One, five, six, and four.

After neglecting this blog, I’m back with an impossible task.

The four most common chords in music have a way of coming back, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. The most popular chord progression in all of popular music is the ubiquitous 1-5-6-4, which shows up in almost every genre in some order. (Songs in minor keys are often of the 6-4-1-5 variety - same sequence but with a different starting point.)

Over the next several weeks, I am going to scan the Billboard Hot 100 charts for songs that use this progression (or its more classically inclined predecessor 1-6-4-5, the backbone of ’50s soft rock). Tracking these over time will probably reveal a staggering trend in terms of general popular music.

Once this project is done, I will post the assembled list of 1-5-6-4 songs that I have found from the last fifty years.

A fairly famous example of a 1-5-6-4 progression

Alternatively, 1-6-4-5.

Finally, another long-winded music rant.

Because I know you all were waiting for one. (Summer Girls by LFO) This rant was originally about a certain dance single, but I was expertly reminded of this song by another person and I got to thinking about it.

For starters. LFO does not first and foremost denote a group where kid-friendly sitcom music meets the lyric delivery style of Tony Soprano on Prozac meets the lyrics of your average self-respecting indie band. LFO stands for Low Frequency Oscillator, and is used a lot in art music and any nonmusical sonic application. Come on. Don’t pilfer another well-known acronym. Seriously.

For other starters. This pop-rap style that you have going doesn’t actually make you cool, avant-garde, or different. People have been doing that for a while. Nothing special about the delivery, either. You really couldn’t have written a melody? Even hip-hop tends toward certain inflections and melodic patterns, whereas you just sound…conversational. Even the pitch of your voice doesn’t really mesh with that guitar track you stole from Zac Hanson. When you do sing, it’s just out of tune enough to get some phat beats from the interaction with Zac’s guitar. And I don’t mean in the good way. (Beating occurs when you take two tones that are just slightly out of tune - you create these pulses that occur on the scale of 0.5-10 seconds. The more out of tune one is from the other, the more frequent the grating hits. Just like real beatings.)

The big one. You seem to be completely unable to form at least a decent slant rhyme, a must for pretty much every self-respecting rapper out there (not that I condone some of the incomprehensibly band slant rhymes that are out on some major labels). Still, this is probably the pinnacle of reaching to make a rhyme, and considering the subject matter (or lack of one), it should NOT have been this difficult.

One by one:

Chorus:

Hits/sick - Seriously, this is the rhyme you start out with? To paraphrase Barney Frank: ‘On what planet do you reside? Trying to rhyme with you is like trying to teach a keychain to do Pilates’ [Decision: FLAGRANT]

Fitch/wish - This one is almost worse. In addition, I must add that wearing shirts that have no logos or signage other than the company from which you bought it and no real differences from almost any other shirts seems like the lowest you could possibly stoop for the advancement of mindless commercialism. Except maybe buying a TI album. [Decision: FLAGRANT]

Verse 1:

span/began, see/33 - Two good ones. Finally. [Decision: ACCEPTABLE]

hornet/sonnet - What? Just because you pronounce sonnet ‘sornet’ doesn’t mean that it suddenly rhymes with ‘hornet’. How the hell do you take TWO non-sequiturs, have neither of them rhyme, and smack them both together? [Decision: FLAGRANT]

baby/crazy - This is the sort of double-syllable rhyme that’s become commonplace in hip-hop recently. I’m not condoning it, and the “I’ve seen worse” argument really shouldn’t be able to hold any water at any time, but I will refrain from kicking a puppy this time and THIS TIME ONLY. [Decision: CRINGEWORTHY]

mad/back - Where what how why I don’t even [Decision: FLAGRANT]

home/alone - The fact that this was pasted together as a rhyme, in ADDITION to the fact that the word ‘home’ is reused in the second line, just smacks of seventh-grade writing. Aren’t you supposed to learn in sophomore English, wait, no, fifth grade Language Arts, that avoiding word repetition and its evil cousin word fatigue is key to grownup writing? [Decision: FLAGRANT]

speaking/Keaton - Apparently, it rhymes because of the K. Problem is the K isn’t even in the same place in both words. This one’s closer than most, though, because of the interchangability of those letters. It’s still not even close to excusable considering priors, though. You are sentenced to four years in prison without parole and six thousand hours of community service. [Decision: CRINGEWORTHY]

Rich/Fitch - Rhyme works fine. However, this is not a damn recurring commercial for overpriced and overall ethically unsound laundry. (Or, maybe it is. Never underestimate corporate giants’ abilities to make connections.) [Decision: Grudgingly ACCEPTABLE]

Verse 2:

boogie/hooky - If I were able to tell from the song that this word was ‘boogie’ and not ‘bookie’, it would be a minor transgression. As it is…well, I guess it’s still a minor transgression, certainly compared to what’s going on elsewhere. [Decision: CRINGEWORTHY]

style/smile - Hey, a decent rhyme. What are we up to, 35%? [Decision: ACCEPTABLE]

girl/world - I have to admit I use this rhyme often - although considering my level of humor it’s often ‘hurl/world’. Only issue is that ‘girl’ was just used in the previous line of this song. Seriously. Fifth grade. Remember Wendell Wordfatigue? He was EEEEEEEVIILLLLLLLLLlllllll…[Decision: ACCEPTABLE]

grow/slow - Dude, we’re on a roll here. This must be what it was like when Helen Keller…wait, I thought everybody was supposed to laugh at the mere mention of Helen Keller [Decision: ACCEPTABLE]

roll/old - This is, like, the first couplet where one of the lines is not a non sequitur. Welcome to crappy writing, or as the music industry calls it, ‘Post-Ironic Consumer-Obfuscation Reduced-Effort Lyricisation’ [Decision: ACCEPTABLE but very barely]

Revere/near - Fifth acceptable rhyme in a row. There’s no way they can keep this up.

Coke/joke - Sixth. Glenn Beck is about to fall out of his chair from excitement.

Turn:

on/song - And here we are! Did you get that? Six whole rhymes in a row. This one’s not horrible, but you knew that after a heightened state that lasted THAT long, that coming back down to the average output would smell like Dukie Weems from the beginning of S4. [Decision: CRINGEWORTHY]

like/bike - Are we okay? Are we okay? False alarm? Timebomb? Red alert? Warning light? [Decision: ACCEPTABLE]

Verse 3:

sticks/quick - Plurals are okay. We’re okay. [Decision: ACCEPTABLE]

Limpet/miss it - Just when you thought the worst was past. [Decision: FLAGRANT] How the hell does this reference even make it into the song when it’s obviously the worst rhyme ever? I don’t think a single other non sequitur even makes it farther back than 1980. (Revere obviously does, but that’s sort of transcendent.)

cheese/trees - More non sequiturs. Luckily, they got this pair to actually line up. [Decision: ACCEPTABLE]

use/Footloose - At first glance, this one looks fine. It doesn’t sound flagrant, certainly. However, the pronunciation of ‘use’ is fenagled majorly to get it to sound with the same S sound as in ‘loose’. It’s reeeeaaaalllly shaky. [Decision: CRINGEWORTHY]

before/sure - This one’s probably mostly a dialect issue. I can’t imagine me actually writing this as a rhyme, but I’m sure in other parts of the country it makes perfect sense. [Decision: ACCEPTABLE]

Final tally. Acceptable - 13; Cringeworthy - 5; Flagrant - 6. The second and third verses actually brought the tally all the way back to even. I’m impressed. Considering I usually shut the song off after one verse, I’m quite pleasantly surprised at just how many okay rhymes there are throughout the rest of the song (although if you count chorus repetitions, we have a problem again).

However, that leaves out the issue of the lyrics. Let’s leave out the crazy number of non sequiturs (sorry, I mean Post-Ironic Consumer-Obfuscation Reduced-Effort Lyricisations), and focus on the rest.

A new segment - Amateur Song Lyric Psychoanalysis

[Chorus] Protagonist likes when girls stop by for the summer…apparently was excessively influenced by old summer flame. Still values over anything else - would rather get laid than do any other number of potentially awe-inspiring things. Just a case of sad stones? (Warning: Really really ridiculously bad music pun. Really, really, really ridiculously bad.) Protagonist must have been too scared in the past, and is trying to somehow express previous inadequacy.

[Verse 1] Inference can be made that copious amounts of fast food were consumed, considering the paper cup imagery brought forth after the NBA aspect of Tourette’s kicks in. Protagonist proceeds to degrade self upon the realization that if he even knew girl’s name or had asked for an email address, there would be no way they wouldn’t have reconnected.

An aside: How would the ending to this song change with the advent of Facebook (or as it was then, ‘thefacebook’) in 2005? Does the low-frequency oscillator find the girl again, graduated from college and happily married, and the proceed to make his life a soap opera (or cry deeply)? I would pay to see a song written about that. Like, a whole five bucks.

[Verse 2] Protagonist claims to be a breakdancer. (Perhaps a former life on Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo. Research more to find possible motivation for erratic behavior in the presence of this girl? Maybe unaddressed resentment at having Gerard Butler’s face pasted on top of his in the Sparta Remix? Would certainly explain lack of ability to speak normally to girls in typical social situations) Girl appears to be some sort of southern belle, with a less-than-perfect past, and may have thusly become addicted to sugary substances - lemonade, Fun Dip, and cherry Coke are mentioned - could there be more issues with sugar? Doesn’t really say much…

[Turn + Verse 3] Protagonist once again restates sexual desire for girl, and women in general. Perhaps overcompensation to cover up closet homosexuality? The word Boogaloo does resurface here…definitely a connection that needs to be followed up. Perhaps the girl was also part of Breakin’ 2? Footloose is mentioned as a source of resentment, and was released mere weeks before the original Breakin’. Kevin Bacon is also mentioned by name, and his surname sounds rather similar to ‘breakin’. Protagonist does mention that he has the girl’s phone number, but laments the fact that by now she probably uses only her cell phone, and texts people much more often than she talks on the phone.

Diagnosis: Acute withdrawal from rejection on the set of Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo. (Many non sequiturs to the mid-’80s confirm the time period around 1984 as the period of greatest emotional distress.)

Recommended treatment: Supervised introduction to Facebook, to talk to the girl. Restraining orders against the rest of the cast of Breakin’ 2. One weekend at a fraternity house to slightly devalue the idea of sex.

There you have it. LFO, ladies and gentlemen.

Artists I have managed to never listen to

Leona Lewis

Kings of Leon

Mariah Carey

Alicia Keys

Flo-Rida

Usher

T-Pain would fall into this category if not for I’m On a Boat

Rant numero uno. Lyrics and repetition

This rant is about…popular music! This’ll be a common phenomenon.

You walk up to a person, they’ll list off a few songs that they might prefer over any other. If you ask them why they prefer this song, they might list off any number of reasons, although one of the primary ones (other than catchy beats) would be the lyrics. Unless it’s rap (which generally does happen to escape this phenomenon), however, the lyrics often end up being what may or may not consist of one paragraph, or even less. (Disney songs end up in the negatives.)

Now, granted, almost anything nowadays that’s longer than that, regardless of the material, is generally marked as too long for any normal attention span (our famous tl;dr). However, people regularly listen to songs that are 6+ minutes long (although this seems to be a lost art nowadays) - almost any major group from 1968 to 1979 created at least a few long epics. (Examples: Stairway to Heaven, 8:01; Bat Out of Hell, 9:48; Money, 6:23; Won’t Get Fooled Again, 8:32 among others) You can easily say a lot in six minutes should you choose - although a lot of these didn’t necessarily do so. (number nine number nine number nine number nine)

Nonetheless, over the past thirty years, the tendency toward even greater “conciseness” has really taken its toll on a large portion of the music industry - the amount of distinct lyrics in one song may add up to three short verses and a chorus, if lucky. Some songs are able to pull off this sparseness due to the texture of the music, delivery of the lyrics, or their speed (think Take On Me), but most songs stay within a relatively narrow range in terms of speed of lyrics  - rendering many songs unbearably repetitive and completely unsuitable to repeat listens (because each play is a repeat listen in and of itself).

Take, for example, the 1997 top-10 hit Tubthumping, by Chumbawamba. In addition to a lady with Woody Allen glasses (to which I’m not exactly sure how to respond), it contains a perfect example of unbelievably repetitive lyrics. There are 687 total words in a 3:34 song, which is a relatively quick delivery (although much of this is layered - by comparison, Jason Mraz’s I’m Yours clocks in at about 350 words in 3:34, which is a relatively large amount for a song of that speed). However, here are the words that are used in Tubthumping (different forms of the same word in parentheses):

we’ll be singing (sings) when we’re winning I (me) get knocked down but up again you’re never going to keep pissing the night away he (him) drinks a whisky drink vodka lager cider songs that remind of good times better oh danny boy don’t cry for next door neighbor

The unintentional comedy of the phrases ‘you’re never gong to keep pissing the night away’ and ‘danny boy don’t cry for next door neighbor’ regardless, this song uses a total of 46 basic words. Simple math tells us that each word is sung an AVERAGE of 687/46 = just under FIFTEEN times each.

As a student in music composition, I’ve been told a few times that repetition turns people off right away. (This is quite true.) The maximum number of times something should be heard in sequence is theoretically two (the second iteration consisting of hearing something that you’ve now heard before). Obviously, this song is not playing anything fifteen times in a row, but you can’t explain away that large of a difference. (Unless you’re Congress approving a budget, of course.)

Of course, the usual rebuttal to this theory is that people often listen to things for ‘phat beats’, and this is of course true. Lyrics are often secondary to the music itself (rap gives some excellent examples of this phenomenon, even though it doesn’t necessarily fall into the ‘repetitive’ category), which is occasionally acceptable, if the music is interesting.

This brings us to ‘dance’ music.

Repetitive beats, repetitive lyrics, unoriginal instrumentation. Welcome to the trifecta. Now, I have nothing against music that is meant to be danced to, but dance music artists could at least make an effort to show the world that they’re creating this music for actual artistic reasons, and that they’re not just three guys who decided to make a space alien movie to go along with their autotune rhapsody to try to make a few bucks.

There are actual electronica/dance artists that do create songs that end up being musically engaging (think Aphex Twin) - and if he can do it, why not other people? One example to look at comes to mind immediately - One More Time by Daft Punk. (It doesn’t bode well that this song sounds like a skippy CD player with LSD cat vocals overlaid - Daft Punk deserves props for other things elsewhere but not here.) This song has 371 words in the 5:20 album version of the song (so a relatively slow lyrical delivery compared to the above example). The B section in the middle of the song (about 60 seconds) contains 53 total words, with roughly 22 distinct words not in other parts of the song:

I’m just feelin’ tonight wait too late no he don’t stop you can’t know do it hey just music got me need

That’s not too bad so far. However, the other 4:20 (and 318 words) is comprised of this word cloud:

one more time we’re gonna celebrate (celebration) oh yeah all right don’t stop the dancing (dance) come on and so free

That’s eighteen words that comprise your four minutes and change, six of which you could classify in general as having nothing to do with the meaning of the song (oh yeah; all right; come on). In the long version, the main change has to do with the insertion of some extra repetitions and some added instrumental breaks. (318/18 = 17 and two thirds times, on average, that those words appear - at least Tubthumping is quick…) And some people wonder what people dislike about dance music. (omg their so mean its sooooooooooooooooo fun 2 dans 2 and u can liek heer da diffrnt mixes)

So, what to take away from this gigantic rant? If something sounds repetitive, it probably is repetitive. Think about the songs you listen to. I know some people are set up for massive amounts of repeat listening (at one point or another, I could do this), but if you’re not one of those people, this might be something to consider.

Perhaps a coefficient could be created for songs (port-able to albums and entire discographies) of just how repetitive something ends up being. (Word Disassociation by Lemon Demon, one of my more favorite bands, rates at 1.15, very close to the common-sense minimum of 1, Tubthumping is at 14.94, the average song would probably end up somewhere around 3-4, and Lady Gaga’s songs are all in the 200s - all I hear is blah blah blah blah blah. Wow, I’m such a nerd.)

Now that I’ve bored you all to death by having to sit through that, you’re going to curse me every single time you hear a song and it gets just a teensy bit too repetitive for you. You’re welcome.