Weekly Billboard Theory — Say Something
Usually when I write these “reviews” (if they’re even that anymore) I’m a bit more favorable of songs that use unique ideas. Unique chord progressions, interesting rhythmic patterns, and/or text painting will usually win me over. Despite having some of these characteristics, I feel like Justin Timberlake’s biggest hit of 2018 leaves something to be desired. You’ll see what I’m talking about soon enough.
Justin Timberlake featuring Chris Stapleton
Key: C Minor (Not really though, we’ll talk about this)
Tempo: 97 BPM
Usually I tackle the easy stuff, such as form and instrumentation, first because it’s easy to digest but I’m going to save that for the end this time. I’ll explain why later. Let’s talk about the chords, melody, and key of the song. The chords are all simple. C minor, Eb major, Bb Major, and F major. Something seems off? Probably not by name, but what if I use Roman numerals? i-III-VII-IV. Okay, maybe that was a little harder. If you look below at the chords you’ll see what I’m talking about. That last chord has an accidental which means that the F major does not naturally occur in the key of C minor. This is great news because it’s something interesting!
Accidentals usually lead us somewhere. They’ll often alter chords to temporarily change the tonal center of a piece of music. This should be a refresher by now. Anyways, this is where things get interesting with “Say Something”. That last chord, F Major, leads us to the tonic C minor chord. Usually, a minor chord turning into a major chord will act as the V, or dominant, of the following chord. However this is not the case as it would turn it into the IV. Could it be possible that people have finally heard my cries that the IV-I is a much more relationship in contemporary pop music than V-I? That by turning the typical iv into a IV further cements this idea? As validating as that would be, there’s a simpler explanation for this. It probably won’t seem simpler at first because there’s some concepts I’ll have to lay down in order for it to make sense but that’s how these write-ups tend to go, right?
I think I explained modes at some point last year but I can’t really remember and I didn’t document stuff too well so we’ll right that wrong right now. Whew. Modes are BASICALLY scale variations. Yes, it’s more complex than that but no, it does not matter. Read about it if you want. When we think of the majority of all western music, we think of either the major scale or the minor scale. Each of these have eight notes. The space between those notes are known as intervals. By adjusting those intervals, we get the difference between major and minor. For example, the major scale (also known as the Ionian mode) goes whole step-whole step-half step-whole step-whole step-whole step-half step. The natural minor scale (also known as the Aeolian mode) goes whole step-half step-whole step-whole step-half step-whole step-whole step. That might be a little confusing, I know. The important thing to note is that these adjustments of intervals change the scale. To oversimplify, this same idea occurs with modes. Look below and you can see.
You can see a very tiny difference between those two modes. C Dorian has a whole step between the fifth and sixth sound which gives us the A natural. THIS is where that IV chord comes from. This song is not in C minor, but rather C DORIAN. So that IV chord actually does occur naturally because we are in the mode of C Dorian. Pretty cool, right? If that’s the case, we probably have a pretty interesting melody, right? Unfortunately, not particularly. The melody is almost exclusively pentatonic. I think this is sort of clever because it avoids the issue of creating a catchy melody in an uncommon mode but it’s also definitely a cop-out because it avoids the issue of creating a catchy melody in an uncommon mode. The irony is that they had the opportunity to “Say Something” interesting by capitalizing on unique melodies but decided to say nothing at all.
Okay, so one big missed opportunity. Is that enough to make you dislike the song? No, but there isn’t much else happening. The song is at this weird tempo where it isn’t fast enough to dance to but also isn’t slow enough to dance to. It’s in a weird limbo. Also, the melodies all mix together. Not in that they’re pretty close note-wise, but it just sounds like Stapleton and Timberlake are half-shouting the entirety of the song. “But there’s text painting”. I’m not even going to address it because it’s PRETTY obvious as to when it happens. Let me know if you find it. Everything is just kind of…there. Nothing really stands out in this song except the progression and I’m marking that in the L column because it just repeats over and over. Normally I’m cool with that, but you created a cool harmonic opportunity for yourself and didn’t take it. I probably wouldn’t be this critical if it was a Soundcloud rapper, but it’s Justin Timberlake. Take the chance.
I’ve been out of town writing music with some friends so I don’t have any recommendations for new listening this week. But have you heard that new Zedd song? It’s great.
Let’s check out the charts! It looks like I’m not alone in my feelings for this song as it dropped from ninth place to seventeenth. Whoops. The rest of the top of the charts are pretty familiar with Drake, Sheeran and Bruno. At number seven we have The Weeknd and Kendrick Lamar with “Pray For Me”. I have yet to listen to this song but both of those artists tend to knock it out of the park. Find out next week on, WEEKLY BILLBOARD THEORY!
