"Because of You" by Kelly Clarkson from Breakaway

"Because of you / I find it hard to trust / not only me, but everyone around me…" sums up this song. Kelly Clarkson, with her superb and amazingly flexible and strong vocals, sings the haunting song "Because of You".

With the music video, the song's narrator speaks to someone, probably her father, whose use of her as an emotional crutch when she was also hurting has handicapped her. He in his pain insisted that none around him show any signs of "weakness" (like crying), not realizing that others were also hurting.

The emotional pain comes through powerfully in the song, one of Kelly Clarkson's more personal ones. She wrote it at sixteen, though she says she's since recovered from much of the pain with God's help. "Because of You" still stands as a lament to her troubled background.

Though the vocals are, as usual, Kelly Clarkson's strong point, the music still melds with above-average quality with her voice. The music of this gentle pop rock ballad doesn't get noticed much if you focus on enjoying Kelly.

Overall, it's a lovely rock ballad, even if something about the sound doesn't make it my personal preference.

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Lyrics: 5/5
Music: 4/5
Vocal(s): 5/5
Overall: 9/10

"Never Too Late" by Three Days Grace from One-X

"Even if I say, 'It'll be all right;' I still hear you say you want to end your life."

Unlike most songs speaking of suicide, this is a friend talking to the suicidal individual. The narrator's encouraging his suicidal friend to continue living. "This world will never be what I expected, and if I don't belong" "maybe we'll turn it all around 'cause it's not too late. It's never too late" to seek to pull yourself out of the depression and hopelessness.

Lead singer Adam Gontier has a voice well-suited for the post-grunge-influence rock Three Days Grace produces, but it also fits well in this song that could be qualified as a guitar-based rock ballad. Acoustic guitar, electric guitar, drums, and cymbals meld in a way that's pleasing to the ears if you like rock. None of it's discordant, and it all flows together in such a way that I can't imagine the song fitting to anything else.

The music video involves a girl playing with her parents, intercut with the girl as a young woman fighting nurses who are keeping her from killing herself. The video symbolically portrays the child's molestation without the parents' knowledge that led to her current institutionalization, and as "Never Too Late" comes to its ending, she overcomes her past.

Overall, it's a refreshing (albeit darkly-toned) song that considers life worth living even if it looks dark. "Never Too Late" encourages both the sucidal individual and his friend that life isn't over just because it seems hopeless.

As a Christian, I view it as incomplete since it fails to address that God is man's hope. Parents may not want their younger children to listen to the song, either, from the psychological elements it addresses. Nonetheless, it's a remarkably well put-together song considering the junk that tends to end up on the radio a lot, these days.

As of this writing, the song was displayed on the MySpace page of Three Days Grace.

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Lyrics: 4/5
Music: 5/5
Vocal(s): 4/5
Overall: 8/10