He's a Pirate

Welcome back to Tea with Liya! Today's song is "He's a Pirate," the theme song of the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean." It was composed by Klaus Badelt and Hans Zimmer. The song has now become more popular than the movie itself, much like quotes we might know from books or even a classical song I posted a few weeks ago. I hope you like listening to it!


Listen to the song here
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I have to make sure I don't run out of time to write posts before Monday comes, so that you always have a teapot to reach for. If I'm getting behind on writing them, you might drink all your tea before I have a chance to pour some more.

It's quite possible that you've heard about this song without ever having watched Pirates of the Caribbean. Maybe it came up in a playlist of songs you were listening to, or you were sitting beside someone who was always looking it up. The thing is that by hearing the song in this way, you know nothing about the context - in fact, you might not even know the title. 

That happened to a jazz song I recently listened to. I recognized the title and recognized the melody, but I didn't know they went together. I had just heard the melody being played and seen it being written at random times. 

If you don't know the context, you might have no idea what a song actually represents. A quote could also be taken out of a book in such a way that its meaning doesn't actually represent the content of the book. Without reading the book, you don't understand the reason why that sentence was put there.

If I had hidden a word in this jumble of letters, you wouldn't know it was there just by looking at each letter or maybe five at a time. You'd have to look across the whole pile.

With that misunderstanding, you might come to conclusions about the sentence that aren't actually true, especially if there's a word that could have multiple meanings.

If you're playing a song, it might have lyrics that provide some information about it that the title doesn't. For example, if the song's called "Autumn Leaves," it could be talking about jumping in piles of leaves, or it could connect the leaves with cold and death. That would change the way that you could play the song. So, musicians would recommend learning the lyrics of the song even if you're not going to sing it.

Of course, you don't have to know the context to be able to listen to a song. It's a bit like drinking tea without knowing what leaves it was made from. You can still drink it, but you wouldn't know how to find a similar cup or how to describe it. So, if you know a bit about the origins of the song, then that's better.

Keep filling your teacup with music (and take a look at the leaves, too)!
~Liya