Dissect - S10E11 - ARE WE STILL FRIENDS? by Tyler, The Creator

Episode Date: January 10, 2023

Our season-long analysis of IGOR continues with ARE WE STILL FRIENDS?, the album's final track in which Tyler expresses his desire to remain friends his with former crush, and in the process, puts himself at risk of becoming entrapped in a endless loop of falling in and out of love. IGOR then ends with an ominous final note that contains a number of thematic and narrative implications. Shop Season 10 merchandise here. Follow us on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter. Host, EP, Writer: Cole Cuchna Writer: Camden Ostrander Audio Editor: Kevin Pooler Theme Music: Birocratic Recreations: Andrew Atwood Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From Spotify, this is Dissect, long-form musical analysis broken into short, digestible episodes. This is episode 11 of our season-long examination of Tyler the creator's Igor. I'm your host, Cool Cushner. Last time I dissect, we examined Igor's penultimate track, I don't love you anymore. It was there, Tyler repeated the mantra, I don't love you anymore, in a moment of finality, the formal farewell to his love after finding peace with things ending on Gone Gone Thank you. In this way, I Don't Love You anymore felt like a natural conclusion to the album's narrative, with Tyler saying goodbye, letting this door close in order to open the window of new opportunities ahead.

However, as we noted last episode, Tyler also expresses confusion and aimlessness on the song, calling to mind the vulnerable emotional state in the immediate aftermath of breaking up, where often our head and heart struggle to align. In Tyler's case, his head knows he needs to move on, but his heart is battling the reality of the sky being completely absent from his life. Thus Tyler entertains a compromise of sorts on Igor's next and final track, the subject of our episode today, Are We Still Friends?

Are We Still Friends was produced by Tyler Okoma and features a guest verse by Farrell Williams. Notably, the song contains long, instrumental stretches without original vocals. When performing the song live for the first time, Tyler explained why. A lot of the music that I love, shit, a lot of it is mostly instrumental.

And it made me realize, oh, I don't always have to say something. Sometimes we get caught up in filling void. that's not even a void. That's just how it's supposed to be. So when I wrote this album, I was like, let me just let the synthesizers talk. I don't always have to add a 16 or add vocals.

Let the instrumental speak for itself. I'll put my voice and my personality in the way that the drums and the bass hit. And sometimes that's really hard. Even in relationships, if shit doesn't work out, you feel like you have to fill that void. So even a piece of that voice, being filled feels good so even if y'all not like a thing at least being friends is a option and uh

i wrote this song as tyler explains here a big evolution in his songwriting and production was the revelation that not every space needs to be filled particularly with vocals sometimes the music itself is the most powerful communicator of emotions of expressing what words cannot thus are we still friends contains several stretches of instrumental music, and in this way brings Igor full circle, as its opening track Igor's theme was also mostly instrumental. And like A Boy is a Gun, Are We Still Friends heavily relies on samples, specifically samples of Al Green's 1977 song called Dream. Given Tyler's monologue we just heard, we ought to investigate Al Green's dream a bit

in order to find out why he chose this song to end his album with, and how it might express or represent what he was feeling, so much so that he didn't feel the need to augment it with too many of his original vocals. The song titled Dream is heard repeatedly in the sample used in Are We Still Friends? And in the song's second verse, Al Green expands on what he means by Dream, singing, Dream, dream, dream I'm the one you know. Dream a new and different stroke. Just dream. We can make it all come true. I want to know, I want to take me with you. Then in the song's refrain, he sings, make it last forever. Take me along with you. In a dream,

you can make it last forever. I want to go with you. Throughout this season, we've observed how the sample sources on Igor almost always reflect in some way what's happening either emotionally or narratively. And Al Green's dream is no different, as his dream of being with a lover forever provides an interesting thematic backdrop to the finale track of Igor. It's the first of a few signs that Tyler may not actually be ready to move on like we've been led to believe. Perhaps Tyler is simply allowing this relationship to live in a dream state and nothing more. Perhaps his dream is to simply be friends, as the thought of this person totally gone from his life is simply too painful to bear. But there's also the possibility that this dream reveals an ulterior motive behind

his sudden desire to remain friends, as it leaves the door slightly ajar to the possibility of them one day becoming more than friends, the dream of one day becoming lovers again, of giving things another chance. And because Al Green's dream is such a foundational element of Are We Still Friends, listening to the song almost feels like we're witnessing Tyler himself listening to Dream alone in his car or bedroom, reflecting the common experience of using music to help process and cope with the heartache of a breakup. But Beyond Dream's lyrics, there's also its music to consider, because as Tyler said, sometimes the music itself speaks louder than any words. Beginning with the song's rhythm, Dream is written in what's called a 6-8 time signature. This is significant because every song on

Igor to this point has been in the most common time signature of 4-4, where each measure is defined by four quarter notes, counted in groups of 4. In contrast to this 4-4 time signature, a 6-8 time signature has six eighth notes per measure counted in groups of six. 6-8 is what's called a compound meter because despite being divided in groups of six, the feel of the time signature is two big beats with accents on beats one and four. This will make more sense when you hear it. I'll play the same excerpt again and I'll alternate counting in groups of six and groups of two. Music in 6-8 tends to have a dance-like lilt, and when executed at a slow

or moderate tempo like Are We Still Friends? The beat kind of sways back and forth, like a basic slow dance. It's for this reason that 6-8 is great for what are known as power ballads, a rock song type characterized by a slower tempo, emotional vocals, and a grandiose production that often begins soft and builds to a powerful climax. Perhaps the most famous song in 6-8 that meets this criteria is Queens We Are the Champions. As you listen, notice how the slow, back-and-forth swing provided by the 6-8 time signature makes the perfect soundtrack for a group of people swaying back and forth together in celebration of a victory.

A more recent example of a power ballad in 6-8 time is Billy Eilish's Happier Than Ever, a song that begins extremely soft before giving way to a gigantic, swaying 6-8 climax. In both We Are the Champions and Happier Than Ever, we hear how a swaying 6-8-time signature paired with powerful production and soaring vocals can provide a sense of climax and finality, which is why both songs were the closing numbers of Queen and Billy Eilish's respective live shows. Even Al Green's dream was placed as the final track of its album, likely for this reason, an attribute that Tyler no doubt recognized as he builds on dreams feeling of finality for its own final number.

Just listen to how the end of the song captures a similar feeling to both We Are the Champions and Happier Than ever. Now the swaying 6-8 time of Are We Still Friends is paired with a four-court progression that repeats throughout the majority of the song. An F major 7, F dominant 7, B-flat major 7, and B-flat minor. Now here it is in full. This is actually a chord progression beloved by many songwriters, as it's used in some of the most well-known songs of all time. Here's just a handful of songs it's found in, beginning with Frankie Valley's classic Can't Take My Eyes Off of You. You're just too good to be true. Can't take my eyes off for you.

Now here it is and Build Me Up Buttercup by the Foundation. And now part of your world from The Little Mermaid. And we can even hear it as far back as 1902's The Entertainer by Scott Joplin. Now there's a few reasons why this chord progression has stood the test of time. For one, it's sonically interesting as two of the four chords are borrowed chords. As we talked about earlier this season, when you're working within a specific key signature, there's a standard set of seven basic chords that belong to that key. A borrowed chord is what is what is.

called when you use a chord that isn't a part of that standardized set because you're quote-unquote borrowing it from another key. Are We Still Friends is in the key of F major, which is also the first chord of the progression. Then it moves to a borrowed chord, an F-dominant 7. This is a chord of tension and in this context is known as a secondary dominant chord, which just means that there's a specific chord that it wants to resolve to, and that specific chord is a B-flat major, the next chord in the progression. Lastly, we get our second borrowed chord, a B-flat minor chord. This move from the B-flat major to a borrowed B-flat minor chord is to me the equivalent of a musical sigh, tinged with melancholy. Now the reason why this

four-core progression sounds so smooth despite having two chords that technically don't belong in the key is because it's constructed around what's called a descending chromatic line. As we covered in our episode on puppet, a descending chromatic line is a sequence of notes that move downward to the closest neighboring note below it, even when some of those notes don't belong in the key. signature. Chromatic lines like this help with using borrowed chords more smoothly as it allows you to sort of ease into the wrong notes with the correct notes directly next to them. Because you're not leaping randomly to the wrong notes, our ears register it as smooth yet surprising. Specifically in this core progression, the descending chromatic line works as the backbone or anchor of the progression.

I'll play the line isolated again, then I'll accent it within the full progression. Now, as we pointed out in our puppet episode, chromatic descending lines often convey a feeling of melancholy. But in this particular progression, because we're getting a balance mix of major and minor chords, as well as an equal balance of chords of tension and chords of resolution, the resulting feeling, at least to my ears, is one of mixed emotions, the musical equivalent of bittersweet. It's an emotional and musical middle ground that seems to perfectly capture exactly what Tyler is feeling as he approaches this bittersweet end hoping to find an emotional middle ground with his ex, friends. Tyler sings the song's brief refrain, asking,

a similar question two ways. There's a subtle progression between the two, as are we still friends as an objective question about the state of the relationship, while can we be friends feels more like a plea, implying that Tyler's the one that wants to be friends. Despite his best intentions here, we sense a tinge of desperation, and we can't help but worry that Tyler might be in danger of slipping back into the troublesome, imbalance relationship dynamics the album began with. Recall that it was there that Tyler was emotionally controlled by his crush, catering his behavior to serve him. Asking, can we be friends, feels like a regression, giving the power dynamics back to the guy, which feels a bit crushing when we've seen Tyler working so hard to regain his autonomy on the second

half of the album. But with that said, it's kind of hard to blame him. We all understand the temptation to remain friends with our once beloved, especially when we're freshly vulnerable after the breakup. It seems wrong, unfair, or even illogical that someone that we cared for so much, someone that we truly loved, is suddenly relegated to a stranger. And we often can't. can't help but feel there must be a gray area, some middle ground the relationship can sustainably exist on. Unfortunately, that isn't always the case. Sometimes the chemistry between two people is unavoidably polarizing, so intense that feelings of love, passion, or attraction cannot be avoided. And thus things always eventually escalate emotionally and or sexually. And having played that version of the relationship

out to its failed conclusion, there's almost always risk involved when attempting to sustain a friendship, as it allows that door to remain open, however slightly, potentially trapping you in a toxic loop of friendship, followed by passion, followed by heartbreak. Whether consciously or not, this is the risk Tyler's willing to take here at the end of Igor. And again, we can't help but feel a little concern for him, given how many emotional strides he's taken

to break free from this guy and find peace with things ending. Now, as Are We Still Friends continues, we get a brief two-measure interruption of sorts, where the swinging 6-8 feel stops, and we hear this four-note sequence. We also heard this same sequence begin the track on Igor's familiar distorted bass tone. What's interesting about this riff is that it disrupts that swinging 6-8 feel we talked so much about earlier. This example shows us how the same unit of time or measure of music can be manipulated and felt in different ways.

The tempo or the time signature doesn't change, but the way we feel it does. Tyler's manipulation of 6-8 time here in this riff, provides an unpredictable moment of suspension, almost as if the music is winding itself up only to release again into the 6-8 swing, which now feels reinvigorated due to the contrast between it and the straight four-note riff. Are We Still Friends dips into a softer register, where Tyler at first talks his way through what might be the closest thing we have to a verse on the song. He says, if we can still see each other, shake your hand, say hi. He then breaks into more of a singing cadence to say, I can't stop you, I can't rock to,

I've been back there and I cannot die to. While the phrasing here is vague, the consequences of going back quote unquote there is death. When considered with I can't stop you and the central tension of this relationship throughout Igor, we can infer that Tyler here means that he cannot live his life wearing a mask, he cannot live pretending to be something that he's not. As he says, he's been back there,

he's lived that closeted, scared life, and it led him to unhappiness and loneliness, which as we've discussed this season, was largely documented on his previous album Flower Boy. Having made that arduous journey and rewarded with freedom, he can't imagine going back there, can't imagine regressing. Clearly, Tyler's crush has not reached that place yet, and saying, I can't stop you, conveys an understanding that each of us are traveling on our own path at our own pace.

But at the same time, Tyler can't rock to, he can't rock with or live that life alongside him. And thus, the question remains. Can they be friends? We'll be back right after the break. Welcome back to Dissect. Before the break, we heard the second repetition of Are We Still Friends, where Tyler asked his former crush and himself if a friendship is possible between them. After this refrain, the song transitions into a softer bridge section, where the Al Green sample is replaced with Tyler's original music and arrangement. This beautifully composed bridge finds Tyler moving freely among various key signatures, with guitar, strings, keyboard, glock and spiel, vocals, and a heavily filtered drumbeat all popping

in and out of focus. This is Tyler at his compositional best, displaying his natural gift for orchestration, an intuitive, unpredictable approach to harmony. And despite this bridge section rummaging through a number of new key areas, and really being a pretty big musical departure from the rest of the song, there's one detail that goes a long way in making this section feel at home. Recall that in our previous discussion of the song's main core progression, we honed in on its descending chromatic line. While the majority of this bridge section is built on descending chromatic lines, it starts with this passage,

which contains a four-note chromatic descending line. The part then repeats this descending line with new chords on top of it. And after this, Tyler actually does the inverse, using brief ascending chromatic lines in the bass with various chords on top. This kind of motific development where a new section is based on a compositional feature of a previous part is the kind of stuff that's taught in collegiate-level composition classes, as it allows you to creatively explore different musical territories while maintaining the musical identity of the piece.

The way Tyler has taught himself these kinds of musical techniques is a prime example of his intuitive musicianship. While he's always displayed an eclectic variety of musical influences, a critical part of his development has been his ever-improving ability to synthesize those influences into a unified whole. And this bridge section in Are We Still Friends is a microcosm of that evolution. Beyond this, the bridge also serves the song dynamically, bringing it to an extended low point.

which by contrast allows the final chorus to feel like an even high or high when it finally punches back in. In this iteration of the chorus, Tyler brings back the Al Green sample, but also adds two additional instruments to increase the dynamic impact of the moment. First, we notice that the gravely distorted bass now sustains through the entire chorus, really beefing up the musical texture. There's also a high synth playing rapid octave oscillations, adding a bit of controlled chaos. These instruments are first in a number of new textures that Tyler will add through,

throughout the final stretch of the song, which continues with a new part where his voice takes on a familiar pitched up tone. Don't get green skin, contact, don't say goodbye, smells you, Tyler begins this new vocal section, Don't Get Green Skin, Keep Contact. The initial play here is on the classic image of a green skin alien, with Tyler requesting that this guy not leave his world, not become a foreign, distant, unknowable stranger.

In this reading, Keep Contact becomes a play on the 1997 hit movie Contact about scientists communicating with aliens. The green skin here could also be a nod to the Grinch, the classic green skin grump who isolated himself from society. This is especially plausible considering Tyler contributed to the soundtrack of the 2018 remake of the Grinch. Finally, we have to recognize that within the context of Igor, green was specifically used as a symbol for jealousy back on new magic wand. Thus, we have to consider the possibility that a second or third layer of green skin here could be a call back to this moment.

used to caution himself and or his crush against any jealousy that might arise from seeing each other with different lovers, as that jealousy would jeopardize their potential friendship. Tyler then continues singing, Don't say goodbye, smell you later. It's a phrase that was most popular in the 1990s, and notably used often in the shows The Simpsons, and the theme song for the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. This TV thread then continues into the following line.

Nah, I can't. I don't want to end this season on a bad episode. It's a clever way to say you don't want a romance to end poorly, on bad terms, which Tyler, of course, relates to a TV season you enjoy ending badly, which involuntarily taints your entire experience of the show. Following this passage performed by Tyler, Are We Still Friends continues with the entrance of its final guest, the ever-important Forel Williams.

Fans of Tyler understand Forel's importance to his maturation as an artist in person. On countless occasions, Tyler has publicly characterized him as a father figure he often looked to for guidance both from afar as a developing teenager, and later in person as a developing superstar navigating the entertainment industry. I'm like one of the biggest, forrelle, nerd, Neptune's fans of ever, probably top three. And every year I throw a carnival slash festival where it's rides and skate parks. We have people like Rick Ross and Kayan, Snoop, and whatever. But getting Farrell there was the biggest achievement of my life, I think. The stories used to tell me about listening to our albums and then to see you have a show

and we're out there performing and it's your show. Like that's... Thank you. That means more to me than it does to you. Because I would have died to have that with Q-Tip. Died. You know what I'm saying? But we never did that.

And you're a different generation. and I just love that this generation has its anchor. As long as you keep, you stay where you are and you stay loyal to your beliefs. And secondly, your curiosity, no one can touch you. Throughout this season, we've talked a lot about how the absence of Tyler's biological father may have contributed to his abandonment issues on the album. These issues ultimately led him to becoming his crush's puppet, as he feared that deviating from his servant position would cause the guy to abandon him.

Then on the song puppet, amidst Tyler's lowest emotional moment, it was the paternal mentor figure Kanye West who appeared calling him son, picking Tyler up and setting him back on the correct path. And it would seem that here on Are We Still Friends, Farrell symbolizes a similar paternal role, entering the album at another moment of apparent weakness, when Tyler is risking his emotional health pleading to be friends. Farrell's feature is undoubtedly one of the most cryptic lyrical passages of the album,

beginning with the line, bouncing off things, and you don't know how you fall. There's a recklessness or hyper-clumsiness implied here, likely a comment on Tyler's reckless abandon in his approach to this relationship. The next line develops this further as he sings, Your power is drained, so you cannot go through walls. When paired with the previous line, it evokes imagery of a video game character or a superhero who's lost their powers from exhaustion. It's an unlikely but fitting analogy to Tyler's own state at the end of this relationship, Depleading your emotional energy in a relationship can have severe consequences on the rest of your life, and it feels as if Farrell is warning Tyler that he's at risk of losing his own superpowers at the expense of this guy.

The video game analogy continues with, You're caught in this matrix, don't know where you play it, you hate it. It appears Farrell is comparing the difficulties of navigating this relationship to navigating a matrix, be it the classic films matrix or a generic matrix, which are known for their complex structures. The line could also be read as commenting on life in general. and the confusion and frustration that we all feel at times trying our best to navigate the incomprehensibly complex circumstances of every moment. Ferell's final line is,

It could be your favorite if you make it your friend. With Tyler's clear intentions on this song, it here seems to refer to the guy, and there's a clear goal of progressing from friend to favorite, which in this context likely means something like more than friends. When abstracted, the idea of something becoming your favorite after being friends feels like a general statement on giving yourself a chance to succeed by trying, rather than totally giving up and guaranteeing failure.

While friends may not be everything Tyler wants from this guy, at least it's something, and it leaves the door open for more in the future. Farrell's feature in symbolic paternal presence adds to the finality of the album's end. And now when looking back on Igor's three most prominent features in Playboy Cardi, Yee, and Farrell, we realize there's a kind of symmetry to their placement. Cardi appears on Earthquake, the album's second track and first traditional song. Recall that we theorized Cardi could be playing the symbolic role of their crush, the one riding with Tyler. Ye's appearances on Puppet, which sits at the center of the

album and was described by Tyler as the low moment of the story and the critical bridge song on the album. Now Farrell appears at the end of the album, bringing closure and completing the trifecta of symbolic appearances that help characterize Igor's narrative. Now, one of the more challenging things about a climactic song like Are We Still Friends is how to take it to the next level dynamically when you've already reached such a high high. But Tyler finds a way in the final chorus by sampling the 7-minute mark of Al Green's dream. The chords during this section changed from the original progression, but like that progression and the bridge progression, these chords are also built on a descending chromatic line. The chords built on this baseline are A minor, A-flat major, which is a borrowed

chord, and a G-major, also a borrowed chord. This last chord is held twice as long as the others, creating an extreme amount of tension. Let's hear the sequence altogether and notice how holding the last chord really has us craving resolution. On Are We Still Friends, Tyler raises the stakes even more by adding layers upon layers of vocals, including a harmony section singing, Can't Say Goodbye, and a long, drawn-out scream, which on top of this new progression and beefed up by the distorted Igor bass makes for an extremely cathartic climax. Tyler's cathartic scream here feels like an incredibly appropriate way to end the album,

encompassing his passion, frustration, desire, disappointment, and confusion more than words ever could. The pairing of this scream with his final statement, Can't Say Goodbye, seems to make clear that despite his best efforts, Tyler is still wrestling with the resolution of this relationship. The piece he claimed to have found on Gone Gone Thank You hasn't sustained him, as he now seems tortured by the fact that he may have lost contact with the guy for good, that his worst fear expressed on the album has been realized.

He's been abandoned. Now following this climactic moment in the song, Are We Still Friends winds down with a brief outro in which the final chord rings out, and that familiar distorted synthesizer returns to play one, final note alone before the album ends somewhat abruptly. As we've pointed out all season, the distorted bass has appeared in some fashion on every single song on Igor. It's perhaps the single most important and consistent musical thread that brings Sonic Unity across the entire project, despite the album having a diverse range of styles and genres. And of course, Tyler made clear the significance of this instrument immediately in the album's opening moments, beginning Igor with nearly 30 seconds of a single note played on a distorted synthesizer.

It's no coincidence that Tyler chose to start and end the album with the same instrument sustaining a single note. We can perhaps think about it like a film that starts and ends with the same or similar shop, a technique known as book ending. For example, David Fincher's Gone Girl opens with a close-up of a woman's face who appears to be looking endearingly at her husband. The story of the film then unfolds and it turns out that the woman is deeply troubled, as she fakes her kidnapping, frames her husband, and eventually inseminates herself with

his stored seaman to trap him in marriage. The film then ends with a near identical shot to the first, the same close-up of the woman's face, only now with the context of the story, instead of perceiving her expression as endearing, we perceive it as deranged. This kind of book ending can be extremely effective because not only does it create a feeling of closure, of things coming full circle and returning to its start, it can also in just two shots display just how her character has changed by the result of their journey. And this is the way we might think about the start and end of Igor. The distorted bass, Igor's central instrument, begins the album energized with strength, command, confidence, and perhaps even optimism. By the end, this same instrument sounds noticeably

flat, depleted, and unenergized. The notable difference in the synth tone at the album's start versus its end is the perfect musical reflection of Tyler's character arc we've experienced over the course of this album, from riding around town with his crush and in love, to being alone, exhausted, feeling abandoned, and unsettled by the thought of this person being gone from his life forever. But as some of you may have noticed, while the album starts and ends with the same instrument holding a single note, the note itself is not the same. The album begins with an E flat and ends with a B flat. And this is where things get really interesting. To understand why, we have to do a quick sidebar to cover one of the most fundamental aspects of Western music theory, the cadence. A cadence is the

end of a musical phrase where the melody or harmony creates a sense of resolution or completion. There's a number of ways to execute a cadence or resolution, but the most common way is harmonically through the use of chords. Listen to the following sequence of chords and focus on how you feel when you hear the final chord. It feels complete, right? Like you feel comfortable with things ending here. That's because it ended with a cadence, which provides harmonic resolution, the musical equivalent of a period at the end of a properly written sentence. Specifically, the cadence we just heard is what's called an authentic cadence, which contains two main ingredients, a dominant chord and a tonic cord.

The dominant chord is the chord with the most tension in a key signature, while the tonic chord is the most stable chord, which is why it's also known as the home chord. The authentic cadence is when the dominant chord of tension is resolved by the tonic chord of rest or stability. Let's hear the chord sequence again, and I'll call out the dominant and tonic chords. Dominant.

Tonic. To further display the tension of the dominant chord, let's hear this same progression, only this time I won't play the tonic chord of resolution. Can you feel that unresolved tension? It's uncomfortable, right? I always compare this to the feeling you get right before you sneeze, but the sneeze never comes. This is what happens when a cadence is left incomplete. It's the musical equivalent of a sentence without a period, or ending a story with a question mark. Now the chord progression we hear throughout Are We Still Friends contains a cadence, specifically what's called a minor plago cadence. It's not as strong as the authentic cadence

we just heard as it uses what's called a subdominant chord. As the name implies, a subdominate chord contains some tension but not as much as the dominant chord. Let's hear Are We Still Friends as chord progression and I'll call out the cadence, the move from the subdominate chord to the tonic or home chord. Subdominate Tonic. All right so let's hear the progression again, only this time I won't play the tonic chord at the end and we'll leave it hanging on the subdominate chord. Again, not a satisfying feeling, right? We're craving that tonic chord to resolve things to complete the cadence.

And this is precisely what's happening at the end of Are We Still Friends? After the big build-up and climax, we get the tonic chord of F major. But instead of ending the song here on this cadence and letting that tonic chord ring out like it should, Tyler surprisingly has the synthesizer moved to a B-flat, which is that final note we hear on the album. This implies the sub-dominant chord, the chord of tension, the chord that wants to resolve. Tonic, subdominant. While Tyler, by his own admission, is not fluent in music theory, he clearly has incredible

musical intuition. I have no doubt he understood that he was ending the song and effectively the album unresolved. In the same way, starting and ending the album with the same instrument reflected the narrative arc of Igor's journey. Leaving the song and album unresolved reflects the thematic ending of Are We Still Friends? Because think about even this title, Are We Still Friends? It's a question. Tyler is asking, longing even to be friends with this guy.

But in the song, his question goes unanswered. Like the lack of musical resolution, Tyler at the end of the song and album is unresolved emotionally. He has not reached a place of full stability. His final words on the album are quite literally, can't say goodbye. In this way, leaving the song an album unresolved at its end is a perfect musical reflection of the end of its story, as we too are left without resolution, left to guess whether or not Tyler ended up salvaging a friendship with the guy, left a guess if he ever truly found peace. But remember how I mentioned that the synth note that starts the album in E-flat,

is different from the note that ends the album, a B-flat. And do you also remember how I explained the authentic cadence, the harmonic move from the dominant chord of tension to the tonic chord of resolution? Well, guess what the tonal relationship is between B-flat and E-flat? It's dominant to tonic. The final unresolved note of Are We Still Friends is resolved if you start the album over. Igor, the album and its story, is a narrative and musical loop, because exactly what you run from, you end up chasing.

The thematic and narrative implications of this grand revelation are many. We'll cover all of those, recap Igor's central motifs, analyze the cover art, and draw some final conclusions on our season finale next time on Dysect. This episode of Dysect was written by Camden Ostrander and me. If you enjoyed today's episode, please tell a friend about the show or share on social media and tag at Dysect Podcast. It really helps. Limited season 10 merchandise can be purchased at Dysectpodcast.com. Audio editing by Kevin Pooler, song recreations by Andrew Atwood, theme music by Bureau Pratic.

All right, thanks everyone. Talk to you next week.