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Alina Fore

English 1201

Professor Hughes

9 February 2020

The Power of Dreams

How do dreams affect our lives? People mostly dream about their own lives, but

sometimes dreams manifest into dreams for other people. For example, a firefighter hopes that

the person they saved will be okay. One may dream that a person will be reunited with their

family. Both versions of “Wake Me Up” are about people not being accepted, however, they

dream of a day when they might belong. Avicii’s remix version appeals to younger generations;

meanwhile, Aloe Blacc’s original version appeals to Mexicans.

In 2013, Avicii’s version of “Wake Me Up” was introduced to the world and became a

number one dance track for the younger generation. Avicii came up with the chords and melody,

but he solicited Aloe Blacc to collaborate on the lyrics. “Wake Me Up” was the first electronic,

dance song to stay in the Top 100 Billboard charts for a year. Due to the song’s success, Aloe

Blacc released his own version of the hit. The songs were released in 2013 only months apart.

Avicii released his remixed version of the song first. A few months later, Aloe Blacc decided to

release the original version that they created with his own video interpretation. When Aloe Blacc

thought “Life is a dream, wake me up when it’s all over”, he was reminiscing over how he never

thought he would be traveling the world as an actual musician. They incorporated this thought

into the lyrics. For example, “They say I'm caught up in a dream/ Well life will pass me by if I
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don't open up my eyes/ Well that's fine by me/ So wake me up when it's all over.” Blacc thought

of his life as a dream, and he didn’t want to stop dreaming and believing.

The lyrics of the songs are the same, but the interpretation of the lyrics in the videos are

very different. Avicii’s video appeals to a younger audience because the video is about two

young sisters. The town gives them weird looks and stays clear of them when the sisters walk

past. In the video, the youngest sister asks why the town doesn’t like them. The older sister

doesn’t have an answer to her sister’s question. Younger generations can relate to the sisters

because many people don’t know why other people are so mean. Furthermore, this version

appeals to the lower economic class. The sisters live in a rundown house in a rundown town and

no parents appear in the video. They share the same bed and have one, very small bathroom. The

girls feel alone in the town that they live in which pulls at our emotions or pathos. Most people

know what it is like to be disliked by someone and to feel alone. Humans empathize with the

sisters and seeing no parents in the picture to guide them, humans empathize even more. One

night, the older sister rides her horse to a city nearby. There she meets people that are like her

and accept her. She hangs out with them all night, and the next day she goes back to get her

sister. At the end of the video, the sisters are at an Avicii concert with people that accept them.

Their dream of being a part of a group finally came true.

Unlike Avicii’s remix, Aloe Blacc’s acoustic version appeals to race, specifically

Mexicans. In the video, it shows several different stories all about Mexicans. One story is of a

man doing hard labor in America. During his break, he pulls a picture out of a woman with a

baby. The audience can assume that the people in the picture are his family. When he looks at the

photo, he seems sad, but he dreams of a day he will see his family again. This makes the

audience wonder what happened to his family, which makes them feel sad again showing pathos.
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Next, the video focuses on a woman with a baby making a long journey. However, they are

stopped by border security. During the journey, the audience feels hope because we assume the

woman and child are the other man’s family. But, when they see the guards and are caught, hope

is lost. The woman and baby are going to get deported, and hope of the reunion is lost. At the

end of the video, the woman tries again several years later, and she makes it across. The wife and

daughter are shown walking up to a house and are reunited with the father. This connects to the

lyrics “When I'm wiser and I'm older.” The second time the mom was older and she learned from

her mistakes from the last attempt at freedom. The expressions on their faces when they are

reunited make the audience blissful. To see the family’s dreams come true also ignites joy from

the audience. The woman and child’s dream of freedom and the dad’s dream of reuniting with

his family is truly a powerful ending of the story.

While Blacc’s acoustic version appeals to pathos, it also appeals to logos. His video

contains several anecdotes between Mexicans and whites. In the beginning, it states that the

video is inspired by 11 million stories. At the end of the video, it states “Most of the actors in this

video have lived this story.” An example is the woman who played the mother in the story. In

real life, her name is Margarita, and she was born in the U.S, but was deported with her mom.

Overall, Avicii and Aloe Blacc’s videos showed the power of dreams. Dreams give a

person hope, which helps them face their current troubles. Avicii’s remix shows younger people

that dreams of belonging can come true. Likewise, the acoustic version conveys how the

Mexican family didn’t give up hope of reuniting. His video ends with a young woman who made

it to America who is shown fighting for the rights of others. Her dream is revealed through her

group called the “Dream Project.” In the end, dreams are a powerful force, but what dreams are

the strongest? The ones about and for ourselves or the ones for others?
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Works Cited

Avicii. “Wake Me Up”. YouTube. 29 July 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=IcrbM1l_BoI. Accessed 4 February 2020.

Blacc, Aloe. “Wake Me Up”. YouTube. 22 Oct. 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=M_o6axAseak. Accessed 4 February 2020.