Miles Heltzer

  

Volume 9 | Issue IV | December 2025

Latin School of Chicago ’26

Illinois, United States

  

While I am not a musician, my appreciation for music runs deep. It is easy to dismiss music as simply a form of entertainment; however, music serves a critical role in society—it heals, unites, and transforms. Music fills stadiums, broadens viewpoints, and inspires revolutions. My musical preferences have evolved over the years, from classic rock to rap to alternative sounds, yet my desire to understand music’s transformative powers has remained steadfast. During my sophomore year, I analyzed all 16 tracks of Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly. I wrote about the interplay between Lamar’s lyrics and rhythms, studied how music shapes public discourse (and vice versa), and explored the intention of Lamar’s choices in arranging the order of the album’s tracklist. My To Pimp a Butterfly study solidified my interest in musicology and sharpened my analytical and writing skills beyond traditional classroom instruction. I wanted to continue exploring lyrical analysis during my junior year, so I carefully curated a playlist with a wide variety of artists representing my updated taste in music and began conducting in-depth textual analyses of each song. My publication in The Schola consists of my four favorite lyrical interpretations from my junior year study, chosen across four different decades and genres to highlight the ability of lyrics to be classified as poetry across time and style.