Weekly Billboard Theory — Million Reasons
I gotta be upfront, I think the majority of Lady Gaga’s music is garbage. “Million Reasons” is fine I guess, but I’m going to use it to show why her other stuff is no good. In January, I wrote that “I actively try to not be a hater.” I guess I should try harder.
Lady Gaga
Tempo: 130 BPM
Key: C Major
Let me start with one of my biggest problems: the production quality of all of Gaga’s hits (with the exception of Judas) is rudimentary. “Wahhhh I thought you said a lot of pop music is simple and that’s okay wahhh!” Yeah, I did. But there’s more to music than pitch (what I normally focus on) and lyrics (what I normally don’t care about). Timbre, which is pronounced like TAMBER and is an easy way to tell if someone knows anything about anything, is the character or quality of musical sound as distinct from its pitch and intensity. Basically, it’s how we hear a trumpet and know that it’s a trumpet or how we can tell Drake’s whiny voice from any other rappers. This is incredibly important for Top 40 music. The timbre of the synths in practically all of Lady Gaga’s music sounds like the worst Microkorg presets. For real. Go back and listen to Poker Face or Bad Romance and then listen to anything off of Carly Rae Jepsen’s latest album. You’re welcome. Oh yeah, and if you’re gonna say “Wahhh those are her old songs though wahhh” then let me point out how her new ones are no better.
The reason why I bring this matter up is because Gaga’s “Million Reasons” is completely different in this regard. The song begin with just piano, acoustic guitar, Gaga and a vocal harmony. Terrible synthesizers are nowhere to be found and if you listen closely, you can hear intimate details like tapping on an acoustic guitar around 1:09. This is such a breath of fresh air when listening to Lady Gaga’s music. Throughout “Million Reasons” we hear a lot of different and natural sounding instruments in addition to those found in the beginning. A variety of bowed stringed instruments, electric guitar, xylophone (or some similar keyboard instrument), and what seems like a rogue banjo at 1:28 sound appropriate to “Million Reasons” compared to what are typically heard in Gaga’s hits.
For the past several weeks, I have briefly explained how to build chords and which chords are most common in pop music (I, IV, V, vi). Would you be surprised if the entirety of “Million Reasons” consisted of different arrangements of those four chords? You shouldn’t be, that’s for dang sure! “But Lady Gaga’s a REAL musician who went to a conservatory” said the boring music history professor as he interrupted my master’s thesis on Kesha. Clearly, it doesn’t matter if you’re a “real musician” because you’re still going to use the same skeleton when building music. Just because she has training in something doesn’t mean that her music has any more value than anyone else’s and those four chords are proof of that. Yes, she can actually play piano and I will not deny that she is a great performer but those two things do not make her music any more important than anyone else’s.
Despite all my rage, there’s still some stuff to explain. I have mentioned cadences quite a bit in the past and “Million Reasons” requires more explanations. Authentic cadences are V-I and plagal cadences are IV-I. Both of those types of cadences feel very stable as we are returning to the tonic chord. Above, you’ll see a new type of cadence called a deceptive cadence. Usually, we’ll hear a V chord near the end of the phrase and think that a tonic is nearby. Occasionally, the composer or songwriter or whoever will trick us by placing a different chord after that V. MOST of the time it will be a vi chord. I know it’s not a Top 40 example, but Copeland’s song “Brightest” is a great display of a deceptive cadence (plus, it’s beautiful and the singer has a great falsetto). At about 0:47 we hear a pretty stable authentic cadence. The same lyrics come back at 1:37 but you clearly can hear the V-vi signaling a deceptive cadence. To not be too much of a tease, a proper authentic cadence immediately follows.
I’m a firm believer that Top 40 music favors plagal cadences over authentic cadences, and that’s why the ending of “Million Reasons” is pretty cool. At 3:01, Lady Gaga repeats “Good one,” over a IV chord like she does earlier in the song. Previously, this chord resolved to a tonic like ya normally do. However, instead of moving to the I from the IV, she DECEIVES US (get it?) and plays a vi chord. It’s not a traditional deceptive cadence, but it still functions in the same way where we are expecting to hear the music resolve a certain way and we get a different end result. Similar to Copeland, Gaga immediately gives us a more satisfying cadence to end the piece. However, instead of an authentic cadence, she plays a IV-I which further proves the power of the plagal cadence!
Okay, so that’s one cool thing in an otherwise plain song but I’ll point out one last thing about this song that’s trash city. Listen to Gaga sing “I try to make the worst seem better” at 2:43 and try to tell me that the subsequent vocal melody flows well. Whoever recorded and produced this song dropped the ball at that moment, big time. It sounds so unnatural. I understand that it’s hard to measure these things when it’s not numbers and values, but I can’t think of a subjective outlook where that sounds good. The following phrasing of “To cut through all his worn out leather” into “I’ve got a hundred million reasons to walk away” sounds great so why didn’t the one prior sound that good?
I know I’m very biased on this subject matter. You’re totally allowed to enjoy her stuff, I’m just screaming into the void with my opinion on the subject. By now you know how I feel about Lady Gaga but I have strong feelings about heartfelt/softer Top 40 songs too. If I wanted to listen to music that makes me feel too much, I would. Top 40 will almost never do it for me in that way. Just give me the hits! I’ll listen to sad stuff in my own time.
Ed Sheeran, 50 Shades of Zayn, and Migos are still at the top of the charts so I gotta scroll down a little bit to Katy Perry’s new song “Chained To The Rhythm.” Now this song has some good synths! Also, it’s got some cool ideas in it that I look forward to talking about! See ya then!
