Switched on Pop - Demi Lovato is Not Sorry

Episode Date: October 6, 2017

Demi Lovato's latest, "Sorry Not Sorry" is at once an unapologetic anthem of defiance and a super catchy mashup of multiple genres. As we'll see, every small musical choice is here for a reason, together fostering Lovato's message of ascension—or even, transcendence. And as we pick apart "Sorry Not Sorry," we'll go to some surprising places ourselves including: Klezmer melodies, spiritual pretzels and musical dementors.  Featuring: •Demi Lovato - Sorry Not Sorry •Cardi B - Bodak Yellow •Dave Tarras - Freilach Yidelach Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. You know, Nate, it's been kind of a tough time in the world. A lot of people struggling and listen to some pop music, which has been reflecting some of those struggles in the world. But personally, I've been needing, honestly, sort of a feeling of transcendence, something that makes me feel good right now. So today I wanted to talk about a song that makes me feel

feel really good. A song that makes you feel even better than feels from our last episode. That song makes me feel good. Definitely gets into the feeling. But this one stands out for me. I want to talk about Demi Lovato's single, Sorry Not Sorry, off of her recently released album, Tell Me You Love Me. You know this one? I do. And this is kind of a more strident feel good song than the mellow beach vibes chill of Calvin Harris in our last episode. Yeah, this song is this sort of ascendant, transcendent song. It kind of falls into this category of overcoming heartbreak, kind of like, Seelow's FU song. It's like, I'm over heartbreak and it's awesome. Right. The kind of like look at me now song. Yeah, and I'm feeling good. So this song is all about that ascendant

look at me now. Today, I want to break down this track and see how a songwriter can give you those goosebumps that just take you higher to that feeling of getting above something and getting over something. So why don't we just dive right in and take a listen to Sorry Not Sorry? Let's do it. Yes. So how are you hearing this song? What is it making you feel? This song is making me feel defiant. It's making me feel buoyant. It's making me feel invincible, I suppose. I don't feel like I have a lot of haters, which I'm very thankful for. But if I

did, this is the song I would play to tell those haters. You know what? STFU. So in the context of our wonderful narrator, Demi Lovato, what is this song roughly about what you say? It's unclear who's it's addressing. It could be a former lover. It could be society.

It could be the Demi Lovato herself. Who's being addressed here is somewhat indeterminate. What's more important is the narrator themselves and their self-confidence. Yeah. Getting over some kind of struggle, some kind of relationship, whether with a person or anything. And in the case of Demi Lovato, she's spoken about it in public, about personal struggles with addiction and mental illness. But in this case, I actually don't think that it is about a specific relationship per se for the narrator. But I think for all of us, we can read into

whatever relationship that we have right now that we no longer want and we want to rid ourselves with and celebrate our new form coming out of that relationship. Well, then it's somewhat appropriate for us to be discussing this song right around the Jewish New Year. Oh yeah, that's right. Happy Yom Kippur. You don't really say happy Yom Kippur. I didn't think you did. It's not a happy holiday. I think that's an appropriate comparison. Here we see Demioliovato is atoning with something in her past, and I really love how she transforms the language of being bad into a meaning of overcoming what was a bad relationship.

And what we're going to see is that she takes us through this incredible musical movement that encapsulates that ascendance through every single element. We're going to see that there is a master class of composition and performance going on here that all combine to establish this feeling of ecstatic self-empowerment and get an over there stuff. Yes. And I want to start with genre. Genre.

Yeah, how do you say that? Does it have an accent? Genre. I believe is how it's pronounced. Exactly. Like the candelabra from Beauty and the Beast. Genre. talk so much about genre. I find the conversation of genre personally is too muddied in the

marketing often of music. Not to say that there aren't important cultural connections to genre, but the context of genre doesn't always feel that important to me. But here, I think it's essential to the expectations that this song sets up. Why don't we just hit play the very beginning of the track? And I want you to tell me, what kind of song are we hearing? Very well. If I'm out here looking like revenge, feeling like a 10th, the best I ever been. And yeah, I know how bad in my soul to see me like this, but it gets worse. Now you're out here looking like regret. And too proud to beg, second chance you'll never get.

And yeah, I know how bad in my soul to see me like this, but it gets worse. If that's all you've had, you've never heard this song. What are you expecting next? I'm expecting like a banging dance track, I think. Totally. I feel like this is a synthy EDM, old school Calvin Harris kind of thing, right? Right. Like there's going to be a pop drop after the chorus in this song.

Totally. There's going to be some pitched up vocals. Yes, it's going to be chopped up. Some chipmunk soul. Yeah, exactly. She doesn't give us any of that. I want to move forward into the pre-chorus. And tell me, what kind of song are we hearing?

now. Now I feel like we've migrated to a soulful R&B genre. Yes, absolutely. So we are led to believe that it's one thing. Our relationship to this song starts off as this like hyped up EDM thing. And then there's this, more soulful R&B thing happened, I think it's brought in by those drum machine claps, probably sort of an 808 sound bolstered by the piano, which feels like it's almost in a gospely R&B kind of tradition. Oh yeah, absolutely. That has a lot to do with the kind of voicings they're using, which are much richer and more chromatic than typical pop voicings. you know, where a typical pop voicing might just use three notes of a triad. These are richer.

This is a lot thicker. This might use what we're called extended voicing, stretching that triad out to four or five notes. That's sexy. Yeah, I totally agree. We're getting more sonic signals that kind of place us in a R&B world. Okay, so what does this mean in the context of sorry not sorry? For me, I'm hearing, it seems like we have an assessment. established relationship to the music and it's evolving and we're trying to figure out what it is.

I think the transformation that she's going through and articulating and her not sorryness is coming through in the sort of the genre play that's going on. Oh, wow. And we're not done because as we move from this pre-chorus, I actually think that it sounds like maybe we're going to go back to this EDM thing. Check this out, right? Do you hear that rising, sound. Oh, yeah. That's the sound when wobble bass is in your near future. You call that a riser.

Is that right? Yeah, yeah. If you were making an old school techno track, you would take a piece of white noise and you would slowly turn a filter and a volume up on it and then it would expand. And it basically says,

hey, change is coming and it's going to be a mega drop. And it is a mega drop. But it's not. that EDM drop that we get after this. It's a different kind of drop in a whole new context. So let's listen to the chorus and figure out what genre is she channeling? What do you think? Is it fair to say pop music at this point? Yeah, and this is where conversations of genre become totally useless because all the ways in which they blur between each other, especially in production

technique, but I'm hearing two different things here. First, you get this big bass drum, and it's a toned bass drum where the pitch of the drum is moving as if it's the baseline. It's these long, drawn-out bass drums. You can hear this in a lot of modern hip-hop, right? You could look at what I believe is the number one track on the billboard right now. Bodak Yellow has got these big, long, rumbling bass. bass kick drums. So I think what you're suggesting is that here we've stepped into the bass drum. And then that bang or kick drum is taken into even another context back into that R&B and maybe really towards

gospel because we get this call and response. Demi Lovato says, I'm sorry. And then who responds? Demi Lovato? There's maybe like 50 of her in a full chorus. I don't know if it's her, but, you know, it could be background singers, but it really kind of has a Demi Lovato feel to it. I see the Lovato Memorial Gospel Choir, right? Yeah, exactly. It feels like there is a whole chorus responding to her. Maybe it's her, the inside of her head. There's like the solo, I'm sorry. And she's like, I'm not sorry. I see, which has led us on this peregrination through musical genre.

From a dancey verse to an R&B pre-chorus to now this hip-hop gospel mashup chorus. We're seeing the singer try on all these different identities and get to the place of who she is today. And I think that where she lands successfully, sonically, is when she's channeling the feelings that she's trying to get across into the music. You can hear it in the intensity of that kick drum. You can feel it in your gut. You know, if you were dancing next to the speaker, your whole body would be shaking. And that choir is, in its essence, ascendant. I feel like we've moved into movement.

We've moved to a place where her new identity is coming through. the person that's moved past the bad relationship, she's done so, and she's doing it by upending all of our expectations of genre. Word. I love it. And I think there might even be one other genre kind of latent in here. Is it bluegrass?

No, it's polka, obviously. I don't know how you miss that. I did not hear that. In the R&B pre-chorus, we were talking about having these more extended, rich chord voicing's. That takes us into the world of R&B, perhaps a little at the edges of gospel as well.

I think it also kind of indexes even further back to jazz. And there's a moment in this song's chord progression that I absolutely love. At the part in the chorus, for instance, when Demi Lovato sings, being so bad got me feeling so good. Love that line. And then in the second half,

feeling inspired because the tables have turned. Yeah. Those are two moments in the chorus that really do it for me. Both, they've got this great sort of slinky melody, which maybe you'll have something to say about later, but they've got this very distinctive chord change underneath, which sounds like this. Ooh, that is, that's really silky smooth.

And why does it sound like that? It doesn't sound like a lot of pop music. It sounds a little older, and it's because that harmonic motion, I think Q Jazz Masters theme music. I think the reason it kind of sounds a little older is because it's this progression that we don't hear as much, which is called a 251 progression. Right.

2.5.1. And we don't have to go too deep into what that means to say that this particular chord progression was all over jazz standards. Like all the great jazz chord progressions that were written by songwriters like Duke Ellington, George Gershwin, Hogi Carmichael, etc. They all made huge use of this 2-5 progression. You can take a song like George Gershwin's Nice Work if you can get it, which is just entirely made up of that same chord progression we hear in Demi Lovato.

So it goes. And if we just look at the bass, it's all 2-5. All to say that that same motion we hear in sorry, not sorry, is taken straight, like, plucked from the world of 19, 20s and 30s jazz music and just sort of like rocketed into a 2017 chart topper. I think that there might be a really deliberate reason why they chose that progression. Oh.

Your tone is very conspirator. which I'm intrigued by. So tell me where you're going with this. We're going into an ad break. Charlie, you devil. That's how you structure a podcast. Cliffhanger. And on the other side,

we'll see how that progression unfolds in the harmonic movement of the track, which, if you haven't guessed it, the idea of ascension is built right into the music, and that moment of pseudo-jazz is so important. Right when we come back.

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Say the pith. I'm so excited to get into the beyond meat of this song, into the music, because as we're going to see, this feeling of ascendancy of moving a relationship into a new context

is in the harmonic and melodic structure of the track. You established that this genre movement into jazz happens at this particular moment, and it's an important moment. But before we can see

why it's so essential, we have to understand a little bit more of what's happening in the base of the song. And just to be clear, you're talking about this line in the chorus, feeling inspired because the tables have turned. That's the one. Okay, cool. Before we can get to that moment, we have to know what's happening before it and what happens

right from the start of the song. We have a chord progression that goes throughout. And a lot of popular music right now, we're seeing two and four bar chordal loops that just go on and on. And this is probably because of more sample-based music and things that are often built around a loop. This song has a chord progression that goes throughout, meaning it doesn't change throughout the verse of the chorus. There are minor changes to it, but it more or less is the same. But it's a long

progression. It goes throughout eight bars, and it moves in lots of different directions. But I want to establish that it has a general arc. And we can hear the arc of this chord progression if we pay particular attention to the bass note of the track. You can hear it when it's resonating, that kick drum is actually playing that bass note for us. Right. This song opens up and the first thing we get is actually not the home chord, but actually we're already starting from away, and the bass is rising. It goes up three notes. Yes, in that very particular rhythmic pattern that continues throughout. And that begins a sequence, which is continued, and the base continues to rise in the next two bars. Landing us in the home key. So what we notice about this baseline is that it is going up, it is ascending.

baselines can go in all sorts of directions. Very frequently, maybe more than half the time, they're going to be going down. But this baseline, it's going up. It's ascending. Yeah, it's like an insect burrowing up towards the light. So the base has been moving up through this chord progression. And now we've hit this halfway point

and all of a sudden she's singing about the tables are turning. And the baseline, what does it do? It drops back down. So the base has set up this expectation of moving up and up and up, and then things actually transform a little bit, and they move back down just as she sings that line. Eventually, the chordal progression follows all the way through and the base leading us through it. Where does it go? It kind of gets back on the horse again, so to speak, and leads us back to the home key.

Two steps forward, one step back. Yeah. One more step forward. If we play all the notes of the baseline out of rhythm, just one after another, It's almost like a musical pretzel. Kind of goes up and then down back in and itself and then back up again. Yeah, play that for me. It's a salty pretzel.

It is. It's kind of like a little puzzle of a line, a little maze. I mentioned at the top of the show that this feeling of ascension is woven throughout. And one of the other elements that I love is that this chordal progression as it moves, it takes on different contexts. So in this one moment, there's the tables are turning. In another context, during the verse, when you're... she's singing, the bass and the melody are in counterpoint to each

other so that when the bass is ascending at the beginning of this progression, her melody descends. And then, when the bass does a little turnaround and drops back down, her melody comes back up. And they're in conversation with each other, moving in opposite directions, almost as if she's putting resistance against the direction that the song wants to take you in, asserting her sorry not sorry quality in the melodic construction against the bass. Cool. So you're saying when the bass is kind of pulling the song down, then her vocal in the

verse shoots up in order to sort of resist that downward pull. That feels really connected to the message of the song. She doesn't have to write the melody in that direction, but it just feels so connected to the countervailing forces of a relationship and its expectations then against who she's wanting to state herself loudly as being. Right. Like this song wouldn't be so effective if it was just all like, hey, I'm so great now and like I don't have any problems anymore.

That wouldn't be a very compelling song of self-confidence. It's more compelling if you can still feel those forces trying to pull you down. Exactly. It feels established in these contrasts. But you're not letting it. You're still reaching higher and always striving for the light. You know, another way that the song is doing that, I think constantly leading us in different directions, is first by actually not starting on the home key, giving us this suggestion that the song may actually even be in a major. key. The first three chords could suggest that we are in G major. Ah, bright, happy, transformed immediately. But no, the song keeps moving, that sequence of chords keeps rising and lands us into

the key of B minor, a much more solemn key. I heard this song over and over and over again, and I never associated it as a song in a minor key, not listening with my musical ear, but just sort of from a place of emotional quality. Right? It felt like this was almost like a happy bombastic song. Yeah. And yet it's in the context of a minor key. Yeah, I see what you mean. That's cool.

I mean, going back to the Jewish New Year for a second. Sure. It's not entirely inappropriate because a lot of Klesmer songs, for instance, are very positive and celebratory, but are often written in minor keys. Like Eastern European Jews seem to think that minor keys were actually very celebratory. Which maybe it requires us to call. question the degree to which hearing minor as sad is a culture rather than absolute. We can do the episode on the fictional universality of sound any time you want to just say the word.

I want to mention one more aspect of the song that creates this feeling of ascension. Like I said, it's not any one part of the song. It's how they all interact together. And I think we're missing one important piece that we've not yet discussed. It's Demi Levato's vocal. Yes, this is the key. This is the glue holding this whole track together. Her vocal, for me, demonstrates control and authority over her subject in such a way that there can be, for me, in my reading of it, no question that this is a celebratory overcoming of a bad relationship.

There's no irony about this. It is clear that she is ecstatic. So, Nate, how do you hear this quality of vocal ecstaticness? How is it coming across for you? A big part of it is just the range of her voice. Yeah. In the last chorus of this song, she just kind of explodes with those vocal runs

that are so satisfying and feel like the oral equivalent of the kind of rootedness and confidence that she is telling us she has now. In the chorus, she has a fairly high note when she's singing Sorry Not Sorry. She's really belting it out, and you think that that is gonna be the biggest, highest part of the song.

But you're right, underneath the final chorus, she's singing all of these counter melodies and these notes that are over her high note, which I can't even comprehend. They are so in this ethereal other outer space, which is just coming from a deep gutterall, incredible, vocal. Yeah, you know, I think she also just in general, beyond the sort of incredible range of it, just puts a lot of her personality into the song from singing, baby, I'm sorry, on the chorus. Like,

she doesn't sing, I'm sorry, the way Justin Bieber sings sorry in the song, sorry. At this point, I've said the word sorry so much that's lost all meaning. She sings it in a way that, like, gives a little more force, because E isn't a very strong phoneme, but. but A, it's like has a little more power. I'm sorry. Yeah. It gives a little more force. And then I like the way she says the word sorry a lot in the song.

She has to say the word bad even more. But I like it because she like uses it in all these different contexts. So in the verse, she says, I know how bad it must hurt. And the pre-corror, she says, payback is a bad bitch. And baby, I'm the baddest. So that's like kind of a different connotation. of bad. Yes.

Not payback because a bad bitch and baby I'm a bad and then in the chorus there's like a third kind of meaning of bad where she says being so bad

it's got me feeling so good. In the verse it's bad as in the sense of feeling woeful and the pre-course is the sense of bad as like being badass and then in the chorus

it's like the sense of being naughty I guess or like breaking rules you know. And each one I think she gives a little bit of a different inflection. So even though there's all this best,

she really like owns the word bad in this song. Yeah, to take such a simple word and transmute it through all sorts of articulations, it really demonstrates her powers as a vocalist. Oh my gosh. You have something that you want to close out with. But there's just one other thing that I want to point out, which is that in contrast to all of this vocal control that's going on,

there are also all of these moments of feeling where things are kind of like devolving and starting to fall apart. Sort of going back to what you were saying, perhaps about feeling ascension. You can only hear it in context to having some of the bad relationship within the song. And every single time she rolls out of this chorus,

there is this drum fill as if the whole song is completely about to fall apart. Do you know what I'm talking about? I know exactly what you're talking about. I could not play this fill because it doesn't even feel like it's in time. And it just the whole song is going to like, roll off the tracks and then she just catches herself perfectly.

Yeah, it's totally this sort of stuttering like, I like that almost off the tracks. Yeah. There's some wonderful drum fills throughout this. Every piece is a nugget, man. Like every single measure, there's like, oh, I've listened to it on repeat so many times. Each moment, I'm like, I didn't hear that thing last time. It totally surprises me. No, in addition to Demi Lovato soaring vocals,

the production on this track is so thick. It's like every little moment has been tended to like a Japanese garden. Yeah. And there's a moment I just want to end with after this beautiful analysis you've given us of the song that struck me. Like you, I listened to it 20 times. I didn't notice this until like the 21st. that the bridge of the song where Demi Lovato is singing Talk That Talk Baby, Better Walk, Better Walk That Walk Baby,

and she's accompanied by all these backup singers, right? Yeah. It's a very triumphant moment because we have this whole massive chorus of people saying like, Talk That Talk, Better Walk, That Walk, which is really reinforcing the idea that she is putting her, money where her mouth is and she expects people to do the same in return to her. And that little rhythmic vocal from the bridge, Talk That Talk Baby, Better Walk, Better Walk, That Walk Baby is in the entire song.

Wait what? It's in the very first moment of the song. There was this weird, you know, there's this like weird texture at the very beginning of the song. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah. They sound like the Dementors from Harry Potter to me. Like, there are these weird, and their voices. Right? I think.

Yeah. Yeah, they're voices. Now I'm out here looking like revenge, feeling like a tin, the best I ever been. And yeah, I know how bad it might just see me like this. But it can hear. And they go through the whole song. You can hear them in the background of the chorus too.

I was wondering what that was. Dementors, right? In the background of the chorus. Maybe again, it's representing what we were talking about, that thing pulling you back. something, a little unsettling, scary. And then you keep hearing it again and again, and it's only in the bridge that you realize,

oh, that sound was that bridge, that confident bridge. Talk that talk, baby. Whoa, so you're basically saying, like, they recorded the bridge and then basically took that material and altered it and then threw it into the rest of the track.

So it's almost this constant recursive loop slash really salted pretzel. Yeah, exactly. Another pretzel. Whoa. Pretzels within pretz. So the song is not about ascension and getting over a bad relationship. It's about pretzels.

It's about carnival pretzels. Just to be very clear. Yeah. That's the whole purpose of the song. Which are the ultimate. I mean, that's what's waiting for us all. No, I'm talking about ascension and the great beyond. It's a giant pretzel.

You ascend and then you descend back into the thing and then you grow beyond and then you go back and revisit it. Absolutely. Absolutely. A friend of mine told me recently that I need to get more comfortable living in the paradox. Yeah, pretzel paradox. I think we're pretzling a little bit right now, so. Well, I want to say that even though this song puts us in an unsettled place to begin with, not knowing what kind of song we're listening to, is this minor, is this major?

Man, this is not a sad song. This is a song that has been so important to me recently. And in the words of Delo Lovato has left me. feeling so good. I'm happy to get to share it with you, Nate. I completely agree. Sometimes when things are darkest all around the world, it's those pop confections, those bubblegum anthems of independence and strength that surprisingly provide the

kind of emotional feel we need to keep going. I dig it, man. All right. This has been a lot of fun. As always, I'm going to go listen to this song another 20 times. It's so much fun. It is one of those things you can actually just put on repeat. and it keeps getting better.

Yeah. I actually have, I'll say, a secret, awesome other little hidden moment in the track, but maybe we'll just go share it on Twitter. Whoa, yeah, I want to know what that is. Yeah. All right. There's a lot of other hidden things. And perhaps maybe what we need to do is ask people,

if you're hearing cool hidden stuff in the track, please share it with us. We want to continue the discussion. This episode, Switchdown Pop, was produced by me, Charlie Harding. And edited by me, Nate Sloan, and our incredible multi-tile. talented editor, Bill Lance. Our design is done by Luke Harris. And I'm also really excited to announce that we have a new intern. Welcome Olivia Wood to the show.

If you want to continue the discussion with us about Sorry Not Sorry and All Other Things Switched On Pop. You can find us on Twitter at Switchedon Pop, on Facebook, switchonpop, website, switchonpop.com. We are a proud member of the Panoppley Network. They've got lots of other cool shows. go check them out. And we're going to be back again in two weeks with another episode.

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