Weekly Billboard Theory — In My Blood
What? Two songs write-ups in one week? Yep. I missed last week so I’m trying to get back in the swing of things. One of these two songs is a stinker, this is not that song. “In My Blood” isn’t bad, but is it any good? Let’s find out.
Shawn Mendes
Key: F Major
Tempo: 140 BPM
Last time I wrote about Shawn Mendes, I focused on his great production quality. It should be no surprise that “In My Blood” sounds just as strong in that regard. The song begins with guitar and ol’ Shawn singing lightly. As the progression repeats, a little bit of percussion is added. As the song progresses, you guessed it, more and more instrumentation is added and the song moves at a very standard rate. Now, when I say “standard”, I don’t mean to take anything away from this song. Songs beginning quietly and building throughout is standard because it makes a whole lot of sense. It’s not something that shouldn’t necessarily be celebrated, because it should be “standard”, but time and time again I’m surprised by how many pieces do not follow this formula. Sure, there are always exceptions to the rule but this is a pretty safe one to follow.
I glossed over the chord progression because it’s a simple one and it persists throughout the entirety of the song. I-IV-vi-IV. That’s right! No V! Take that classical music! Usually, I would become bored with three chords sounding over and over again. Heck, give us something new in the bridge! But I’m fine with this in “In My Blood”. “Why? That’s not fair!”, you cry. Well, the accompaniments that come in and out throughout the song enhance the chords quite a bit. Let’s go to the chorus at 1:08. You can hear a new, higher guitar part that moves slightly faster than the chord changes that have been happening every eight beats. These ones change every two beats and if you’re wearing headphones, I THINK that they are panned slightly to the right (could just be my ears though, whoops). Below you can see the chords and the guitar part that changes over top. This sounds cool because that guitar part over top contains notes that are found in each of the chords below and ones that are not.
I circled the notes that match the corresponding chord. For the I chord, the A functions as the third over the F. The other two pitches are neighbor notes and create a tension that resolves when it returns to A. The Bb in the IV chord is obviously the root, but that A that comes before turns a boring Bb triad into a tasty Bb major seventh chord. On the vi chord, we use that A again. However, now it functions as the root of the chord. One simple three note pattern over a different simple three-chord pattern keeps our interest. There’s a lot more happening throughout the song to prevent this song from feeling repetitive but this was a pretty easy example to show you.
Alright, there’s one last aspect that I want to go over. Up above I wrote that “In My Blood” is performed at 140 BPM. This is mostly true. However, one of the ways that Shawn manages to keep this song interesting is by switching back and forth between half-time. Half-time is when we essentially slow the tempo down to half of what we were originally playing. This is super common in dubstep music (remember dubstep) and pretty common in bridges of all genres. Let’s jump to 1:22 of Shawn’s song. Listen to the kick drum of the verse. It happens on every beat at 140 BPM. That’s the tempo we’ve been talking about right? Try tapping your foot or bobbing your head to this beat for the time being. That beat persists through the pre-chorus. At the chorus, that kick drum pattern changes. You might still be bobbing your head at 140 BPM but there’s a good chance that you’ve naturally switched to 70 BPM. What is 70 BPM the half of? 140 BPM. Half-time. Bam. Now, the large feel changed to half time but that guitar part we discussed before is still strumming pretty fast. This is how Shawn manages to keep the song from feeling like it has lost energy while halving the tempo. By switching the tempo to 70 BPM, the chorus has a big anthemic sound. If we would have stayed at 140 BPM, “In My Blood” might have felt closer to an EDM song. Who knows, remix it for yourself.
Ultimately, I feel like Shawn Mendes’ latest his is pretty good. It’s nothing groundbreaking but it’s an all-around solid song which I’m thankful for considering that I also had to write about the mess that is “Yes Indeed”.
What should you listen to this week? “High Horse” by Kacey Musgraves. Country disco? Yup.
We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled program next week. I’m SHOCKED that “Psycho” is back up to number one. It isn’t until number eight that we have something new with Kanye’s “Yikes”. I haven’t listened to his new album yet but I’ve been a longtime fan of his. Did this opinion change just like his political views? Find out next week!
