Growing Pains and Growing Up: The Harmonic Journey of Kelly Yu
Disclaimer: This piece is an analysis based on my own interpretation of her music. There will be a lot of music theory terminologies in this writing but I will try my absolute best to explain them as we go.
Words make you think a thought. Music makes you feel a feeling.
A song makes you feel a thought.
– E. Y. Harburg
At the age of 4, Kelly Yu put her fingers on a piano for the first time. Her parents had always wanted her to learn classical music as it was their favorite music to listen to. But young Kelly had other plans. The next thing she knew, her room was filled with CDs of rock music, including musicians like Peter Frampton and Joe Satriani.
Kelly then found a friend in her guitar. It was relatively easier to carry around and the cool musicians that Kelly fell in love with were also guitarists. And although her newfound company might have hurt her fingers and often frustrated her, even someone as young as her understood what a soulmate was.
Music had become her safe place, the only space where she could be free to express herself. At the time, young Kelly didn’t know a lot of things in life, but she knew she wanted to stay in that world for a long time.
Kelly moved to Canada with her mother when she was 14. A few years later, her idol Peter Frampton happened to have a show in Vancouver. Face-flushed Kelly then waited outside a casino for hours in hope to give him her CD. What she didn’t expect was that Frampton didn’t just listen to her music, he also loved it.
One miracle to the next, not only Kelly was able to deliver an excellent performance with Frampton by her side, she also received a full-scholarship from one of the best music schools in the world, Berklee College of Music.
‘Spirits’: The Journey Begins
Fresh out of Berklee, after majoring in musical performance and minoring in music production and composition, 25 year old Kelly Yu debuted with a 10 track album, Spirits, in 2014. She composed 8 songs under the label of Sony Music Taiwan.
Kelly expressed that Spirits was a diary of her struggles and determination to pursue music. Being an immigrant living on her own at such a young age, college was a tough time for her. There weren’t many Asians in Berklee at the time, let alone Asian women, who understood how hard it was for her to adjust and fit in.
College also made it harder for her to make friends or have activities other than her education. She had to practice for more than 10 hours a day to maintain her grades and scholarship. She summarized these trials and tribulations in songs like People Who Love Me, Sing for You, The Girl in Love with Electric Guitar, as well as the title track Spirits.
The album Spirits contains contemplative and wistful lyrics balanced out by optimistic rhythm and harmony. These songs are accompanied by bright harmonic colors, primarily using diatonic progressions with slight chromatic harmony in between.
Diatonic scale or progression represents the chords that are within the key center. Chromatic, on the other hand, refers to notes or chords that are foreign to the key center, oftentimes to create tension or add more color. Here is the summary:
Diatonic Progression Scale
Let’s say that a composer uses the III (major) chord. That chord would be chromatic or foreign, because in a diatonic scale, the three should be a minor key (iii). In this case, the III major chord is a chromatic mediant.
Composers often use chromatic harmony to emphasize specific parts. For her debut album, Kelly used the most common chromatic chords in pop music, the III major (chromatic mediant) and the iv minor (chromatic subdominant).
Harmony is subjective. Though one could argue that western music hegemony and market play a role in its intersubjective influence. To me personally, the III major always feels like some sort of emotional pull, a punctuation. The iv minor on the other hand tends to give a hopeful sound despite the uneven odds, in most contexts at least.
In the song Spirits, Kelly used F major as the key center. Most composers and theorists consider F major, as well as Db major, as the happiest keys. With such an optimistic footing, Kelly tried to incorporate a small dose of chromatic harmony in the chorus for more nuance.
F — Gm — A7 (chromatic mediant) — Dm7 — C — Bb — C
Bb - C - Am7 - Gm7 - Bbm (chromatic subdominant) - FI’m not afraid of failure
nor am I afraid of leaving regrets
No one can replace them so they exist for a better future
Although life is harder than imagined
A smile can overcome challenges
and fire up the fighting spirit
I’m getting better and better
I must be better
Spirits is a graceful acknowledgement of both persistence and hope wrapped in a youthful sound. Young Kelly had gone through many obstacles to be where she was. And as the girl with an electric guitar stepped into the unknown, she knew that the only way to go was forward.
The ‘Decent’ Singer
In December 2017, Kelly released Decency, a single as well as an original soundtrack for her movie The Ex-File 3: Return of the Exes. The movie’s popularity skyrocketed in early 2018, beating one of its strongest contenders, Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2018), at the Chinese box office. The movie generated 306.5 million USD and was the eighth highest grossing movie in 2018.
Along with the movie, it came as no surprise that Decency became her arguably most career defining moment as a musician, topping major music charts and eventually winning The 23rd Huading Award for Best Movie Song in 2018.
Decency consists of simple melancholic melodies, accompanied primarily by diatonic triads. Even with the use of chromatic mediant as some sort of punctuation in certain parts, Decency follows a fairly typical pop harmonic progression in the key of Bb major.
The song relies heavily on its simplicity to speak to a wider general audience. But what Kelly probably didn’t realize at the time, the way people resonated with Decency ended up as the creation of a ghost that haunted her for years to come. In a blink of an eye, Kelly Yu, the girl with a guitar, turned into Kelly Yu, the ‘Decent’ singer.
The invitations were sent and the stages were set, Kelly Yu was one of the most anticipated performers in 2018. It was a blessing, of course, one that Kelly didn’t take for granted, to be able to perform on so many shows and stages. However, being merely recognized for one hit song was not in Kelly’s plans.
In April 2018, Kelly released another single, Accompany. With this song, Kelly tried to incorporate slightly more decorative harmonies with a time signature change in the chorus. But as much as it was a successful song commercially, the ghost of Decency remained.
Setting the Lines with ‘Undefined’
Kelly came up with her sophomore album Undefined in late 2018. The album consists of 10 songs along with Decency and Accompany. She expressed that the album was a journey of unresolved love expressions, actively scrutinizing every concept of love with ‘undefined’ as the primary conclusion.
Harmonically, Kelly introduced a much richer vocabulary on this album than her previous works. It’s almost as if she was trying to prove herself as a composer and Decency was far from being her best song.
If we take Deep Conversation as an example, the song uses A major as the key center, the tonic, or the ‘home’. Starting from the IV chord, Dmaj7, which often resolves to the tonic, Kelly played around with secondary dominants or the V of V (five of five) before resolving it to the tonic (I).
This V-I progression is the most common ‘tension and release.’ ‘Tension and release’ is the foundation of storytelling using harmony. Dominant chords (V) create tension that often need to be resolved with notes that are in the tonic, usually the I or the vi chord.
Think of it as a story. Any story we all are familiar with has conflict and resolution. It’s the same thing with harmony. ‘Tension’ plays the role of the conflict-maker and ‘Release’ serves as the resolution.
Secondary dominants essentially serve as a way to create tension that sounds remote to the key center. They build an illusion of changing keys without actually changing them. This set of progression adds more drama to the melodies that we listen to.
The harmonic progression for the verse in Deep Conversation is:
Dmaj7 — Amaj7 — Dmaj7 — E/F# — B7 — Bm7 — B — E (timestamp: 0:34-0:44)Dmaj7 going to the Amaj7 is fairly typical; it’s IV going to I, all bright colors, all in the key of A. In the second part, the DMaj7 is followed by E/F#. E is the dominant five of A major, and even with the slight discomfort of putting E and F# on the bass together, the F# bass is still in the key of A (the six or vi).
The chord E/F# is then followed by B7 which is not in the key of A major. But that’s okay because F# in E/F# is the five of B7, and B is the five of E, which is also the five of A. So this harmonic progression is a circle of five of five of five. Therefore, the verse gives us two secondary dominants before eventually going back home to the key of A, our tonic.
In the verse, this circle of secondary dominants are used to paint the dramatic scene of the following lyrics:
Calm down and think about
What’s happened to us
Some people live too smoothly
Some always see flowers in the fog
Back to this night
Awaken the mouth that’s been hiding for too long
Deep conversation
To me, the circle of F#, B, E to emphasize the lyric ‘deep conversation’ is quite nerve-wrecking. It’s the heart pounding that you experience after being told you ‘need to talk’.
Kelly also inserted this type of progression to her other songs, such as The Past. What differs from Deep Conversation, the circle of five of five (…and so on), or we can call it the circle of fifths, is now used for modulation.
Modulation, in this case, is basically changing a key center to a different key center. For The Past, the song modulates from A major (the first part of the verse) to C major (the second part of the verse).
Changing keys from A major to C major is untypical because they don’t share the same chord scales. Since she specifically wanted C major, and we’ll understand why later in the chorus, she implemented the circle of fifths to be able to get there.
The harmonic progression for the verse is:
A — C#7 — F#m — D/F# — Em — Am (Timestamp: 0:23-0:37)Dm — G — C — Em7 — E — A (Timestamp: 0:37-0:50)The Em in the first part of the verse is not in the key of A. It is the V minor and it sounds a bit alien than its former counterparts. But with this foreign key, we’re entering the circle of fifths that we talked about earlier.
Em is the five of Am, which is also the five of Dm. And by the time we reach Dm, it goes to G and immediately resolves to C. Dm and G are the ii and V chord, respectively, of the key of C. The ii-V-I progression to resolve back to the tonic is probably the most popular progression in contemporary harmony.
The second part of the verse is in a different key (C major) than the first (A major). This distinctive sound fits so well with the following lyrics:
[A major] — timestamp: 0:23–0:37
I remember asking about the future, you and me
A promise was made without saying a word
[C major] — timestamp: 0:37–0:50
In future life, doesn’t matter how much I ask
The you in tears are so speckled
These two parts are told in a different sound, drawing a line between the past and present. There’s a lot that harmony can do to paint a certain context to the melodies and lyrics, and this particular way is one of my favorites.
One of my main questions when I first listened to this song was, which key is she going to use to paint the chorus? Is it going to be the past or the present sound?
The ending part of the verse goes back to the first tonic, A major. However, just before chorus comes, the song modulates to the key of A minor, which is the parallel minor of C major. Both A minor and C major chord scales have the same diatonic chords with a slight difference in the sequence scales of the degree.
C major chord scale:
C - Dm - Em - F - G - Am - Bdim
A minor chord scale:
Am - Bdim - C - Dm - Em - F - GTo answer the question, Kelly decided to use the present sound with a different quality. The chorus is in Am, paralleling a gloomier version of C major, ultimately mixing the past and present sounds. And good Lord does it sound good with these lyrics:
Let the past go and don’t drag it anymore
Who can willing say that it’s over?
The more we hold on, the more it feels like constant torture
Still pondering about right and wrong
…and…
Let the past go and don’t drag it anymore
Some people are still willing to love
If we could go back to a certain moment in the past
Would we still be happy?
Ending the chorus with an A on the bass of Am gives her a chance to go back to A major by using an E (the V of A major) in between. In the end, right after the last chorus, the song goes back to the past sound (A major), before going through the same sequence to the present sound (C major) and ending it yet again with a bittersweet A minor for the following lyrics:
I remember asking about the future, you and me
Maybe there would be a place for me
Maybe I’ll be busy running about and buried by life
At worst, if you look back, you still have me
One song that completely blew my mind was Injured. The song is so confusing to me and as I’m writing this, I’m still somewhat at a loss for words.
Frankly, I’m still unsure of the scale used for the verses. There’s too little information and the best I can come up with is it’s in A melodic minor, because of the G# at the end of each bar, and the harmony goes back and forth between Am and A with an E in between. With barely any knowledge of the key center, this part makes me feel like I have nothing to rely on, no ground to stand on.
The constant feeling of wonder and confusion perfectly reflects the lyrics where the narrator is trying to illustrate the wounds and put it into words.
Love often falls into the absurdity of drinking poison to quench thirst
Survivors become brave
After the memories rage, the ruins and broken walls are cleared
In the desolation, waiting for repairs
…and…
The body has long been tired
But the heart is still irrationally entangled
Making pain become microscopic
Time disintegrates into fragments and pieces
Even breathing is difficult
The key then modulates in a strange way to Eb major as the new ‘home’ (timestamp: 00:35), where the harmony stays in a natural diatonic pop progression. However, the melody actually starts with an F, which clashes with Eb, making it sound like we’re not starting from Eb; we’re starting from a dissonant Gm7#5/Eb.
In this pre-chorus, it sounds as if the melodies and the harmony are in a disagreement. It’s like the harmony has found a resting place in a simple Eb major scale but the melody has yet to recover from a dizzying space of A melodic minor.
This lack of mutual understanding between the harmony and melodies occurs in the following lyrics:
About love, the details are always vague
Yet many talk about how many injuries there are eloquently
Silence is difficult to bear
They’re all pretentious, thinking they can act recklessly
I suppose Kelly was trying to encapsulate the complexity of recovery. Healing takes time and sometimes, some parts of us find closure sooner than others.
By the time we reach the chorus, the narrator has finished rationalizing the injury. Both the harmony and melody are secured in a pleasant natural diatonic Eb major scale, giving the song a very satisfying ending after an exhausting journey of finding a way home.
This progression is too deliberate for it to be unintentional. The chorus specifically talks about acceptance with the injury. There is peace to be found even with pain and agony.
Touch the wound
Accept the absurdity
Find freedom eagerly
Refrain from holding back
Ultimately, I think of this album as a statement of her unwillingness to be defined as anything. Many people might still perceive her as the singer of Decency. And they might be disappointed that she refused to make ‘another Decency’. But with this album, she made herself clear, at the very least to herself, that she was yet to be defined, if not never.
‘Intermezzo’: The Dramatic Storyteller
Post-Undefined, Kelly was no longer the popular Decent singer. She was no longer popular, period. Her refusal to perform Decency had costed her the split second fame she took pleasure in. “I don’t wish to sing this song [Decency] anymore. But I don’t have the rights to make people forget about it. I will try harder to compose better songs,” said Kelly in 2021.
On September 16th, Kelly’s third album Intermezzo (2021) was released. It was described as ‘a theater you suddenly stumbled into in one afternoon.’ When you hear this album, and I quote, it’s like the lights dim and the curtains open all at once and you begin to watch a play with yourself as the protagonist.
Intermezzo is a term used to describe a musical composition in between acts or plays, usually in opera. In music, this term is commonly used interchangeably with the word interlude, which means an instrumental break in a piece of music.
Acting as both composer and producer, Kelly divided the album into three acts, Initialization, Self-healing, and Worry-free. With these acts in mind, Intermezzo was expected to be her most theatrical work to date and boy, did she deliver.
The First Act
The first act consists of three songs, Boy in White, Testing Game, and You Are. In the Initialization section, the songs mainly reflect self-scrutiny and self-discovery. Testing Game, in particular, uses a breakup as the primary context of self-initialization.
Kelly used familiar diatonic progressions to paint the scenes for the most part. She tried to slightly add more color using chromatic chords, mostly the four minor (iv) and three major (III). Take Boy in White and Testing Game. They contain pop song progressions with some chromatic mediants in between the tonic and the submediant chord.
You Are is relatively more colorful than its first two peers. Since it’s the final section of the first act, You Are serves as the leading piece towards the second act. In order to add more nuance to this piece without actually crossing the line between the divided acts, Kelly used another approach and that was utilizing inversions.
Harmonic inversion essentially means rearrangement of a chord. For instance, the C major consists of the note C, E, and G. But we can rearrange that so that the lowest note becomes anything other than the root note, which is C. Take C/E as an example. C/E is practically just moving the E so that it becomes the bass note; E — C — G. Since we are physically more aware of lower sounds, changing the bass notes can actually recontextualize chords.
In You Are, the Chinese lyrics of the chorus use a diatonic progression with chromatic supertonic (II) and mediant (III). The progression goes like this:
Bbmaj7 - D - Gm - D7/F# - Bb/F - C7/E - Eb - F - BbWe’re starting with the tonic (I) going to the chromatic mediant (III) so that the tension can resolve to Gm (vi). And from that Gm, we are entering the recontextualization of the harmonic progression by rearranging the bass notes.
If we put those inversions away, the progression goes:
Gm (vi) - D7 (III) - Bb (I) - C7 (II) - Eb (IV) - F (V) - Bb (I)As we can see, the scale moves up (I-II-IV) before it resolves from the dominant chord (V) to the tonic (I). However with the inversions, the bass note actually descends half-step from G to Eb.
G (the root note of Gm) - F# (the 1st inversion of D7) -
F (the 2nd inversion of Bb) - E (the 1st inversion of C7) -
Eb (the root note of Eb)In contrast with the harmonic scale, the descending bassline makes this specific part sound like we’re going down to the ground. And I love how Kelly decided to use this rearrangement for certain lyrics that have such a delicate balance between ups and downs, hardships and perseverance, loneliness and acceptance.
1) Embrace the loneliest light in the gentle body
2) The wounds you’ve received is like a flower blooming into a boundless mountain
3) We are stuck in this strange ocean without needing direction
4) This silent wandering can have a pair of wings to disperse the heart
…and my favorite…
5) Fly until we’re unable to fly
The Second Act
Kelly put Leeway as an entrance to the second act. In this section, we are expecting to set a foot into the most dramatic sequence of stories in this album. Well, actually, this act contains Leeway, Summer Waves, and Match-up and I still don’t get why Summer Waves is there. The song does not match the emotional setting portrayed by its two confrères. It feels like a commercial break more than anything.
Leeway starts in the key of Eb major with a vi-IV-I-V progression in the chorus. Starting with a submediant chord (vi) and ending the progression with a dominant chord (V) is fairly common in pop and pop-punk songs. In fact, this progression is considered as the ‘angsty twin’ of the most popular 4-chord pop progression, I-V-vi-IV.
The song tells a story about a doomed love. The vi-IV-I-V progression, the angst harmony, is used to accompany her statement about the relationship.
Leave some leeway for someone? No one needs it
There’s no need to waste time mourning
The whole world is watching, so what?
If you don’t love enough, you should let it go
Let me reflect deeply on myself
Forgetting is the key to recovery
This straightforward loop of vi-IV-I-V progression then clashes with a dissonance at the end of the second chorus. Instead of continuing the loop of Cm — Ab — Eb — Bb in the key of Eb major, the Bb chord is followed by F# major, the augmented fifth of Bb.
Augmented fifth is basically raising the fifth note by a semitone or half-step. And it’s such a dissonant sound, completely destroying the pleasant and natural diatonic sounds we’re already familiar with.
The augmented fifth interval of Bb and F# major occurs to transition from the second chorus to the interlude. The song then transforms to a completely brand new key center, B major, using F# as the five (V) of B.
The chorus | InterludeCm - Ab - Eb - Bb - | F# - D#m - A#m7 - D#m - Emaj7 - C#m - D# - G#m -
A#7 - E - C# - C#m - D# or EbIn the interlude section, notice that there is no more F# (dominant chord or V). Kelly used an alternative for typical descending V-IV and that is VII7-IV (A#7 to E). This specific progression creates the same amount of tension, if not more, with additional dramatic tendencies brought out by the VII chord.
By the time song reaches D#, the chromatic mediant or III major of B, the sound suddenly gets quieter. This D# then enharmonically tranfigures itself back to Eb, the first tonic of the whole song before the disruption of F#.
D# and Eb are essentially the same key. However, theoretically, writing D# or Eb depends on the context of the whole scale. We don’t write Eb in a B major scale simply because there already is an E in the scale, the IV chord. Writing Eb in B major scale would be enharmonic; same sound, different notation.
Contextually, the way we approach the end of the interlude to the next section is that the III major of B becomes the tonic of Eb. In simpler words, D# then rewrites itself back to Eb in a different context despite having the exact same notes.
And then this happens.
Just as we are back to the original home, Eb, the song then modulates yet again using a nasty dissonance of Abaug or Ab augmented to the new tonic, E major. Instead of using a common V-I progression to modulate, Kelly decided to use a dissonant augmented chord to bring us the climactic chorus we’re all yearning for.
Augmented chords consist of symmetrical intervals, with the notes usually serving as a leading tone towards anything that is just a half-step interval from the note. Abaug consists of Ab, C, and E. The disturbing Abaug is then resolved by C#m, the vi of E, the new tonic. Think of the C in Abaug as the leading tone towards the C# of C#m, which is just a semitone away.
This gut-wrenching modulation from Eb to E major puts an emphasis on the last chorus where the narrator defends her initial statement with additional bitterness and a little bit of sarcasm:
Leave some leeway for whom? It’s just bothersome
It’s my fault that I expect too much from you
Who says I have to smile reluctantly?
Hate is more polite than entanglement
Let me reflect deeply on myself
Not being able to forget is really just ridiculous
... commercial break of Summer Waves ...You read it right. I skipped Summer Waves. For the sake of my sanity, let’s move on.
Usually, composers use a single chord to accompany a few notes or melodies. But in Match-up, the final section of the second act, the harmony progresses as dynamically as the melodies. In certain parts of the song, the harmony even feels like it serves as counter-melodies, filling the silent gaps in between the primary melodies.
One way to use this dynamic harmony is through passing chords. Passing chord is a chord that connects two different, usually, diatonic chords. You can put any type of passing chord to create a more nuanced storytelling, be it diatonic or chromatic, consonant or dissonant.
In Match-up, Kelly inserted all kinds of passing chords, both diatonic and chromatic, as well as incorporating dissonance using augmented chords.
Some examples of passing chords in the verses of Match-up:
Eb/F - | B - Faug - F7 - | Bbm7 (Timestamp: 0:00-0:05)Bbm7 - | Dbm7/Ab - Gb7 - Eaug - | Db/Eb - Eb (Timestamp: 0:48-0:52)In the first chorus, pay close attention to the piano chords and hear how dynamic they are to fill in the gaps between melodies, performing themselves as counter-melodies.
This song encapsulates a post-breakup stage, in which Kelly believed that two former-partners should not disturb one another. The way each person decides to process their breakup is their own business.
Whatever you want, it’s fine by me
I’m willing to cooperate with you to the end
Keep your distance or keep me in your heart
That’s your right
The way I’d miss you
It’s purely my own business
Whether it’s enjoyment or indulgence, I’ll clarify it
Please don’t mind, I hope you can cooperate
The relationship between the lyrics and the harmonic context is quite ironic to me. The more I listen to this song, the more I start to think that the melodies and the harmonic counter-melodies are two essential characters, the former-partners. Throughout the song, the counter-melodies seem to haunt the primary melodies, unwilling to cooperate and ‘disturbing’ the partner.
In the climax of the song, the last chorus, Kelly used a different harmonic accompaniment. Instead of using the tonic, she decided to use the six minor, Fm7. Composers tend to use different colors to the same melodic sequence as punctuation. In this case, to the lyrics as follow:
I want to think of you like this
It means I can afford it
Whether to stop or go forward is not up to me
Why don’t you cooperate and play this game?
Also have tacit understanding
In the first chorus, Kelly was merely asking. In the climactic part of the song, she is commanding. In this chorus, the counter-melodies, the former-partner that wouldn’t leave her alone before, are no longer there. The chords are as firm as her statement. At last, they are finally able to cooperate.
The Third Act
Reaching the final act, we are heading for the resolution. The songs in this section consist of Wonder or Not, The Last Snow, and Already Gone. This set of songs are relatively more relaxed. Yes, there is a but here.
Wonder or Not and Already Gone primarily use diatonic chords with zero dissonance and no complicated modulation. Both talk about living freely, with the latter taking a more bittersweet direction.
However, one particular song I found quite strange the first time I heard it was The Last Snow. The Last Snow took quite a turn from the unambiguous pop harmony that Wonder or Not and Already Gone are locked in. Personally, if I were to rearrange the album tracks, I would swap Summer Waves and The Last Snow.
The Last Snow is not as bombastic as Leeway and Match-up. But it captures enough drama that would be a satisfying last touch of the second act, quieting down the conflict for a bit before the final act takes place.
The song is also talking about a post-breakup phase. Even so, The Last Snow is about cleaning up the last pieces of the relationship that’s already long gone. Using snow as an analogy for the remains of said relationship, the narrator is in the process of sweeping off the snow in front of her door.
It sounds more like a closure than anything else, and it is. But after the high drama of breaking up in Leeway and wanting to be left alone in Match-up, as it turns out, getting rid of the snow is not a smooth sailing process.
Looking back at the journey I have traveled
Snowflakes have blurred my vision
Emotions have accumulated into a thick longing
Blocking the only way out
In the verse, Kelly inserted a few passing chords to express the bittersweet quality of moving on. These passing chords are often only half the duration of a quarter note. In other words, they serve as additional colors and immediately resolve to more familiar, natural diatonic sounds.
Kelly also used these passing chords in the chorus. For instance, this very poignant progression in the second part of the last chorus:
Emaj7 — F#7/A# — D#m — D#7/G — A#dim — G#m (Timestamp: 3:15-3:28)The progression above is essentially a more colorful version of the popular IV-V-iii-vi progression. But in between D#m (iii) and G#m (vi), Kelly put these melancholic passing chords, the III major and the VIIdiminished chords. This progression occurs as a build-up for the high B note that Kelly belts out for the passionate ‘never asked me for help’ in these following lyrics:
Get used to loneliness, you will naturally overcome it
You’ve never asked me for help
Memories will melt, no need to blindly bless me
Bless me
This dramatic escalation then resolves nicely back to the tonic, the I chord, using a straightforward ii-V-I progression. By the time we reach the tonic, the narrator has thoroughly swept off the snow in front of the door and took a step out into the world.
We are now at the final scene with Already Gone. There’s not much to analyze harmonically since the song solely stays in simple yet pleasant diatonic triads. Lyrically, though, I would argue that this song couldn’t have been more perfect as closure.
I’ll take the fall so I have room to fly
I’m on my own, now I’m a butterfly
The past, a door that I close and leave behind
You say it’s bittersweet, you say you’re incomplete
But I’m already gone, you know I’m moving on
Already Gone concludes the long, frustrating, beautiful, and gratifying journey of Intermezzo. It’s an exquisite encapsulation of self-discovery, self-healing, and self-determination, the main acts of the album.
Kelly took harmonic storytelling to a next level in this album. We feel the highs and lows as the story progresses one song at a time. And when the intermezzo gradually fades into nothingness, the curtain closes, the lights are on, we find ourselves back in the real world.
Riding the Wind and Waves
In early 2022, Kelly was revealed to be one of the contestants for arguably the most anticipated variety show in China, Riding the Wind and Waves season 3. The show brought in 30 female public figures over the age of 30 to perform on stage, including the Taiwanese sweetheart Cyndi Wang, vocal powerhouse Sitar Tan, as well as K-pop superstar Jessica Jung.
Like many other contestants, Kelly had to face challenges in order to present a good show. She was a musician with zero experience in dancing. Since the show used a girl group format, she was forced to learn new things and cooperate with unfamiliar people.
24 hours after the last episode aired, Riding the Wind and Waves season 3 had surpassed over 5,6 billion views. It had become the show’s most successful season on Mango TV, a paid television channel platform.
Thanks to this show’s popularity, Kelly gained a lot of new fans in China and overseas. Most of these admirers had known her beforehand for being the singer of Decency. The rest, including me, had never heard of her before. But the two sides agreed that this woman was worth getting to know.
Kelly finished in the top 3 right after Cyndi Wang and Jessica Jung respectively. In her speech, she told the audience that a lot of things had changed for her while at the same time, she was still the same person before the show.
This sentiment started making more sense to me after she released new singles post-Riding the Wind and Waves. Just as I felt like I knew her better musically, she took me by surprise with her songs Hedgehog, I Used to be You, and Beautiful.
Hedgehog was her first sing-and-dance song as opposed to her usual angsty live band music. Using an upbeat rhythm to set the atmosphere, she used predominantly minor chords to express her personality. The way I see it, Kelly Yu, minor chords, and a Fender guitar are a match made in heaven.
Although the way she approached her recent music was different, the theme of the song still pretty much summed up what she always considered herself as for years; a hedgehog, sharp on the outside but is actually soft-hearted and determined.
Stay away from the crowd
Guard against arrogance
Live humbly
Avoid the conventional
Widen my horizon
Insist in creating
Slow down the time
Be crazy until old
Although people accuse me for being too sharp
I don’t want to care
I want to live like an elegant hedgehog in my own world
This attitude then tempered down with her second single after the show, I Used to be You. Taking a much softer approach to express self-love and acceptance, she brought her groupmate and newfound actress friend, Cici Wang, to write the lyrics and sing the song with her.
I Used to be You was her first duet, ever. She always perceived the music scene as the world she was living in alone. Then there was this tall girl who had zero knowledge in music, genuinely interested in Kelly’s world, asking her to teach her anything so that she could be a part of it.
It was revealed by Cici Wang that Kelly wanted her to participate in a song she was working on. In a break between filming Riding the Wind and Waves, Kelly asked her whether or not she could write lyrics. “If you dare to let me try, then I will dare to write,” Cici answered confidently.
With Cici Wang by her side, Kelly produced the least complex project she had ever put out. The song uses the key G major from start to finish, which is arguably the easiest key to work with right after C major. This song also consists of diatonic triads with almost nonexistent complexity in terms of harmonic accompaniment.
I suppose it was her way to re-introduce the world that she fell in love with since she was 4 in the simplest form, the same way she did to her duet partner. It’s never too late to ride the unfamiliar winds and waves even at the age of 30. Especially at the age of 30.
For her birthday in November 7th 2022, Kelly released another single, Beautiful. She dedicated this song to people who had stuck by her side, as well as people who’d just come into her life.
Beautiful was her first genuine love song. Throughout her career, she only composed angsty love songs in terms of lyrics, composition, and arrangement. With Beautiful, she embraced the idea of a carefree love, using bright harmonic colors in the key of A major, as well as a playful guitar solo before the last chorus.
You are so beautiful
When the spring breeze meets you, the flowers will bloom
When the dark clouds meet you, the sky will turn blue
You are so beautiful
The one who loves you will come and accompany you
Just like me, because you’re never alone
After Riding the Wind and Waves, Kelly had undergone a series of musical contentment. Now she could produce any song she wanted and without worrying about public recognition. The songs she put out had been quite experimental for her, too; first sing-and-dance song, first duet, first happy love song.
All of these wouldn’t have been possible had she not met the other contestants. Throughout the show, she learned to empathize with her peers and appreciate the beauty of music across genres and expressions, while at the same time still holding onto her own beliefs.
Sing a rock song in a G chord
Sing out the bittersweetness of my ordinary dream
Not having money isn’t pathetic, what’s pathetic is not having a dream
I still have people who love me and my small rock band
I don’t want to change the cruel world
I just want to not be changed by the world
I don’t care how far my dream is in the future
I just don’t want to regret today
At the age of 33, Kelly let go of her fear of uncertainty within the entertainment industry. And with so many friends who were now only one call away from her, she was no longer lonely in the music world.
Coda: The Story Continues
Life comes at us in waves. Kelly understood this sentiment really well. She had gone through hardships as a young immigrant, struggles of keeping friendships in the past, and the burden of associations in between career highs and lows. Yet she persisted the same belief she had when she debuted; challenges exist for a better future.
Kelly Yu’s musical journey is a celebration of life at its purest form. It’s an honest recognition that growth is rarely linear. Just because you have overcome something, doesn’t mean you can’t redefine certain moments in the past and learn from them all over again.
Kelly had spent most of her career trying to compose bigger songs than Decency. As it turned out, she never needed to make bigger songs, otherwise it would only create the same cycle of trying to produce more hit songs. She needed to be bigger than the song itself and Riding the Wind and Waves gave her exactly that.
Years ago, Kelly might have thought that she would never sing Decency again. This year, though, the ghost of Decency turned into a blissful reminder that she was heard and loved. In August 2022, she performed the song with the biggest smile on her face.
Like each and every one of us, Kelly is constantly moving from one intermezzo to the next. What’s to come is ever unknown. And there’s never a perfect ending to conclude her musical story. But maybe that’s the most frustrating and beautiful thing about human beings; ever changing and ever becoming.
More of Kelly Yu
About me
Is a regular office worker who abandoned her dream of formally studying music many years ago. Discovered Kelly Yu in 2022 and found herself revisiting her memorable life as a music theory nerd and guitar player.
*) Special thanks to my best friend, my soulmate, my partner in crime, you know who you are! Not only have you encouraged me to write this, you’re also the reason I’m in such a comfortable stage to celebrate every single memory in my life, even those I’ve left behind and tried to forget. The road ahead is only filled with blooming flowers now that I know I get to write every page with you on it.
