Ain T No Rest For The Wicked: Song Analysis

1266 Words3 Pages

In today’s age, many artists incorporate topics or issues going on in the world in either a straight forward or subliminal way in their songs. Cage the elephant an American rock band from Kentucky released a popular song in 2008 called “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked”. This song covers the topic of questioning why people commit crimes. Throughout this whole song, the singer comes across criminals and questions their motives. For this assignment we are asked to apply one of five criminological theories to the given song. The theory I will be choosing to apply to this song will be the neutralization theory. With this theory I will be applying the techniques of neutralization. I will apply this theory to three criminal acts described in the song; …show more content…

Most offenders deflect the blame for their criminal behavior on the outside forces, circumstances and other people; they do not take account for themselves. The second technique is denial of injury. With this technique offenders underestimate the harm caused by criminal behavior; most see their behavior as harmless fun or feel that it won’t affect people as bad. The third technique is denial victim. Here offenders deflect the blame for their criminal behavior on the victim; they believe the victim deserves it, that the victim was careless. The fourth technique being condemnation of the condemners. With this one, offenders move the focus away from criminal behavior and question the motives of those who disapprove of it; in which they believe the people disapproving are the problem, not them. One may have the views of “Everyone being dirty”, the police are the worst, and virtuous people are hiding something. Lastly the fourth technique, appeal to higher loyalties. An offender will deflect the blame for criminal behavior by claiming loyalty to a perceived higher goal. Some examples where some may claim loyalty to are gangs, honor and religion. With each technique now being described, I will explain how the theory applies to the lyrics in the …show more content…

For this section of the song, the singer did not come face to face with the offender, rather he saw it through the television. The technique I feel applies to this scenario would be number five, appeal to higher beliefs. Perhaps, religion played a key role into why the preacher ma did what he did. He could have had the sense that God, told him it would be okay or that he needs to do so. It is not yet clear since the man did not give his own justification as to why he did so, but the singer makes it clear that he like the rest must survive and in order to do so he had to steal money from the

Open Document