Analyzing Jessica Darrow's 'Surface Pressure'

Olivia Nefzger
Mrs. Dose
English 09
31 January 2021
Faltering Under Pressure Many people are forced to act strong for their families and friends, but many feel the need to hide their anxieties from others. In the song “Surface Pressure” by Jessica Darrow, the speaker expresses her anxiety and pressure from bottling up her emotions. This song comes from the Encanto soundtrack. The song takes place when the speaker is talking to her sister about how everyone in her family and community pressures her to be the strongest. The speaker is beginning to give in to the pressure from everyone relying on her. “Surface Pressure” by Jessica Darrow demonstrates that people can gain many different pressures and anxieties while trying to support others through

The speaker references the Titanic while she is explaining how she felt pressured to do everything right. Darrow says “The ship doesn’t swerve as it heard how big the iceberg is” (Darrow 6). The speaker went through many different struggles trying to support her family, and the Titanic represents her and her anxieties. She knew that she would go through many different struggles as they did on the Titanic when it sank, but the pressure prevented her from being able to avoid the obstacles and forced her to be put under a lot of pressure. The speaker also references greek mythology to emphasize the pressure she went through. Before, she states, “Was Hercules ever like, ‘Yo, I don’t wanna fight Cerberus?’” (Darrow 2). The reference to greek mythology and asking if Hercules always wanted to have to deal with fighting Cerberus added emphasis on the fact that the speaker struggled with handling the added pressure from other people. Cerberus represents the people she was trying to help, and the pressures she was taking off of their shoulders, and putting on her own. Therefore, these lines reveal the speaker's discontentment with the position she was forced