2019Released
4:02

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Interesting facts and trivia about Wild Roses. By Songfacts®.

"Wild Roses" finds Of Monsters co-vocalist Nanna Hilmarsdóttir singing of painful circumstances. She sees the titular wild rose as a way of helping her deal with the sadness. Oh, roses, they don't mean a thing, you don't understand But why don't we full on pretend?

In Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet, the Bard used a rose as a symbol of a detachment between name and object. In Act II, Scene 2 Juliet asserts: That which we call a rose, By any other word would smell as sweet The name is of little consequence; it does not affect the inherent qualities of the object. Though Hilmarsdóttir is yearning to be free from her painful reality, the singer acknowledges she has to go through the tribulations of slow healing. She explained to Billboard: "It's a sad song that talks about feeling a lot of things and not really knowing what to do with them but not avoiding them either. Just kind of leaning into your sadness."

The song was inspired by mythologist Joseph Campbell, who developed a concept of "the hero's journey" - the story of the archetypical hero who, through great suffering, achieves a heightened sense of being. In 1988, PBS broadcast a series of six documentaries, Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, which were conversations between the mythologist and journalist Bill Moyers. A companion book for the series, The Power of Myth, was published at the same time. A serpent on a bed of leaves in the month of May What do you want me to say? Hilmarsdóttir explained to Billboard: "I was also very inspired by Joseph Campbell, who wrote The Power of Myths. There's this one story that talks about how you have to participate in life to say yes to the serpent - that's why I'm always talking about a serpent - which means going on this journey without knowing where it's going to lead. It might be a horrible journey, but you do it anyways because it's better than saying no and not living. That's where the inspiration from that song comes from."

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Song Analysis

Key, BPM (tempo) and time signature of Wild Roses.
F♯Key
MinorMode
4/4Time Signature
116BPM

Album

The album Wild Roses is released on.

Released By

The record label that has released Wild Roses.
Republic Records
© 2019 SKRIMSL ehf, under exclusive license to Republic Records, a division of UMG Recordings, Inc.
℗ 2019 SKRIMSL ehf, under exclusive license to Republic Records, a division of UMG Recordings, Inc.

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