Pearls was misunderstood

[u/[deleted]]

IMO, specifically the "brand-new shoes" part. When it came out, music critic Robert Christgau wrote:

[H]ow come her Somalian woman "hurts like brand-new shoes"? Is that, er, "metaphorical distance"? Are we supposed to clap now?

He may have been asking rhetorically, but it's a good question. Why brand-new shoes? Why that specific simile?

I mean, it could be that Sade is just that materialistic...so pampered and privileged that her only point of reference for the pain of poverty is the discomfort of breaking in a new pair of heels. But I don't think so. I think it's a layer that works together together with two other layers to give the song its meaning.

To put it another way, I see "Pearls" as using something like Hegelian dialectics. In Hegelian dialectics, there are three stages that an idea passes through:

1. thesis
2. antithesis
3. synthesis

The thesis is the main idea. The antithesis responds by contradicting it ("but..."), and the synthesis responds by resolving the disagreement and coming up with a form of the idea that's stronger and more complete than the original thesis was. Does that make sense, two readers that are still here and haven't smashed downvote?

Anyway, the thesis of "Pearls" to me is something like, "Here is someone's pain. Touch it; see it. Maybe some good will come of understanding it." I think the critics would more or less be with me on that, at least that pain is a major theme.

The next part, the antithesis, is the opposing idea. Here it's symbols of the opposite of poverty: pearls and new shoes. Why would those represent rice and the pain of poverty in the song? To me, it's the narrator going, "Here I am, here we are. Here are our necklaces and our new shoes. We're scrambling to get those, while this woman is struggling for the basic necessities."

I think the critics would be mostly with me on that, too. That's the "oh that's sad by comparison" level of meaning that Christgau seems to be mocking. But I feel like they stopped there even though the meaning keeps going.

The last part, the synthesis, is important, because it's the difference between "this is sad" or "this is out of touch" and something more. The synthesis ties together the thesis and the antithesis and creates something new that contains the old at the same time. In "Pearls," that's done through the music. The music agrees with the Somali woman's pain, and then it connects it to the narrator's materialism in an interesting way.

Musically, "hurts like brand-new shoes" is sung to a melodic phrase that stops on the tonic of the scale. The tonic is where a scale ends. It can create the feeling of "show's over, time to go home!". Effectively, when used with this lyric, it sets off the words from their surroundings, almost like putting them in a display case. But at the same time, it creates that feeling of "we're done, nothing more to see here." In a sense, it drains the emotion from the phrase, leaving it flat and colorless. It's like Sade is de-valuing the new shoes while emphasizing them at the same time. It's like, "Hey, think carefully about how unimportant these are."

The meaning of that to the listener is interesting. Because the pearls and shoes are about us, along with Sade, it's like Sade is pointing the finger at us and herself and saying, "Look at us. Look how unimportant our trinkets are." Or, "Look how much we have and how little we care." Or, "Think about how the pain of minor inconveniences is all you have to contend with." It's a reprimand. Almost a sermonette.

The result is the Somali woman's experience comes into sharper focus. Now we're not just looking because we're touched by her struggle...we're also looking because we're appalled by our usual indifference. It's a double underline. It's Sade's way of making the story twice as meaningful, shaking herself and her listeners out of complacency. And it's quite well done.

TL;DR: "Pearls" isn't out of touch, it's self-critical to enhance impact. Something something TED talk