Four, Five Seconds - Bridge and Verse 3

Hello and welcome to Learning English with Lyrics, the podcast where we breakdown the lyrics of English language songs to help you improve your English! I am your host Jake, and today we are going be diving into the bridge and final verse of the song "Four, Five Seconds" by Rihanna, Kanye West, and Paul McCartney. If you haven't heard the first few episodes in this series, I'd recommend starting with the first one and listening from there. If this is your first time joining us on this podcast altogether, I'd suggest starting on the episode titled "Introduction". Alright, let's go!

This portion of the song is a little bit odd don't you think? It doesn't match the flow or rhyme scheme of the verses, but it doesn't sound like the chorus either. What is it? In English, we call this a "bridge", because it acts like a "bridge" between the verses and the chorus. Let's jump right in.

! "And I know that you're up tonight thinking "How could I be so selfish"?

This first line is pretty straightforward, with no grammar to correct. Our singer is saying that she knows that somebody is "up" tonight, thinking to themselves that they were being very selfish. What does it mean that this person is "up"? If somebody is "up" at night it means that they are awake when the average person is sleeping. If you text somebody late at night, you might start the text with "Are you up?". This means the same thing as "Are you awake?". Obviously you'd never say something like this in the middle of the day, but early in the morning or late at night it can be appropriate.

In the case of our song, it is implied that this person is being "kept up" by their thoughts. To be "kept up" means that you WANT to be asleep or maybe even you NEED to be asleep, but something is stopping you from sleeping. You can be "kept up" by stressful thoughts, a sick child, loud neighbors, or just about that stops you from being able to sleep.

When you are you "kept" up or "kept" awake, that means you were already awake, and you continue to be awake. You can think of this in terms of support. A wooden beam or pillar keeps a building up, or in other words, keeps it from falling down. It maintains its current state.

You can also be kept "from" something. This is the same idea. You don't have the thing, and something or someone is "keeping" you "from" getting or obtaining it. If two siblings are fighting you might "keep them apart" which means that you are "keeping them FROM each other". To be "kept alive" means that you are being "kept FROM death'. And of course, being "kept up" means that you are "kept FROM sleep".

Does this make sense? Can you come up with some other similar examples?

So we understand that this other person is being "kept up" BY their thoughts about how selfish they are.

The next line says "But you called about a thousand times, wondering where I've been". The word "but" here indicates that our singer disagrees with something she just said. She is telling us why she doesn't think something that was said is true, or to say it another way, she is giving us evidence to the contrary.


She has already said that she knows that this other person is not able to sleep, thinking about how selfish they are. So we know that's not the part she is disagreeing with. We can only assume she is giving us evidence that although this other person is acting regretful, or acting sorry about their selfishness, they aren't *actually* sorry. She is giving us an example of something selfish this person is doing that indicates to her that they doesn't really understand what they're doing, or perhaps that they aren't sorry at all.

So let's talk about what this person did. She says that this person "called about a thousand times". Now, we aren't meant to think that this person literally called one thousand times. The singer is using exaggeration or hyperbole to make the point that this person called a LOT.

Why do these calls bother or annoy our singer? Because the person is calling "wondering where she's been". That doesn't seem so bad does it? But clearly our singer thinks it is. Let's get into what this phrase means, and what it implies. To me, this wording is very particular. I can't be sure, but I think it is supposed to bring to mind or make you think of an obsessive boyfriend or girlfriend who is always suspicious of their significant other. They are what we would call "possessive", that is to say, they act like their significant other is their property instead of a human being.

For me, the idea of somebody calling a lot and "wondering where I've been" implies an abusive relationship, or at the very least, a controlling relationship. The word "selfish" used in the previous line seems a bit tame now, but without any further details we can only guess at what this might mean.

The second part of the bridge starts off similarly, with someone up at night thinking. But this time they are thinking about how "reckless" they were. What does reckless mean? Reckless is the exact opposite of "careful". To be reckless is to do something without considering the consequences. If I drive 100 miles an hour down a busy city street, I am being reckless, because I could easily hit a pedestrian. If I shoot a gun randomly in my neighborhood, I am being reckless because I could shoot someone accidentally. To be reckless is almost never a positive thing. We don't know specifically how this person was reckless, but we do know that it caused some kind of harm with their relationship to our singer.

Our singer follows this line by saying "But I just can't apologize". So the person she's talking to did something reckless, and our singer responded in a way that this person expected an apology for. However, our singer is not going to apologize. We don't know why exactly, but it seems that she felt justified in what she did.

Our bridge ends by saying "I hope you can understand". She hopes that the other person understands why she can't apologize. I hope they do too, because we certainly don't understand!

Alright, that wraps up our bridge. We're now on the third and final verse. Let's get into it.

Our singer says "If I go to jail tonight". He's hinting, rather strongly, that he is probably going to do something that will cause him to go to jail. We could say that he is planning on doing something that could "land him" in jail. What you can imagine is that your decisions and actions are launching you into the air, and you're not really sure where you're going to land. For our singer, his actions will launch him in the general direction of jail, so he knows he's at risk.

"If I go to jail tonight...promise you'll pay my bail"

Here our singer is making a demand. The grammar is fine, but for clarity I would add the word "me" in there. "Promise ME that you'll pay my bail." He's saying that he wants a promise from someone that they will pay his bail, in the event that he goes to jail tonight. He's insisting that they make that promise to him. He wants the assurance that somebody will do that for him, perhaps before he decides if he's going to do the things he has planned to do that might land him in jail. If we wanted it to be more polite, to ask instead of demand, how would we do that?

First, we add the word "do" or "will" or "would" to make this a question rather than a demand. "Do you promise to pay my bail" is a bit more polite, though still pretty close to a demand. "Will you promise to pay my bail" is more polite, placing the question in the future tense. "Would you promise to pay my bail" works as well, but can sound a little bit awkward outside of very specific contexts. So let's use the second option, "will".

Okay, enough grammar talk. Let's finish up with a bit of vocabulary.

You've probably been wondering this whole time...what is bail? Besides being a really simple rhyme for jail of course. Normally, when you are arrested for a crime, depending on how bad the crime is, you will probably be in jail for some amount of time. Usually this is until you are able to go to court and have a trial. The trial will determine if you are truly guilty or not. For most crimes however, there is an amount of money that you can pay in order to get out of jail while you are waiting for your trial. Normally, most of this money is given back to you after the trial. It is used as a motivation for you to return for the trial. The amount depends on the severity of the crime, or how big of a crime you've committed. If they think you might run away, they can set the bail even higher. The amount is also dependent on how dangerous they think you are. If they think that you might harm someone, there could be no bail, and you're stuck in jail until your trial.

The next two lines say "See they want to buy my pride, but that just ain't up for sale". There's only one simple correction to make here, and you can probably already tell me what it is. It's the word "ain't." It's used often enough that it can be considered a word, but it isn't grammatically correct at all. The word should be "isn't", which is a simple enough fix. "But that just isn't up for sale". I would strongly advise against using "ain't" at all. There's really no good context for you to use it in. You'll just have to trust me on that one.

Alright, so what does this mean?

Let's start with our first word: "See". Simple enough. But what is it doing at the beginning of this sentence? In this context, the word "see" means something like, "Look at this" or "Let me explain". You can also add it to the end of a sentence, as a question. "They want to buy my pride. See?" This changes the meaning a bit to say something closer to "Do you understand?" after you've given an explanation. Both versions of the word will make you sound much more comfortable in English.

So he's saying "Look at this! They are trying to buy my pride! But it isn't for sale". What does he mean by that? Well it's not really clear from the song, but we can imagine a situation where he's being offered money or perhaps something else to do something that he considers shameful. For a singer perhaps that means playing a show that he doesn't want to play, or supporting a cause that he doesn't support.   It would be shameful for you to do, so it might feel as though they are being "paid" for their pride.

And apparently this makes him angry enough that he might end up in jail because of it! Yikes!

Our last couple of lines are the same ones we talked about in Episode 5.

So that wraps up our song! I hope that you've enjoyed this series about Four, Five Seconds, and I hope that you enjoyed the song as well! Join us next time as we start on a new song together! Have a great week!

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