Weekly Billboard Theory — Congratulations
I low key can’t stand how Post Malone looks but gosh dang it do I love some of his songs. I just realized that he performs “White Iverson” after hearing it probably a hundred times or so. His latest hit, “Congratulations”, is a very simple song that does a lot of stuff right. Let’s get into it.
Post Malone ft. Quavo
Key: F# Major (lol)
Tempo: 124 BPM
This song only uses two chords. “Don’t you hate songs that are super simple?” Nope! Heck, a song could use one chord and I’d be totally fine with it if the performance finds a way to keep that one chord interesting. Time after time I mention how pop music strongly relies on the IV chord compared to how classical music is based around the V, right? Well the only two chords of “Congratulations” are IV and I. Guess what? They find a way to keep it interesting.
Let’s go into why I’m fine with this chord progression. The first two measures above are the IV chords but arpeggiated (broken up). You might notice that the third is missing so we normally wouldn’t be able to discern whether the chord was major or minor. Fortunately, there are some additional pitches added to these broken up chords that provide us with context clues to decide that these are IV chords. I had briefly touched on seventh chords when discussing a terrible song, but they function a little differently in “Congratulations”. Basically, when you take a simple three note chord (like a IV, for example) and add some pitches on top it will be called an extended chord. This is very common in jazz music and is less common in pop music but certainly helps to keep things interesting. Essentially, by adding more pitches on top of the chords we are able to get more interesting sounds and ~color~. Some of the most common examples of extended chords are Major 7th and Major 9th chords.
Look above and you’ll see two chords broken up. We have a major seventh chord on the left. We get this by taking a major triad, duh, and following up the scale to the seventh pitch above the root of the chord. LISTEN CLOSELY! This is a MAJOR seventh because it is based off the tonic of F#. If you would follow the scale but start off a different pitch you could potentially get a DOMINANT seventh. For example, if ya start on the V chord and do this you’d get a dominant seventh chord. Another way to think of it is to take a major triad, again duh, take the root an octave higher and then go down a step. This will get you a major seventh chord. Clear enough? If it helps, I circled the seventh in red and if you know intervals then you’ll understand to just take the major seventh above whatever the root of the chord is. SO a major ninth chord is the same concept. We take our triad, and we go to the ninth pitch above it. “I thought there were only 8 notes in a scale if ya include the octave wah.” You’re not wrong but you’re annoying. The ninth is the same as the second, just an octave higher. I can’t give you an official reason of why it’s referred to as the ninth rather than the second but I would assume it’s because it would be hard to discern the pitch if it was right next to the tonic. AGAIN, DEPENDING WHAT PITCH IS YOUR ROOT you may have a minor ninth chord or something else. Oh yeah, that ninth in the second chord is circled in green if that helps ya.
Fortunately, when it comes to “Congratulations” we don’t have to worry about other variations of seventh and ninth chords. Since this song is only IV and I over and over, we get very nice major ninth and major seventh chords. To abbreviate this chord progression, you would write IVMAJ9-IVMAJ7-IMAJ7-I. It looks weird typing these out like that because normally you would have the description of the chord (the major seventh part) above like an exponent in a math equation. How does this effect the sound? It makes it very ~pretty~ in this case since all of the notes from the extended chords are diatonic, or part of the scale. If you’ve ever seen Twilight then you might be familiar with a beautiful piece that uses extended chords. The great thing about “Congratulations” is that it doesn’t always rely on these extensions! Sometimes it doesn’t use them. Variation is the spice of life, or so they say, and Post Malone uses plenty of it.
Let’s quickly talk about how catchy this song is. Not just the chorus, the whole song. Each section of each verse starts with a simple rhythmic pattern, repeats it a little bit, and then moves onto a new one. This *clapping emoji* is *clapping emoji* how *clapping emoji* you *clapping emoji* write *clapping emoji* catchy *clapping emoji* music. Heck, this is how you create any idea that sticks. You present something, repeat it so that it is memorable and then move on before we get tired of it. The first verse begins around 0:46 in. It’s a very short and simple rap/sung/whatever pattern that repeats for 8 bars before being dropped for a new one. Post Malone does this two more times with two more patterns before going back into another chorus. It would be SUPER clever if he tied all of these in somehow at the end. He doesn’t, but it’s okay. Quavo does similar stuff in his verse put not as obviously as Mr. Malone. He uses a little less repetition but there are still very clear rhythmic ideas to make it memorable rather than just forgettable rambling (I’m looking at you, Frank Ocean).
I know I’m already around a thousand words but this song has a lot of good simple stuff that I haven’t even got to touch upon so I’ll wrap it up with one last concept. There is a looooot of portamento in this song. Portamento is the sliding between one note to another. Some instruments (trumpet, saxophone) can’t really do portamento properly but others (trombone, violin, the human voice) have no problem sliding in between notes. Since this is a song made with electronics and synthesizers many parameters can be set such as how fast or slow the slide between notes is. These slides are slooooow and it creates such a cool effect. Here’s the first song I can think of off the top of my head that uses portamento in the melody. “Congratulations” uses a whole lot of it and I won’t be surprised to hear many other producers following suit as it creates a cool ~dreamy~ effect.
Lastly, the song is primarily in pentatonic. The chorus is exclusively pentatonic (nothing new there), but if you listen closely you’ll notice the harmonies. Every word of the chorus has at least one additional pitch sounding at the same time. Often time these harmonies will be higher pitched to add energy but as the melody gets higher in “Congratulations” the harmonies jump below. This is a little thing that isn’t too difficult but is a nice touch instead of jumping into the stratosphere with higher and higher harmonies.
Guess what! The top ten songs of last week are the same top ten as this week. I think some people shuffled a little bit but I’ve written about everything that’s up there so I gotta go down to number eleven with “Say You Won’t Let Go” by James Arthur? Idk, I’ve never heard of this song or this dude so we’ll see next week how it goes! Aloha!
