Introducing The ADDJ. Or, how to make it onto my ‘On Repeat’ Spotify playlist.
I’ve always kind of been allergic to nicknames.
Some people, like my stepdad, live their entire lives known only by a pseudonym* but, for some reason, they’ve always eluded me. I was known as Bunny for a few rugby matches but it didn’t take. Colleagues have on two occasions tried to call me Macca, but it felt forced. The head chef at my first job called me Leaping Lord Muleberry, but it didn’t really catch on. Thankfully.
And whilst I was happy to see those nicknames fade into obscure memory, there was one nickname I really tried to make happen. Like, REALLY tried. Or, if I’m honest, I continue to try to make happen. It’s my fetch. It’s such a perfect nickname. It’s catchy, relevant, funny, unique, perfect. I love it.
‘The ADDJ’.
I earned this particular nickname when DJing* for my friend Josh’s birthday party in the local pub. Midway through the night, my neurodivergent bestie pointed out (correctly) that I had skipped every single song during the second chorus, dubbing me the ADDJ. I loved it instantly. No notes.
And, a decade later, the stereotype holds. I constantly listen to music, but I think I have heard the end of maybe 3 songs so far this millennium. I continue to regularly dismiss new songs after 4 bars on the first listen. I often create multiple playlists in a single day. Some tracks get listened to on repeat for a month and then are banished on a whim. But why?
Well, part of the fun of having autism and ADHD is that my life generally cycles through two phases. It goes like this:
- Acting on breakneck-speed ADHD impulses (the ADDJ)
- Using autistic superpowers to unpack why I did what I did later on (No cool nickname here yet… The forensic categoriser? Captain Criticism? The ASD-bag? Suggestions on a postcard…)
So for the past month I’ve ADDJ’d all over Spotify without reflection, so I reckon it’s about time to jump into phase 2. Let’s get over-analytical! What songs stick around for the ADDJ? What do these disparate songs have in common? Is there a method or order to the madness? Well, after half an afternoon of pretty intense listening, here’s what I found:
First of all, I want to make it clear my aim is to be granular and specific.
There are a lot of superficial comparisons I can make about my current ‘On Repeat’ track-list**. For example: they’re usually upbeat; pop and rap feature heavily; there’s often themes of mental health, puffery and/or sex; they’re easy to sing and so on and so forth. But I think that those things are pretty basic to most popular music and if you read my work, you know that we don’t settle for surface level. We here at Matt McKenna Industries are not in the business of serving basic. So what else do these tracks have in common lurking beneath the surface?
Intros that are 4 bars or under
Let’s start with the basics. I don’t have time for you to develop you musical themes. I don’t want you to build to anything. It’s a song. It should start when it starts.
Some Examples: Firstly, ‘edamame by bbno$’. Four bars of intro horns and then we’re in. Bosh. In ‘THATS WHAT I WANT’, Lil Nas X gives us three bars of the riff, a 4 beat count in and we’re off to the races. Yes please. Kate Nash’s 2022 banger ‘Imperfect’ has 2 bars of instrumental and then boom! It’s the song. Perfection.
Weird Instrumentation
A weirdly high number of my closest friends are professional musicians. They will occasionally get a Spotify link from me with the message: ‘what’s this weird instrument at 1:31?'. Obviously, it’s usually a random synth effect or plug in that a producer found whilst fucking around in the studio, but tracing the origin of the instrumentation can often get me into the second verse of a track I might’ve skipped past otherwise.
Some Examples: The current king of this is up-and-coming Canadian rapper, Connor Price. His tracks dominate my playlist currently and a big part of the reason is that there’s weird instruments all over the place. ‘Violet’ features what my mate reckons is a guzheng. The hook on ‘Spinnin’ seems to be a recorder. ‘Straight A’s’ beat seems to be bottles filled with various amounts of liquid being hit. ‘Chuck Taylor’ is built around a steel tongue drum. Super weird. Big thumbs up from me. Check him out. A potentially more famous example is Doja Cat’s ‘Boss Bitch’. I have no idea what’s happening on that track. Tubular bells maybe? No idea. Awesome stuff.
Wild Ad-libs in the Intro
I love a good ad-lib. I’d argue that plenty of artists actually have better ad-libs than lyrics. Will Smith, Childish Gambino, Migos, Bruno Mars, Cardi B… there’s a lot of folks who are at their best in the margins. But this isn’t about that weird ad-libs in the song. This is about the ‘Jason Derulo’ effect, by which I mean starting your song with an ad-lib. Ever since Derulo started saying his name at the beginning of the song, artists have become increasingly bold in their use of ad-libs at the top of the track. Megan does it. Cardi B does it. Connor Price does it. And I have all the time in the world for it.
Some Examples: Megan Thee Stallion excels in this regard. ‘Plan B’ starts with “Who the fuck you talkin’ too, n****? Fuck me? Nah, n****, fuck you, n****”. Incredible. What an opening salvo! Arguably even better is the opening ad-lib of ‘Her’: “I don’t care if these bitches don’t like me cause, like, I’m pretty as fuck”. Inspired. I also want to give a shout out to Brian David Gilbert’s song ‘Just One day’ for “We’re quadruplets!”. Perfection. Oh, one more! I loooove Lizzo’s “Sheesh!” at the start of her (infuriatingly titled) banger ‘2 Be Loved (Am I ready?)’.
Starting with a ‘Chorus Tease’
I have no idea why more songs don’t do this. Brett Domino*** pointed out in 2017 that “there’s almost no point in verses”. Whilst I wouldn’t go quite that far, I do think that unless your verses are the best part of your song, you can start with the chorus, or part of it. Now, I understand you want the song to build to a big triumphant crescendo in the first full chorus, so I’m really enjoying what I’d call the ‘chorus tease’. Basically starting with a line from, or a stripped back version of, the chorus really seems to capture the ADDJ’s attention. And remember what Brett Domino always says “Don’t be a tortoise. Get to the Chorus!”.
Some Examples: This technique will often result in me listening to certain songs of artists I wouldn’t normally listen to. I have no idea who Andy Grammer is but by starting ‘Damn It Feels Good to Be Me’ with a preview of the chorus meant it stood out of the random Spotify playlist I found it in. Doja Cat’s ‘Best Friend’ just straight up starts with the chorus and now I’ve explored a bunch of her music, which I might not have done otherwise. Even the usually dour Sam Smith managed to get me to listen to all of ‘Unholy’ by previewing the chorus at the top of the track. Speaking of ‘Unholy’…
Choirs
When I started researching this, I knew a few things that I’d expect here off the top of my head. The ADDJ wants the chorus right fucking now. The ADDJ suffers intros poorly. The ADDJ’s (in)attention is often captured by weird instruments. This one… yeah, I don’t know. It’s definitely not a popular trend. If you look at the wrap-ups and retrospectives of 2022 music trends they talk about things like TikTok killing the third verse of songs (the ADDJ thanks you), the blurring of genres, and the continued rise of hiphop. Not choirs though. I also don’t particularly enjoy choral music. So… this is what it is. Maybe all my years in the school choir left a subconscious itch to scratch.
Some Examples: The quasi-monastic choir in Sam Smith’s ‘Unholy’ is one of my current favourite things to sing along to. The choir in Megan Thee Stallion’s ‘Anxiety’ is weird but it slaps. It literally goes “Ya ya ya ya ya ya ya yo” in a descending scale. Why? No idea. Love it.
But the current apex of this for me is Kesha’s ‘Praying’. On this track, Kesha delivers a career-best vocal performance accompanied by a large choir. The choir here almost feels like a musical theatre chorus. When the song’s emotions are as big as they can possibly be, the choir throws its full voice and emotional weight behind Kesha as she almost shrieks in pain. She’s not singing alone. Not anymore. Never again. Fuck, I’m bubbling up just thinking about. It’s excellent.
Right, deep breaths, almost done. Last thing.
Sexy-ass hooks
This one is hardest to explain and probably the most subjective. If you search Spotify for the playlists called ‘sexy hooks’ you get a wide range of stuff that I personally wouldn’t associate with the term. So it’s potentially helpful to start with some common songs on these kind of playlists as examples of what I don’t mean. Adele’s ‘Hello’ pops up a lot. It’s definitely sultry, but not what I’m driving at. MGMT’s ‘Electric Feel’ is vibey and definitely would suit a lot of ‘bedroom playlists’ but it doesn’t have a sexy-ass hook (I feel the same way about Childish Gambino’s ‘Redbone’, which crops up a lot). James Brown’s ‘I Got You (I Feel Good)’, a common addition, slaps but it doesn’t feel sexy in 2022. So, what do I mean by sexy-ass hook?
I think the way I would describe sexy-ass hooks is musical ideas that are sexy in a way you can feel viscerally. Sexy-ass hooks make it uncomfortable to sit in the car with your Mum while it plays. Not due to the content, but because of the vibe. I’m thinking the chorus hook from Derulo’s ‘Wiggle’; Timbaland’s ‘SexyBack’ beat; most of the riffs from ‘Kiss Kiss’ by Holly Valance; the strings from ‘Toxic’, the riff from ‘You Sexy Thing’.
It’s hard to define, but I reckon if you want a guiding principle for sexy-ass hooks then no-one better at it than (early to mid era) Beyoncé. There’s too many examples to list comprehensively but a few standours include the opening riff from ‘Naughty Girl’; the beat from ‘Feeling Myself’; the uh-oh’s and drums in ‘Crazy in Love’; most of the production on ‘Video Phone’ and; my personal favourite sexy-ass hook of hers, the horns from ‘Work It Out’. Those some sexy-ass hooks. Right, now we (might) know what I’m talking about, let’s close this out with some examples…
Some Examples: Lots of songs we’ve already seen fit in this category. The beat of ‘Rumors’ is dirty in the best way. I think a lot of the hooks in ‘Boss Bitch’ are at least somewhat sexy-ass. ‘Unholy’ springs to mind. As well as the already mentioned, Megan Thee Stallions ‘Body’ definitely has sexy-ass hooks. The horns in ‘Strut’ by Emeline have a bit of the Beyoncés about them. But the band that really live and die by their sexy-ass hooks are Fifth Harmony. Six years after its release, the sexy-ass horn hook on ‘That’s My Girl’ keeps it in my current top 10 ‘On Repeat’ songs. That’s the power of a sexy-ass hook.****
Conclusion
So, now we have fully explored the common threads of the ADDJ’s current ‘On Repeat’ playlist, what have we learned? Honestly? Basically nothing. And, in my humble opinion, that’s not a bad thing.
I’d argue that modern culture often over-prioritises and valorises utility. We don’t make art. We make content. We try and produce things to make money, or develop a following or build clout. We don’t have hobbies; we have side hustles. And that’s totally fine, but I’m not really into that.
I just enjoy analysing why I like the things I like. I enjoy writing about things I find. And I like it when people read what I write. That’s it. Conclusion concluded.
Plus, it kills the time, doesn’t it?
Thanks for reading, lovelies.
* I want to be clear here. This is a guy pressing next on a Spotify playlist so that the host can do laps of the room, not anything even vaguely skilful or using what I believe are called ‘decks’.
** Full playlist can be found here
*** Everything you ever need to know about writing a pop song can be found in these videos: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3
**** In fact, I’d argue that most ofFifth Harmony tracks have to recommend them by are the sexy-ass hooks. I’d even go as far to say that the singing was largely an unpleasant interruption from said hooks but that’s an argument for another time.
