Romantic experience always evokes strong emotions and empowers desire to express these feelings in some way. Most often, love is embodied in the works of art; people who have fallen in love paint pictures, write poems and create songs about love. From all kinds of art, music impacts the perception of a person most directly; it reflects a person’s feelings and worries as well as his emotional world. The songs demonstrate human hopes and dreams, their customs, beliefs, and desire for a better future. The song See You Again written by American artist Wiz Khalifa demonstrates to listeners the power of love and friendship that is stronger than death and makes one appreciate life and enjoy every moment they have right now.

The History of Writing a Song

In the lead-up to the world premiere of the film Furious Seven, American rapper and songwriter Cameron Jibril Thomaz also known as Wiz Khalifa featuring singer Charlie Puth released a music video. The song titled See You Again was chosen not by chance, because it was the main soundtrack to the movie Furious 7. The video clip See You Again was dedicated to one of the chief actors of all parts of this movie, Paul Walker, who died in a car crash on November 30, 2013. The clip also contains a montage of the scenes with Paul Walker from all parts of the movie Fast & Furious. At the end of the clip, the inscription “For Paul” appears on the screen. The song made its debut at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and ranked high in many other charts (Trust 2015).

The Key Message of the Song

The song See You Again does not tell the story about the love we used to hear in the romantic works. This story is about the power of friendship that is much stronger than death. The creators of the song expressed their respect and gratitude for the friendship with Paul Walker through their lyrics. They said that this actor was a great friend and they had come through a lot together before a tragedy happened. Despite all obstacles and difficulties on the way, they succeeded together because of their friendship and support. Friends never had any miscommunication or secrets. Having experienced so many good things together, they lost each other, but the authors of the songs promised Paul to preserve their friendship, to meet in another world and tell everything to each other.

The key message of this song is that friendship is not just a relationship between people, but the Lord’s blessing that is not being destined to everyone. Those people, who have best friends, should all be grateful for these truly precious moments in their life, and those who do not, should make every effort to find them. By entering into friendly relations with another person, we learn to keep fidelity to the given words, end selfishness, open our hearts to sufferings of others and enjoy someone else’s happiness. So we become better, cleaner, kinder, and when trouble comes, we have no need to be afraid because our friendship is stronger than anything in the world.

The song also refers to the theme of family. Family is equally an important area in human life as friendship. The musicians are singing “How could we not talk about family when the family’s all that we got?’ (Franks et al. 2014). That means that no matter what family is, even if it is just people from one set of a cinema company, they will always be around forever. People say that friends are the family which we can choose and that is a very equitable expression. If friends spend a lot of time together, they have something to talk about, they can help with advice to each other, to support, to listen and just to have fun, then it is safe to assume that such friends are the family. The authors of the song wanted to convey all the feelings they experienced when they lost their best friend. Musicians are singing that every time they can see the stars, they know that this is the way that belongs to their friend.

How That Message Is Communicated

The authors of the song See You Again have been working for a long period to create it and used various music techniques to express their feelings more accurately. First of all, musicians poured their souls into lyrics which are not a set of meaningless words, but one of the foundations of the song that express the feelings and emotions of singers. Having experienced their grief, the authors had an inspiration to write a truly good, strong, and deep song that has touched many souls. In addition to the semantic component, there is a melodic motive in the song’s words. Beautiful and sad piano melody from the first seconds of the song reflects the emotional state of the characters and the pain of their loss. The voice of Charlie Put was chosen for this song because of his emotional experience that was similar to the lyrics. The voice of the singer and a melody become one and the same, they merge together and sound in unison. This melody complements, embellishes, and enhances the emotional voice of the singer.

The reasons for the success of the song See You Again were deep, soulful music and lyrics that were written by talented authors in moments of inspiration, not by order of the producer. The musicians must not only sing a song that sounds well, but primarily to experience, to put their souls, to convey their feelings, experiences, and emotions with the voice. The melodiousness of the lyrics, its semantic component, a melody that harmonizes with the singers and the heart that was put in this song are the elements that have forced millions of people to understand and love it. The story displayed in the video clip is also especially symbolic. At the end of the video, the main characters begin their last friendly race. They move on equal terms, but soon they go in different directions. It means the end of the road for one of them, and his white car disappears on the horizon, where we will never see him again.

Is That Message Helpful for Audience?

After watching a video for the song See You Again it makes listeners think about how valuable are the minutes that give us the joy of communication. Despite today's hectic lifestyle, everyone needs to take pause and think about the most important thing that we have, about time. Many people care about having money as the most important thing in life. If a person who possesses wealth loses it, he can easily return his capital working hard and having specialized skills. However, if that successful and rich person loses time, he will not be able to bring it back. In the first place, we need to appreciate our life and the time that we often spend on things we do not need. Also, everyone should think not only about themselves, but their family, children, parents, relatives, and friends. What are the people we should fear the most about, to tell them all that we have always wanted to say, not to hide our thoughts, not to hurt them, because any moment can be their last? The song See You Again helps everyone to stop for one second and think that their life should be valued because they only have one.

Conclusion

In today’s world, the song modern industry requires a huge number of daily new song lyrics and creates primitive and boilerplate songs that evaporate before they begin. Sometimes we remember songs which were written over half a century ago and forget the ones that were released very recently. The song of American musical artist Wiz Khalifa See You Again is one of those that we will remember for a long time because it conveys a sense of intense emotions and the pain of the loss of talented actor and the most famous racing driver of cinema, Paul Walker, who died in a car crash that was a real tragedy not only for his fans but also for all the people who knew him. The song teaches us to cherish our loved ones, appreciate life and enjoy its every moment.