The year is 2001. I am 7-years-old in the back seat of the car with my personal CD player in hand and oversized headphones on. My family is on the move from St. Louis, Missouri to Richmond, Virginia. I had just received the funky blue and silver RCA CD player for my birthday and the only incentive the dreadful ten hour drive offered was the opportunity to play the new Train album on repeat until I learned every lyric of each song. I vividly remember playing track three an estimated fifty times in a row; It was top 5 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart and Grammy-award winning, “Drops of Jupiter.”
The piano moved me, and the lyrics perplexed me. When I listened to it, I was brought to a different scene. I became the protagonist of the song—the dreamer, the traveler, the free spirit. I fantasized an exhilarating and breathtaking journey. I pictured myself going places, traveling the world, partaking in intoxicating adventures, and falling in love.
Harmonically, the song is piano based and the chords are triads. The melody is uniquely constructed with long lines in the verse contrasting with shorter phrases in the chorus. The splendid orchestral backdrop along with the lead singer’s passionate vocal shimmering gives the song a lot of personality. The song starts out with the piano at a slower tempo. As the lead singer’s voice builds to the chorus, the pianist becomes more enthusiastic, changing chords and playing at a faster tempo. The build up to the chorus exudes passion. At age seven, before taking lessons or discovering how to read musical notes, I learned how to play “Drops of Jupiter” on the piano by ear. The piano part intrigued me, but the lyrics were even more magical. I noted the song’s mystified musical genius and deemed it poetry in motion.
Interestingly, the song lyrics are written similar to a stream of consciousness about a girl that the singer is infatuated and maybe even in love with. The girl appears to be coming back from a “soul vacation”—a wondrous journey that she embarked on in order to find herself. There are both surreal and real aspects of the song. Abstractly, the singer informs us that the girl explores a different atmosphere—drifting along the Milky Way, visiting the moon and sun, “tracing her way through the constellations”, and retreating to earth with “drops of Jupiter in her hair.” Her journey is also a spiritual one. The singer questions if she found that “heaven is overrated.” On the other hand, the lyrics are realistic when the singer recounts a “first dance,” “deep-fried chicken,” “five hour phone conversation,” and “the best soy latte that you ever had.”
The protagonist is described as a blissful, open-minded, and ambitious individual: “she acts like summer and walks like rain”, “she listens like spring and she talks like June.” It appears the singer thinks of her in radiant light as a free spirit. By contrast, he describes himself as grounded and stationary as he fears that she thinks of him as a “plain ol’ Jane” that was “too afraid to fly.” Yet, her luminous disposition reminds him “that there’s time to change” and “room to grow.”
It’s quite clear that the singer doesn’t want the girl to depart, and he can only view her spectacular expedition from the outside, but he knows that she was born to fly and that he must let her go. When she’s gone, he wonders if she has found everything she “wanted to find,” if she missed him, and if she was ever “lonely” looking for herself “out there.” To me, this song exemplifies the purest form of love—whether from a friend, a relative, or a lover’s perspective; the singer only wants the girl to be happy and free.
When I was seven, this song was very special to me. I was the excursionist. I was the adventurous girl in the song. I was sad to leave my old friends and scared to start over in a new town, but this song brought me hope for the future. I envisioned the move as a new and fascinating adventure.
To this day, “Drops of Jupiter” remains the single most meaningful song to my life. It never gets old and it’s the first song I play when I come home from college to a dusty piano. I still fully relate to the protagonist of this song in terms of wanderlust. It’s difficult for me to stay in one place for too long. I yearn to see the world and experience every avenue of life. I consider myself a free spirit-- I look upon every unfamiliar undertaking as a journey--a chance to meet new friends, a way to improve myself, and an opportunity to leave a positive impact on others.
An applicable modern event in my life was my decision to go abroad in the fall of 2015. I will be participating in Semester at Sea, visiting 11 different countries around the world. This type of venture has been my dream for years as a pilgrim at heart. My age seven fantasy is coming true, and I’m more than excited for the adventures to come. I see myself laughing in the sunshine, dancing in the rain, gaining special friendships, and making a difference in lives of others. I’m eager to share stories of my upcoming travels with loved ones as I return. I’m still in search of the “chance to dance along the light of day.” I’m still “looking for myself out there.” “Drops of Jupiter” is, and always will be, so meaningful to me because I am the protagonist.
