Hellogoodbye and Vanessa Carlton
[ February 15th, 2009 | No Comments » | by Ryan ]
If you’ve worked on the classical side of vocal music, either as a composer or a performer, you may have heard the old joke, “What’s the difference between art songs and pop songs?” Record sales. Air play. Pick a punchline suggesting modern commercial viability. It’s enough to reduce a musicologist to tears, hearing Our Good Man Schubert’s work compared to “Disturbia” and “Baby One More Time.” When it comes down to it, though, what were art songs back in Our Good Man Schubert’s day? If you wanted musical entertainment in the convenience of your home, you had solo instrumental works and small chamber works, and specifically for vocal music, nothing could have been more portable than piano-and-voice art songs. Many argue that the tradition of art songs continues through the 20th and 21st centuries: what can you say about Britten and Ives, among so many others? Critics must remember, though, that the concept of art for art’s sake is relatively new. What we call “classical” today was, with minor exceptions, the extent of the musical repertoire through the 19th century. Until the development of jazz (and later rock and roll) in the early 20th century, what we consider “popular music” today didn’t exist with the same connotations. The term “art song” is obviously a musicologist’s coinage; two hundred years ago, they were your average, run-of-the-mill songs that you’d sit around a piano and sing to entertain guests. In terms of societal function, then, popular music is a direct analog to the art song of the past, but even as a composer of popular vocal music, I question the notion that musicologists centuries from now will sit down analyzing Beyonce and Elton John.
Nevertheless, I feel that many (or even most) classical musicians’ disdain for popular music neglects not only the memory of the “art song” and its place in our lives but also the surprising sophistication of many popular songs. I am continually surprised by how much popular music composers push the envelope with considerable commercial success. I doubt you’ll hear 12-tone music in anything but the most underground indie music simply because popular music must remain approachable to be…well, popular. While Our Good Man Schubert was adventuresome at times, it’s nothing you can’t analyze within a typical early-Romantic idiom. Today, many songwriters can’t manage much past tonic-predominant-dominant-tonic. In this series of articles, I’d like to highlight a number of writers and performers who are pushing the limits of what your everyday listeners will jam along to in their cars as they drive to work. It is from this daring integration of sophistication into mainstream music that a true musical culture emerges.
A number of songwriters are experimenting with cadential formulae other than the typical, perfect dominant-tonic resolution. Californian power-pop band Hellogoodbye’s song “Here (In Your Arms)” presents one of the more common examples: a repeating I – V – vi – IV chord pattern. For those of you more acquainted with jazz/pop notation than Roman numeral analysis, that’d be F – C – Dm – Bb in F major. There’s not one authentic cadence in the entire song. What makes it work, then? The employment of all three major chords in the key brings all 7 scalar pitches into play, defining the key clearly for the listener’s ear. Although the motion from the tonic to the dominant (F to C) introduces the tonic and dominant immediately, the root motion of an ascending fifth instead of a descending fifth also creates tension in the very first chord change. The dominant then resolves deceptively to the submediant, D minor, denying the resolution of that tension. That tension is held as one note shifts into the next chord (5-6 motion, for the classically trained). Finally, the IV resolves back to the tonic into the next phrase in something akin to a plagal cadence with the notes resolving as a kind of 6/4 chordal appogiatura.
Note the lack of leading tone resolution in the end of that chord progression. The settling feeling of the IV-I neighbor motion is satisfying enough to our ears to take the place of an authentic cadence that would, after all that repetition, become tiresome to the point of annoyance. Another singer/songwriter who utilizes a non-standard cadential formula to exellent effect is Vanessa Carlton (whose third album I really should go out and buy). If nothing else, most people have heard her debut single, “A Thousand Miles.” First of all, the song ventures into modal territory, which is a topic for another day. Being in E lydian instead of E major or B major, though, requires special treatment. In the days of strict counterpoint, you could rely on linear resolution to give a convincing E lydian cadence. Even though that’s a luxury Vanessa doesn’t have in today’s world of vertical harmonic treatment, she draws on those tools to create a cadential idiom for the song. She takes advantage of the fact that E lydian keeps a whole step relation between the tonic and supertonic and a half step relation between the tonic and the leading tone. These key-defining features of the familiar major mode are worked into a bass ostinato of tonic – supertonic – leading tone – tonic. This bass line harping on the linearly cadential features of the E lydian mode successfully pulls the Average Joe’s ear to hear E as the tonic, with the A# as an augmented fourth in the scale instead of as a leading tone to B. It is so strong, in fact, that listeners don’t even flinch at the final chord: E, B, and C#. The fifth against the tonic is common enough, but the addition of the C# would seem out of place, were it not for the insistent finality of the bass line.
The use of repetition is to be noted in both of these songs. “Here (In Your Arms)” never deviates from those four chords, and “A Thousand Miles” is based on that four-note bass ostinato except only for the bridge (which is repetitive in its own way). It brings up a sort of “chicken or egg” paradox to me: is the incessant repetition what makes the non-standard cadences work, or are the non-standard chord progressions necessary to keep the ear interested with all that repetition? I think the two work synergistically to justify each other. How do they work apart though? How droning does repetition without chordal interest become, and how jarring is a non-standard cadential idiom without repetition to acclimate the ear? Next week, I’ll draw on the music of my favorite singer/songwriter, a woman who uses both techniques separately and together in conjunction with a number of other devices non-standard to mainstream music. For now, I’ll leave you to enjoy Vanessa and Hellogoodbye while I go rock out to some Lady GaGa. (Speaking of repetition…)
Tagged under: hellogoodbye, music theory, Vanessa Carlton