Weekly Billboard Theory — Unforgettable

Robert Joffred
Jul 20, 2017 · 6 min read

Let’s be real. You’re probably not listening to “Unforgettable” for French Montana. You’re probably listening to it because of the Swae Lee melody and the actual beat. The song has some a few interesting ideas but I don’t believe that they will be enough to make this song last. What I’m trying to say is that I find “Unforgettable” to be kind of forgettable, and I’ll explain why after the jump.

Normally I try to make fun of artists with these pics but this rules

Unforgettable

French Montana ft. Swae Lee

Key: Ab Minor

Tempo: 98 BPM

I like getting the easy stuff out of the way. The song has a very strong distinction between the chorus and the verse not only in its melodic content but also in the instrumentation of each. Choruses are fuller while verses begin small and build over time. This is pretty textbook but some songs miss the mark with this so it’s definitely a win for French Montana. However! This doesn’t make a song particularly ~unforgettable~ because it SHOULD be a given for most music.

Real quick, guess what the melody is. It would be a very safe assumption to shout, “pentatonic” instinctively and ya know what? You would be correct. Again, nothing special here but Swae Lee manages to avoid the tonic for the majority of the choruses which is sort of interesting but it’s a stretch to say that the melody is ~unforgettable~. Also, I should be clear that when I’m referring to the choruses I’m kind of speaking of the entire time that Swae Lee is singing because it’s literally a minute each time. That makes me wonder why he’s the feature and French Montana is the main artist. Monsieur Montana performs on a fraction of the track compared to Swae Lee making his verses very FORGETTABLE.

Look at all those flats

If you look at that key signature above you’ll notice a whole lot of flats. If you don’t read music, those lower case “b”s to the left represent a flat. That means we take a pitch and lower it a half-step. We’ve seen some songs this year that have been in the key of A minor, meaning that there are no sharps or flats. If we flat the tonic note of A minor, the A, what would ya think would happen to every other note to keep the intervals the same? Every note gets a flat put in front of it. By putting it to the left on the first bar is a way to establish that “hey, all these notes are going to be flat” instead of cluttering up the staff with a million little symbols.

The thing that is actually interesting about this is that it might give us some insight into how the song was written. If you play any sort of rock guitar then this will make perfect sense to you but I’ll try to explain it as clearly as possible. Pretty often, artists will record a song in a particularly key; let’s say they record it in E major, okay? The recording booth is a very controlled environment where an artist will have several opportunities to capture that perfect high note of a song. They could also just use pitch correction to get it. Whatever, I don’t judge artists based on that and that’s an argument for another time.

Anyways, in a live setting they don’t have the luxury of perfection. On top of this, artists are performing several songs in succession so they also have to worry about fatigue on their voice. An easy way for a performer to navigate these obstacles is by performing the song in a slightly lower key than the original. This makes the highest notes easier to reach and the audience never notices unless they listen to the recording side by side or they have perfect pitch. SO if the song was recorded in E major, it very well may be performed in Eb major. The reason I mentioned rock guitar earlier is because guitar is traditionally tuned E-A-D-G-B-E and I am literally on tour right now with a band that tunes Eb-Ab-Db-Gb-Bb-Eb. Many others do the same and will even go much lower.

Now how does this all relate to “Unforgettable?” Ab minor is a pretty hard key to play in with actual instruments. Again, I’m not judging the use of midi technology, which is used to compose songs on a computer, and that’s yet ANOTHER argument for yet ANOTHER day. If you would be playing in A minor you would be only playing white keys and it would be pretty dang easy for a competent piano player (which I am not). Ab minor uses some flats that are rarely used such as Cb or Fb. Logically, it would be wayyy easier to write this song in A minor and just drag everything down on a MIDI grid a half step, right? I can’t say for sure that this is how this song was written but I’d like to think it’s a very logical assumption about the writing process. “Oh that melody is too high for ya, Swae? No problem, I’ll just nudge it down.” Boom. Ab minor.

The red is a perfect fifth above or a perfect fourth below

Okay, one more thing. I’ll try to get through really quick because it’s probably the most memorable part of this song. I say this because it navigates around a rule of counterpoint in a clever way. This deals with intervals, or the space between two notes. A perfect fifth is an incredibly common interval in rock and pop music. Know what a power chord is? That’s a perfect fifth.

In counterpoint, parallel (or consecutive) perfect fifths are forbidden. They create an “undesirable” sound. Side note: in a graduate level music theory course I took, one of my classmates couldn’t understand why power chords were used in rock music. Because they sound awesome, nerd. Realistically, it’s probably because they are a very stable version of whatever root note you’re playing without cluttering up the sound by filling out the chord. We already have distortion filling it out but that’s neither here nor there. Perfect fifths are illegal in counterpoint.

HOWEVER! The inverse of a perfect fifth is a perfect fourth and those are totally cool to use in succession. Two seconds into the song and you hear a pseudo steel drum kind of melody playing parallel fourths. To me, those parallel fourths are the most memorable part of “Unforgettable.”

Now this is the kind of pic I like using

It’s a fine song. Just fine. It doesn’t have the staying power of some of the other songs we’ve seen this year but it’ll be around a little bit longer than some of the stinkers. Looking to next week and the usual suspects are back at it. Gotta move all the way down to number 8 for some fresh meat. It looks like I’ll be writing about “There’s Nothing Holding Me Back” by Diet Ed Sheeran AKA Shawn Mendes. I’ll be in Canada so I might not have reception to get it up by next Thursday but I’ll do my best. See ya when I see ya!

That Good You Need

Keeping you caught up on what counts. Knowledge about what you don't know, and jokes about what you do.

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Robert Joffred

Written by

Music / Sometimes Other Stuff Too

That Good You Need

Keeping you caught up on what counts. Knowledge about what you don't know, and jokes about what you do.

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