Same Love
Mackelmore and Ryan Lewis
Song lyrics - Written text
13th September , 2020

The song “Same Love’ , is a text brought to life by Mackelmore and Ryan Lewis who aim to dismantle the homophobic prejudice that society holds. Themselves, although not apart of the LGBTQ+ community use their platform to show support and try to raise awareness to the equality that is just not there. In a society filled with derogatory slurs that roll off of adults, teenagers and even children’s tounges without a second thought, a song like this is a powerful way of getting a very large audience to listen and reflect.

The song released in 2012 is apart of the famous rapper Mackelmore’s album. The fact that this song was written by Mackelmore and his partner, a rapper, made it interesting at the time as the world’s media was and is so heavily filled with messages the exact opposite of this. As part of the hip-hop genre, this song was a breath of fresh air as generally this variety of music was splashed with homophobic lyrics and slurs or was just completely ignored, as in the song Macklemore raps,” If I was gay I would think Hip-hop hates me, Have you read the Youtube comments lately? “Man that’s gay” gets dropped on the daily,”. However not nearly as accepted now on such large platforms, it doesn’t change the reality that behind the scenes of these artists, politicians, adults, kids, homophobic slurs and prejudices still exist in everyday life so casually. In fact, people say it so often that when people call out others for saying “that’s so gay” or “You fag”, they are labelled sensitive, uptight, lame, which is what happens in my own school. Fortunately, I am not afraid to call someone out because I am confident and secure enough within myself that my ego won’t be too hurt if the sixteen year old boy with a mullet thinks I am lame however this isn’t the case for so many kids who are super impressionable, socially anxious or such and are afraid of what people might think of them, and that they too could be labelled ‘gay’ for defending the word. The prejudice that comes with the word ‘gay’ is so majoritively negative that it actually frightens me because I couldn’t even imagine how it would feel for a word that was a huge part of me to be so shamefully said. The lyrics ” ‘Gay’ is synonymous with the lesser,” only further develops this idea that the prejudice people hold of the word and what it means is cruel and demeaning to the point where they are considered less of a human because of it.

The song delves in the the prejudice that comes with being a homosexual. Society and the media portrays such a strong image of what it means to be ‘gay’ that children, who are growing up and learning the ways of life, are taught to define themselves by stereotypes rather than what they actually are. “When I was in the third grade, I thought that I was gay, Cause I could draw, my uncle was, and I kept my room straight,” this is the effect of the prejudice installed in minds from a super young age, that they have a pre-conceived idea of what being ‘gay’ actually means and to society it is being ‘feminine, crafty, clean’ ‘obviously’ all the ‘worst’ traits of a human. So obviously wrong to myself yet apparently not to the vast amounts of society, when upon thinking he (Mackelmore) could be gay ,” I told my mom, tears rushing down my face,” ,I thought that it was sad enough the prejudice of being ‘gay’ yet even sadder that it is so abused that the idea of being ‘gay’ brings people to tears.

Another important part of the song is the factuality that you really are who you are and you cannot change yourself no matter how much society deems you ‘wrong’. As a society we fill the word ‘gay’ with so much hate that people are ashamed to be who they are and convince themselves they aren’t worth it or they need to ‘change’, all in hopes of pleasing a never-satisfied crowd. The prejudice that to be gay is to be wrong and need ‘fixing’ is a outdated thing of the past right? I mean most states and most people accept gays, but most isn’t good enough when being brought up in a society that declares it illegal to marry the person you love because they are the same gender and to only in the recent couple years have this law lifted. Because saying there’s no law saying stopping people from being gay therefore its ‘okay’ now is so naive to me as this is exactly what happened in America when slavery was ‘abolished’ in 1865 yet we all know the truth is that this stopped barely any actual discrimination. Hate, judgment, bias that people apart of this community face is so cruel that it makes me confused how people can still preach ” And you can be cured with some treatment and religion, Man-made, rewiring of pre-disposition,” because do they really think that in the place we live today if they wouldn’t change they would? As sad and horrible as it sounds to admit, it is the result of the prejudice society holds who are not willing to realise and see with clear eyes that “I can’t change, even if I tried, Even if I wanted to,” as said in the song and I thought these lyrics were really important because of the truth they hold.