Weekly Billboard Theory — All The Stars
I’ve written a lot about Kendrick’s music since I started this series. This will be my fifth and probably least favorite writeup. I don’t want to waste too much time on the intro so we’ll just get right to it, I’m not sure if I think this is a good song.
Kendrick Lamar & SZA
Key: Eb Major
Tempo: 97 BPM
There are plenty of redeeming qualities to the song. Easy to follow form, appropriate length, and really masterful production. I often talk about how songs progress in these write-ups and the progression of “All The Stars” might be one of the best we’ve discussed. The first 18 seconds of the song consist of a synth bass, simple drum pattern, and an ethereal synth pad/string sound (I’m not sure the best way to describe this but you’ll understand what I mean when you listen to the track. Kendrick’s vocals enter with what will serve as the pre-chorus. One of the reasons why I enjoy Kendrick so much is that he isn’t afraid to use his voice in unique ways and “All The Stars” is no exception to this. His voice is heavily filtered to make it sound more instrumental than vocal. SZA enters at 0:38 along with more percussion and synth pads to signify the chorus. Following the chorus, we hear a traditional rap verse from Kendrick with the same instrumentation as the opening of the song. Some additional percussion is sprinkled in as the verse repeats once. Second chorus? Real strings! This adds a ~cinematic vibe~ to the song which is obviously appropriate because it’s a part of the “Black Panther” soundtrack. Second verse is SZA’s time to shine as the instrumentation is stripped back to the beginning. However, this time the instrumentation drops out several time to help showcase SZA. The strings reenter towards the end of this verse helping us climb up to the climax of the song. Then we get another Kendrick pre-chorus, this time with SZA overdubbing and MORE STRINGS BAYBAY! And then we have the final ~most cinematic~ chorus before ending with a little bit of the intro.
Whew. That was a lot. “Sure seems like you like this song!”, you cry. Well, there are aspects I like about this song but we’re about to get into why I’m not crazy about “All The Stars”. Let’s start with the bass. It’s pretty stagnant. There are some passing tones so it’s leaps and bounds above something like “Bad At Love”. This is a rare case where I’d say the bass being blasé works in the song’s favor. Because it is so spread out, it sounds like we get two short alternating chord progressions rather than one long one. Also, the progression of the song is pretty unique which helps maintain my interest. Unfortunately, I think this progression is what causes some trouble to my ears.
Back and forth between IV and ii isn’t unheard of but not something that I think we’ve seen before in one of these write-ups. If you’ll notice the second four measures, I notated them as going back and forth between vi and iii (with a question mark). iii is pretty rare and almost never found in classical music. Usually, if the third scale degree is in the bass it signifies a I chord in first inversion, but we don’t really have any other “major” sounding elements occurring. It could also be a vi in second inversion which wouldn’t be too different in this case. This differentiation doesn’t really matter as the chord goes back and forth, but definitely something weird.
The pre-chorus melody is…fine. It’s largely pentatonic except when it peaks up to those Abs. If you’ve been keeping score at home, this is actually similar to one of the melodies in “LOVE.” that I wrote about a few weeks ago. Cool! Nothing too special here but if you look closely you might notice a difference between the bassline in the intro compared to the one we’re looking at right now. I almost missed this when I first notated this out and it actually doesn’t even occur at the end of the first pre-chorus. However, it happens every pre-chorus after that initial one. But yeah, that last measure is sonically different. We can think of that Bb as either a V chord and the G as a lower neighbor or think of that entire measure as a non-harmonic motion to get us to the Ab in the following measure. Pick your poison.
“Wow, seems like there’s still more interesting stuff going on. You must really like it.” Well, we’re about to get to where this song loses me. The chorus melody fits over some of the chords kinda weird. Look out below. The first measure on there is the pickup to the chorus so we’re not going to worry about the chord there. The second measure (which is the first actual measure of the chorus), is just pentatonic over the IV chord. Piece of cake. Go to that red oval to get to some tough stuff. In the bass, we have an F signifying the ii chord. Well, we had been calling it a two chord before. Above it, the melody outlines a different chord. It descends to reveal a Gmin7 chord, which would be an extended version of the three chord. What makes this especially weird is that F in the bass would be the 7th of that iii chord. “Well, the melody immediately repeats, maybe it will fit better over the next chord?” Nope! Not really! It goes back to the IV, remember? Again, only one note overlaps between the two chords but this time it is the last pitch of the melody.
That melodic pattern from the first half of the chorus repeats but this time it is bumped up a little bit. However, this doesn’t really work how (I feel) that it should. See that not circled in blue? It’s the only non-pentatonic note and it repeats throughout the chorus. Do you remember what that note is called in relationship to the Eb major scale? It’s the 7th scale degree and it’s also called the leading tone. The leading tone USUALLY ~leads~ us up to the tonic. We’re used to hearing it do that. HOWEVER! That doesn’t happen here. This is probably why this copy and pasting of this melodic idea sounds so out of place to me.
Lastly, we have a similar situation as the red with the green. Things are a little muddier here because the Cs wouldn’t belong with a traditional three note chord so I’m thinking about omitting them. Without the C, this outlines a G minor chord which would be a iii. Remember how I said that was pretty uncommon? Well, when it’s over the vi chord that iii turns it all into a vi9. This is the first time we’ve got some kind of resolution I guess. At this point though, I’ve already been completely torn away from the song because of this angular melody. It’s not bad per se but it functions in a weird way where we don’t really get our footing. If this was during a bridge or pre-chorus, I wouldn’t think too much of it but a chorus should be the most singable part of a song. THEN AGAIN! Maybe by being so distinct it has it’s own type of importance. Idk. Ultimately, I shouldn’t have to try this hard to justify whether a song is good or not. Ya know?
Guess what! I have recommended listening for this week! It’s not super relevant to this posting and I’m a little late to the game on it but I can’t stop listening to “Get You” by Daniel Caesar with Kali Uchis. I loooove how sparse the bass is in it and yeah he’s a pretty good singer too.
What are we looking at next week? Obviously Drake is still number one. But! BUT! We have a new contender at the number two spot with Post Malone and Ty Dolla $ign’s “Psycho”. I was pretty meh on “Rockstar” and I haven’t had to write about whatever Ty Dolla $ign’s previous hit was so who knows how I’ll feel about “Psycho”. You will! Next week! You’ll know how I feel about it! See ya then.
