Samuel Timothy’s English Assignment

Meaning Through Music

“The A Team”
By Ed Sheeran
1. The social functions of the song are as follows :
- To entertain the listeners.
- To teach moral value through the lyrics of the song.
- To express Ed’s personal experience meeting someone named Angel.
- To be used as a media for language learning.

2. The language features of the song are as follows :

a. Lyrics :
White lips, pale face
Breathing in the snowflakes
Burnt lungs, sour taste
Light's gone, days end
Struggling to pay rent
Long nights, strange men
And they say
She's in the Class A Team
Stuck in her daydream
Been this way since 18
But lately, her face seems
Slowly sinking, wasting
Crumbling like pastries
And they scream
The worst things in life come free to us
'Cause we're just under the upper hand
And go mad for a couple grams
And she don't wanna go outside tonight
And in a pipe she flies to the motherland
Or sells love to another man
It's too cold outside
For angels to fly
Angels to fly
Ripped gloves, raincoat
Tried to swim, stay afloat
Dry house, wet clothes
Loose change, bank notes
Weary-eyed, dry throat
Call girl, no phone
And they say
She's in the Class A Team
Stuck in her daydream
Been this way since 18
But lately, her face seems
Slowly sinking, wasting
Crumbling like pastries
And they scream
The worst things in life come free to us
'Cause we're just under the upper hand
And go mad for a couple grams
But she don't wanna go outside tonight
And in a pipe she flies to the motherland
Sells love to another man
It's too cold outside
For angels to fly
An angel will die
Covered in white
Closed eyes and hopin' for a better life
This time, we'll fade out tonight
Straight down the line
And they say
She's in the Class A Team
Stuck in her daydream
Been this way since 18
But lately, her face seems
Slowly sinking, wasting
Crumbling like pastries
They scream
The worst things in life come free to us
And we're all under the upper hand
And go mad for a couple grams
And we don't wanna go outside tonight
And in the pipe, fly to the motherland
Or sell love to another man
It's too cold outside
For angels to fly
Angels to fly
 Fly, fly
For angels to fly, to fly, to fly
Angels to die

b. Imagery :
- White lips, pale face (Visual Imagery)
The sentence above is included as visual imagery because it is perceivable by
sight. The lyrics “White Lips, pale face” describes to the listeners that the girl in the song,
Angel, is sickly and has lost all color from her face.

- Breathing in the snowflakes

Burnt lungs, sour taste (Visual Imagery, Gustatory, and Organic Imagery)
The sentence above is included in both visual and organic imagery because it is
perceivable by sight, taste buds, and organs. The words “Breathing in the snowflakes”
shows the listeners about how Angel is sniffing coke, which is a very dangerous and
addictive drug. It is also followed by the lyrics “Burnt lungs, sour taste” which is the side
effects of using coke that can be felt with our taste buds and organs, hence the gustatory
and organic imagery, this also strengthens the reason why she is pale and sickly because
those two are also side effects of drug use.

-Light’s gone, days end (Visual Imagery)

The sentence above is included in visual imagery because it is perceivable by the
sense of sight. From the lyrics, we can say that Angel sleeps all day because of working
long nights and possibly until morning and then waking up at late in the evening or night
to repeat the same process again and again. This also explains why Angel is pale because
she rarely gets any light and sunshine on her.

- Struggling to pay rent

Long nights, strange men (Visual Imagery)
The sentence above is included in visual imagery because it is perceivable by
sight. Here the singer is trying to show the listeners that Angel is financially unstable
because she struggles to pay her rent and in order to get money to pay rent and fund her
daily needs she has to whore herself out to men in the night time.

- And they say

She's in the Class A Team (Auditory and Visual Imagery)
The sentence above is included in both visual and auditory because it can be
perceived by sight and hearing. “They” in this sentence is referring to the people around
her who is saying that she is in the “A Team”. The term “A Team” means a group of
people who are too far gone in their addiction to be saved, and cocaine is also a class A
drug, which supports the context.
 - Stuck in her daydream
The sentence above is included in visual imagery because it is perceivable by
sight but in this case, with imagination. Her daydream is the world she wants to live in
but knows she can't, so instead she spends her life high on cocaine so she can imagine it,
because truthfully a high is thrilling at first but after doing it repeatedly for so long it all
just wears off, and you wish you could go back.

- Been this way since 18 (Visual Imagery)

The sentence above is included in visual imagery because it is perceivable by
sight. The singer is saying that the first time she tried to use drugs was when she was
eighteen and she has been addicted to it ever since.

- But lately, her face seems

Slowly sinking, wasting
Crumbling like pastries (Visual Imagery)
The sentence above is included in visual imagery because it is perceivable by
sight, though the words used to describe her face are figurative and ambiguous. The
singer is telling us that lately she is not the same person she used to be. Her face, her
body, her life, it's all going downhill and because of that she may want it to end, and it
will, just not the way she wants. The “Crumbling like pastries” is the term the singer is
trying to use to describe her life, which is falling apart and crashing down on her.

- And they scream

The worst things in life come free to us (Auditory Imagery)
The sentence above is included in auditory imagery because it is perceivable by
hearing. The word “They” are referring to the people around her who are either
screaming or reacting to her state right now. The singer is also telling us that all of life’s
misfortunes are free compared to all of the beautiful things in life that we have to work
hard on, and for Angel to recover and live a normal life again is very hard and comes
with a very steep price of stop using drugs and leaving the “high” life behind.

c. Figure of speech/Figurative languages :

- ‘Cause we’re just under the upper hand
With the sentence above, the writer is trying to describe her attempt to get out of the
addiction, it’s like when you're trying to climb up a hill and every time you get close to
the top, you start to slide back down and fail.

- And go mad for a couple grams

But she don't wanna go outside tonight
The lyrics above explains that she will do anything to get high of the drugs again as a
way to escape reality, but she doesn’t want to sell her body tonight.
 - And in a pipe she flies to the motherland
This sentence explains that she is managed to get a hold of drugs again and after
smoking/using it she manages to get to her fantasy world where everything is fine.

- Tried to swim, stay afloat

This explains Angel’s feelings. When she has already cried so much because she doesn’t
know who she is anymore and she does the best she can to stay on top, but she still feels
like she is drowning in her own terrors and traumas.

- Dry house, wet clothes

This is the singer’s way of explaining that it’s not the world who’s the problem, but
rather because of Angel’s choices that brought her into ruin.

- Loose change, bank notes

This implies that every time Angel tries to make the money she needs to fulfil her daily
needs, sometimes she just makes just enough to get by, but most of the time she doesn't
quite make enough.

- Angels to die
The singer explains a tragic ending to Angels life because of her addictions were killing
her from the start and she failed to get out of it.

3. The Moral of The Song :

The message here is obviously about addiction, but the meaning I get out of it is so much
more than that. There's a likelihood that I'm merely over-analyzing, but I feel like the song
represents how easily we get addicted to things and how easily we get stuck in our
addictions. She's trapped in a life she doesn't want, doing things to get what she needs to "get
out". She is unable to "get out" through means other than drugs, or perhaps that's the way she
sees it. I feel as though drug abuse is one of the lesser evils in this song, so to speak. It's a
song about her suffering and how she can't escape it, and how she tries to find means to do it
through her addiction, something that is so sad.

My favorite lines in this are the main chorus. "'The worst things in life come free to use,
“'Cause we're just under the upperhand." I noted Ed's usage of the word "us" in this sentence.
Not "her". This is not just a story about her. While the main note of it is drug abuse, yes, to
me it symbolizes more. It is so easy to suffer. The worst things are free in life; the emotional
anguish, the physical anguish, the addictions, the needs, the dead ends. We're all under the
upper hand. For example, not only the poor in comparison to the rich, but the rich as well. I
(as stated previously) am probably over-analyzing, but the ‘upper-hand’ to me is the things
we want and dream about. We all end up falling short of our idealistic desires. We're slowly
sinking, wasting". The drugs in this are the personal story of an addict, but they can also
represent how everyone in life has something that drags them down and keeps them from
"flying" so to speak.