Angry All the Time

In Tim McGraw’s song, Angry All the Time, there is a conflict between a husband’s feelings and his job as a husband. Throughout the song the husband is forcefully speaking to his wife. The husband is torn between staying with her, and his feelings about doing what is best for him. The husband is tired of the difficulty of their relationship. He is feeling as though he must get out of the marriage in order to carry on. However, the conflict that is stopping the husband from leaving his wife is that he had always promised his wife he would never leave. Now their lives are changing as their sons have grown up, they have entered midlife, and the husband is now feeling as if he has lost the woman he feel in love with. The husband believes that his wife has been taken over by the hardships that surround their life and their marriage. Those difficulties have turned her into an unhappy woman who is angry all the time although she is not the only one with problems surrounding her. He states this in the chorus of the song, “You ain't the only one who feels like this world left you far behind/ I don't know why you gotta be Angry All The Time”. The husband chooses his feelings over his job to stand by his wife as he decides to leave her. He demonstrates in the song that he leaves her by saying, “Twenty years have came and went since I walked out of your door”. The husband also states that he himself has never gone back to his original self since being without her but he knows he made the right choice of leaving her because he could not live without the real her he feel in love with.

The author of this song uses a method to explain the opinion about divorce. The author displays this song of a difficult time when a marriage is falling apart as an example of when divorce tends to be necessary. This song shows an instance of how through difficult situations in a marriage, divorce can be uncontrollable. Divorce can be necessary for a person if it is the only way for a person to become the least bit happy again. Bruce Robison, the songwriter of “Angry all the Time”, starts by stating the situation the husband is stuck in. The author then continues to a time years after the husband has divorced his wife, to relieve himself of his troubles, to show the husband’s remarks on his action earlier in life.

Robinson portrays the message very clearly throughout the song. In the lines, “I got to get away” and then again, “Twenty years have came and went since I walked out of your door”, it is known by the listener that the husband leaves his wife. Although the message is not an uplifting one, it’s a problem that a lot of Americans are dealing with right now and something that needs to be discussed, and is done well throughout the song. However, the song does become confusing when the husband thinks back after he has left his wife. The husband says the line, “And God it hurts me to think of you/ For the light in your eyes was gone sometimes/ I don't know why this old world can't leave well enough alone”. These lines in the song make you wonder that even after he left her if there were still problems. He is asking why they cannot be left alone but he has already left her trying to escape the problems surrounding their lives. In these lines of the song it makes you wonder than if he still has those same problems was divorce truly necessary.

“Angry All the Time” is a song that many listeners can relate to because the author, Robinson, does an effective job of displaying his message about divorce. People can relate to this song over broken relationships rather than just marriages. It communicates to not only to the ones going through the hardship of failed relationships but also the ones affected by them such as children. The people going through the heartbreak of divorce or broken relationships know that people tend to grow apart and divorce can be unavoidable. Robinson does an effective job of displaying his message about divorce being unavoidable at points in the song by having the lines, “The reasons that I can't stay don't have a thing to do with being in love”. He also does a great job of connecting to the listeners of the song by saying the lines, “I remember every time I said I'd never leave/ What I can't live with is memories of the way you used to be”. These two lines connect to listeners because no one ever hopes for divorce. There have always been promises made between couples that have split that had been about always staying together and being there for each other through the hardest parts in life. The main message of this song is that divorce can come because of outside factors. It does not always have to be viewed as a bad thing if it is helping a person because a better person.