, it was one of his starting points in life. In this line, it is used as a timestamp that refers to back when drake's young. This specific line tells us that over time with increasing fame and money that he has. It doesn't change who he really is in the first place, he's still the same person as he was when he lived on Scarlett Road. Even though it refers to something that maybe some of you don't recognize, but a lot of people especially Drake and his fans notices.

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