Lyrics Analysis

Lyrics to Love & War - Rita Ora ft J.Cole:

"It's something 'bout you I can’t explain
You give me love and take it away
I see you like this game that we play
And yo this fighting sh-t is getting too old
And you gon' find yourself left out in the cold
It’s time to straighten up or you can move on on on on yeah

Yeah, something crazy about the way we love to hate each other
I don't wanna fight anymore
Every day we fighting like the navy baby
Maybe we could save each other
I don't wanna fight anymore
You go off, I go off
And you mad over nothing
I don't wanna fight anymore
Can't we just make love and not war

Baby there’s something about you
You go that good sh-t I don’t wanna give up
It’s too good to give it away
Yeah I’m feeling we’re just coming too close
Who’s wrong or right this is outta control
I’m not perfect but I’m tired of this bullshit
Let's move on

Yeah, there's something crazy about the way we love to hate each other
I don't wanna fight anymore
Every day we fighting like the navy baby
Maybe we could save each other
I don't wanna fight anymore
You go off, I go off
And you mad over nothing
I don't wanna fight anymore
Can't we just make love and not war

White flag (ahhh), white flag (ahhh)
White flag, (ahh), white flag

Anymore, anymore, anymore, anymore
I don't wanna fight anymore
Anymore, anymore, anymore, anymore
And I don't wanna fight anymore

Yeah, there's something crazy about the way we love to hate each other
I don't wanna fight anymore
Every day we fighting like the navy baby
Maybe we could save each other
I don't wanna fight anymore
You go off, I go off
And you mad over nothing
I don't wanna fight anymore
Can we just make love and not war

Yeah, there's something crazy about the way we love to hate each other
I don't wanna fight anymore
Every day we fighting like the navy baby
Maybe we could save each other
I don't wanna fight anymore
You go off, I go off
And you mad over nothing
I don't wanna fight anymore
Can we just make love and not war"

From these lyrics, we can see that this song overall has a quite strong mood and sense of anger and heartbreak to it, maybe the artist wrote the song as revenge from a real experience of a past relationship like this; or maybe it was just written as a catchy song that would be easy to memorise and would hopefully make it into the charts. The representation of Rita Ora as an artist from these lyrics is that she is quite a strong woman and will stand up for herself. The lyrics include strong representational images such as simile 'the navy' which represents the 'war' that is happening in this relationship. There are also sexual connotations such as 'make love' which shows that the lyrics are written describing a relationship in which the couple might love and hate each other at the same time. These lyrics could be quite relatable to the young target audience that the song is aimed at, as young couples in relationships could relate to the message that the song is based around. The second artist that features in this song, J.Cole, is also represented as somebody who could be quite relatable to a target audience; he could be relatable to male fans and Rita Ora could be relatable to female fans. Although, he isn't represented as a very strong masculine figure like he is in his own music, as he sings phrases such as 'white flag' which show he is surrendering to problems in the 'relationship'. Overall, the mood to this song is quite argumentative and shows Rita Ora as a strong female figure.