"Inaudible Melodies" by Jack Johnson

“Inaudible Melodies” by Jack Johnson is a song about growing up. The title is the first shocking thing that comes to mind. How can melodies be inaudible? It simply means that many people don’t realize their growing up until they are grown. In the chorus, Johnson says, “Slow down, everyone, you’re moving too fast, frames can’t catch you when you’re moving like that.” When he talks about frames, he means pictures of moments; and if one is moving too fast, or growing up to fast, then pictures will be scarce, and not many moments will be treasured in a photo. Throughout the song, he uses the same mellow tone evaluating the life of someone growing up too fast, and comparisons for those people.
Johnson mentions many things that contribute to a growing life. He starts with an anastrophe saying, “well shortcuts can slow you down and in the end we’re bound to rebound off of we.” In life, people take shortcuts, and because they are shorter, people slow down. Then in the end, they have to rebound off of what they have done. There is always a consequence for everything. He also says, “in the long run we have found, silent films are full of sound.” This is an analogy for saying as people grow up, things that didn’t seem to mean much when they were younger, have much more meaning. Towards the end of the song, Johnson mentions “Plato’s cave is full of freaks demanding refunds for the things they’ve seen, I wish they could believe in all the things that never made the screen.” He is referring to Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”. It’s about prisoners in a cave that only see the wall in front of them, then when let go, see this whole new world they never knew. Then they realize that they didn’t want to know all they’ve come to know because it’s a scary world out there. Johnson is simply saying that the world is full of people who don’t realize reality in life. He also contributes to this idea earlier in the song. He says, “Unobtrusive tones help to notice nothing but the zone of visual relevancy”. Unobtrusive means hardly noticed; and tone refers to emotions. So hardly noticed emotions contribute to a person’s focus on what they think truly matters. Overall, the message of the song is, again, to not grow up too fast and to take time exploring life and to take too many pictures; capture moments to treasure.