Switched on Pop - DJ Khaled - I'm The One... six... four... five

Episode Date: June 1, 2017

DJ Khaled, Justin Bieber, Chance the Rapper, Quavo from Migos and Lil Wayne have allied for a new smash hit: "I'm The One." Despite the star power present, the resulting track is less than the sum of its parts—repetitive, derivative, uninventive. And yet, the lackluster "I'm The One" sits comfortably at the top of the charts, which raises the question: why?? Our answer: because Khaled and company understand the bewitching power of tonal harmony, and they've utilized the most surefire chord progression in pop history to ensure their success, a simple sequence of chords that has captivated listeners for almost a century: I - vi - IV - V. Check out our playlist of songs using this progression — and please send us any others that you identify! Featuring: • DJ Khaled - I'm The One • Dean Martin - Blue Moon • Ben E. King - Stand By Me • Hoagy Carmichael - Heart & Soul • The Police - Every Breath You Take  • Whitney Houston - I Will Always Love You • fun. - We Are Young • Justin Bieber - Baby • Jean-Philippe Rameau - Les Sauvages Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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pointe slash records. Welcome to Switched on pop. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan and I'm

songwriter Charlie Harding. Charlie, Today, I want to talk about a song that I find completely beguiling. Say more. Because on one hand, I find it repellent, for lack of a better word. And yet on the other, I cannot get it out of my head. What is it?

The song in question is called I'm the One. And it is performed by an all-star coterie of hip-hop artists. DJ, Kaled, Justin, Bieber, Chance, the Rone. rapper Cuevo from the group Migos. That's probably enough. But Little Wayne is also on there as well. Oh. Wow, what a pantheon of artists, right? Right, right. And yet, my goodness, the song is bad.

I don't know how else to say it. My vocabulary is failing me. It's just bad. I mean, you've listened to this song. I can't be alone here, right? Support me in this. This is not a good song. This song stinks.

Oh, man. On top of really recycled misogynist lyrics and machismo, throughout the entire thing. It's kind of as if everybody's phoning it in to this song in which there is a single bass line that is kind of a rip-off of Iggy Azalea's fancy, has the same sort of timbre of right, right, that DJ mustard bass. Mm-hmm. And they play that bass line all the way through when Justin Bieber sings his, I guess you could

call it a chorus or a hook. This song doesn't really like go anywhere. It doesn't grow. There's no great climactic moment. It's just sort of verse, chorus, verse, verse, chorus, of the same repeating baseline with the same sort of terrible lyricism throughout. So that's my short review. Yes, it does feel as though everyone involved with the song wrote their verses about five minutes before the recording session began. It has such crimes against lyrics.

as Justin Bieber singing early morning in the done, which is I think supposed to be dawn, but he says done in order to rhyme with the word one. So in summation, this song is, let's see, derivative, offensive, and lazy. And yet, and yet, whenever it comes on, I have to listen to it. No, no.

Oh, man. Why is that? Okay, the reason, Charlie, I think at least, this is my hypothesis. The reason I can't stop listening to this song, well, in order to answer that, we need to start to enter the wonderful world of tonal harmony. I had a college book called Tonal Harmony. And I never thought that DJ Khaled and Justin Bieber would be the ones to take us to this mysterious world of music theory. And yet here we are, it's the wonderful thing about this show, the circuitous routes that musicology takes us. And indeed, in order to understand the song's effectiveness, I think we need to understand how

tonal harmony works. And that in doing so, we will be able to understand why we can't stop listening. This is be good? I could probably use a bit of a refresher. And I'm just wondering, is this sort of a repercussion of me cutting you off last time you tried to do a classical master's? You're just going to take over the entire episode? Yes, this is retribution. So what do we got to do? So why is this song so effective? Well, I think, big part of the reason is that this song uses what might be, I was going to say the first most popular chord progression of the 20th century. It might be the second, though. Maybe the 12-bar blues is the first most popular. Sure. This is what I was saying, the baseline that runs throughout,

on top of being appropriative of the Iggy Azalea track, funny used appropriative and talking about Igazalia's music. And anyway, it's also just like the most used chord progression ever. And I think this is part of the reason why I was at first like, nah, not for me. Then again, I think it's now a platinum song. Everybody loves it. It seems to be really catchy. Seems to work for people. And it maybe it has to do with this baseline in core progression. I think it does. And it's a good point because this song was for a while the number one song in the country. Currently, at the time of this recording, it's resting comfortably at number three. So yes, this core progression still seems to have a lot of cachet. What is this first or second most successful?

chord progression of the 20th century. Let's describe it in Roman numerals, and we hear it again and again and again throughout this song. It's right there in the bass line. Our first chord is the one chord, and then we go to the six chord, and then we go to the four chord, and then we go to the five chord,

and after those four chords, guess what, we're just going to repeat the same progression over and over again. One, six, four, four. And in order to understand it, I think we need to talk about what tonal harmony is, how it works. And in doing so, we'll finally, we talk about these Roman numeral chords a lot in our show. And maybe this is a good opportunity to actually hit the brakes for a second and say, okay, what exactly are we talking about here? So what are people going to take away from this when they learn about the 1645?

Great question, Charles. What I'm hoping that people take away is a new appreciation of the power. that tonal harmony holds over us. And it's one of these elements of music that's not always necessarily immediately apparent. It works a kind of subtle magic on us, unconscious even. But in breaking down how this simple four chord progression works,

it'll actually unlock the entire world of tonal harmony because it shows how chords aren't just static notes sounding through space in the system of tonal harmony. harmony, they're telling a story. They're telling a narrative. This tale of 1645 sounds very dull when I describe it as four Roman numerals. And yet when you hear it, there is an entire narrative. There is like an odyssey within these four chords.

Okay, cool. And to understand how composers take us on that journey, I think will kind of crack open a whole world of music that maybe some people. hadn't access before. I think we probably also need a clarifying definition. What the heck is tonal harmony? I'm glad you asked and to answer, let's go back to 1723 when a French composer named Jean-Philippe Rameau first coins this term, tonal harmony in his treatise. He is not someone we're familiar with today, but he might have more impact on the history of music than just about any other figure. Is this like 18th century Bieber? Yeah, that's a powerful analogy that I'll have to

kind of meditate on for a second, but sure, sure. So what does he say? Ramo says that in order to understand how music works, you need to understand how chords work, how they interact with each other. And in order to do that, you need to establish this system that we're going to call tonality. And it's called tonality, because it's all based around one tone. This is a hierarchy. As soon as you assign a key to a song, that key becomes the most important tone. So in the case of I'm the one, G major.

Okay. So G is our home. Let's think of it as our house. You know, it's nice, it's comfortable, it's stable. We feel really good whenever we hear G. We feel we've arrived. Right. Put our feet up, make a fire.

We love G, right? Yes. That's our tonal home, and we'll call it the tonic. It's a tonic for all of our als. Yeah, great. And in terms of numbers, it's going to be the first. It's number one. Like this song says, I'm the one, right?

G is the one here. Okay. Now, in a G major scale, though, there's seven other notes. Yeah. There's G. A. B. C, D, E, and F sharp.

And if we can just go up the scale and assign each of those notes a number, then the second note, A, would be number two, B, third note number three, C, fourth note, number four, and D, fifth note number five. Now, what we can do with each of those notes is build a chord off of them. So going up to scale again, we can take that G, our tonic G, and make a G major chord. And then we can go up to A, number two, and make an A minor chord. 3, B minor. 4, C major.

5. D major. 6. E minor. 7. F sharp diminished. Ooh, that's nice, right? And then we're back to one again. Ramo recognized that each of these chords had a very specific relationship to home, to the tonic to one, to G major. And what his great contribution was was to map out exactly the kind of web of relations of all these other chords to that tonic chord. Sure.

And the first one that comes to mind is probably the most profound tonal relationship in the history of Western harmony. Yeah. Which is the movement from the chord we build off of the fifth scale degree. In the case of G, that's D major. Here's the five chord. Because this chord, this five chord, this D major chord, has a very special property. It wants to go home. It wants to go back to G.

It wants to go back to the tonic. And you can hear this. If I play this D major chord, we feel this almost inexorable desire to go here. To go home. And in the case of our Khaled Bieber chants at all track, I'm the one. This is the fourth chord we hear every time.

This is the chord that always takes us back to G major. Yeah. And we can hear the power of this chord because when I play a G major and then I play a D major, take me back home. And I don't play that G again. It's really uncomfortable. Yeah, take me back home.

We want to go home. That's like a bus dropping you off in yonkers when you live in Broderum, you know? You're like, no, no, no, I need to go home. This isn't right. Okay, so that's a powerful relationship, right? Rameau recognized that. Five wants to go to one. Yeah.

But then there's five other possible chords built from this. G major skill, right? We still got two, three, four, six, and seven. Yeah. And those each have their own relationships to one. Now, the two other chords that Khaled and company use in this song, as we mentioned, are six and four. And what those chords do is basically take us to the five chord, which is going to take us back to one. We're in some like recursive falling loop. Yes. So everything is building up to that five chord, which wants to go back to one, and the first two chords, six and four, are kind of setting the stage for that five chord. Let's hear how that works. And we're going to listen really for the story that the harmony is telling right now.

Okay. Here's our one chord, G major. Our second chord, the six chord, E minor. The four chord, C major. And the five chord, D major. Which again wants to bring us back to the tonic. The one, G major. I'm the one, Charlie.

I'm the one. 16, four, five, you are the one. As we play those chords, we hear this story unfolding. So we start every time, we start at home, right? G major, ah, here we are at home. Everything's great, everything's wonderful. But then you have to leave your house. And when you do, it can be a little scary.

And in the case of this chord progression, there's some trepidation because we step out of the house and immediately we go to the six minor chord. Yes, we'd call up the relative minor. And that's a little unsettling because we just left our house and already we're in a rainstorm or something. You like step outside and it just starts a downpour. Yeah. And it's kind of a bummer, frankly. But that engage, that's a good thing for the songwriter because that engages us. And then it's a question, where are we going next? Are we going to continue to be in the rain?

Are we going to go to another minor chord? Or are we going to walk into the sun? Our next chord, the four chord, C major. Ooh, it's brightening up. Right, so this is exciting. We have a suggestion that the clouds are going to disperse. Will this come true? We have to get one more chord in order to know.

There's that five chord. And at this point, we're like, oh, this is good. It's going to end well. I'm going to get back home back to my. warm house dry off throw master of none on the projector and make myself a drink g major one all as well maybe this is an absurd extended metaphor but there's almost like a perfect baseball analogy here as well as someone who knows a very little bit about sports i kind of feel like home home base you start there then you get to the sixth core which is first base where you're like okay this is exciting i made it to

base, but there's a long way to go and it might not end well and I could just get out immediately. And then you get to second base where you're like, ooh, things are like building up. This could really happen. You get the third base. You're like, oh my gosh, the whole stadium's going totally mad and then boom, back home. You score a point. Wow. I love it.

That actually, yeah. Well, did you just come up with that? I did. I'm impressed. Oh, thanks. And I like the four bases too because the crazy thing about harmony is that every time we hear it, we can't help but get pulled along. So each one of these four chord progressions, no matter what, is going to grab us.

Because the way that tonality and the tonal system where everything is getting constantly pulled back to this home key, we can't fight that. We don't have control over that. I mean, this is a whole other discussion, but that's probably ingrained in our DNA in some way, this tonal system. Because we've been exposed to it since we were kids, you know? At least we Westerners. Okay, wait, hold on, hold on. Important distinction. So you're saying nature or nurture?

Well, yeah. And again, I don't like, do I want to open this can of worms? We'll probably have to say this for another episode. I'm sure, you know, the next Bieber track will get us into a deep discussion of whether music is a universal language or something you learn culturally. He has brought us to some existential places in the past. So, yeah, okay, we'll wait for that one. But let's table that for now. Sure.

Regardless, I think for our ears, or should I'll speak personally for my ears, I'm so ingrained to hear this that even if it's in a silly, dumb, offensive song and I can't help but be dragged a line because that's the power of harmony. Home, away, and then return. I mean, this is how Western classical composers have been taking advantage of this tonal system since Ramos first established it. This is how Mozart, Beethoven, created these grand symphonies of home and away, regardless of its pop progression or an hour-long symphony. it's really based on the same tonal premise that you establish a home key, you travel away from it, and then you return in triumph.

That is the power of tonal harmony. So even in this insipid track, as this chord progression rolls around 1, 6, 4, 5, the drama of those chords going by is undeniable. and seemingly linked to all of the history of Western music. Well, if you'll indulge a short break while we collect ourselves, that's exactly what I want to pick up in the second half of this song because Khaled, Bieber, and Company are not by any means the first to crack this tonal code. They are part of a long history of songwriters pulling out the 1645 card in order to guarantee a hit. All right, we'll see you on the other side.

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Brought me back to some late night cramming sessions from college in which I had to study a bunch of that stuff. Though our friends DJ Khalid Justin Bieber, chance the rapper, Quavos and Little Wayne proclaim continually on this song that they are, quote, the only one, end quote. It's important to point out that these singers are far from the only ones to use this magic chord progression. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why I was not immediately taken by the song. I heard it as derivative and in particular I heard this core progression and I was like, oh, that's that like 50s, core progression that everybody used for all like Motown and stuff. I've heard that

thing too many times. I'm done with it. I hear what you're saying and yet I'd counter that for one, this chord progression is being used in American music pre-50s and 60s. And, post. Okay. Well, it'll be interesting, I think, as we listen to some of these different examples, is to hear, despite the presence of this chord progression in many songs, different artists really create an entirely different world out of this chord progression. Cool.

I am super interested in hearing how this progression is used differently throughout history to pull on all of our heartstrings and expectations. Tell me more. Well, in order to do so, let's go back to 1934, which, might be the first appearance of this core progression in a song by one of my favorite songwriting teams ever, Rogers and Heart. This is... Blue, you saw me standing alone without a dream in my heart, without a love.

All right, I'm already one back over. I love it. So, yeah, this song probably made a good case for the power of this core progression. and we have in this very kind of wistful nostalgic song, this movement from one to the minor six and then gradually getting back to four and finally five, which will take us back to one.

Yeah. Gives you this sense of longing, I think, and yearning, right? Yeah. You have that sense of home, of this relationship maybe, and then it's kind of taken away from you and then you get it back over and over and over again. So while it may have been introduced in the 1930s, as you mentioned, this chord progression really comes.

into its own in the 1950s and probably no other song helps to really establish this as one of the dominant chord of regressions of the 50s and 60s than Ben E. King's stand by me. When the night has come and the land is dark and the moon is the only light will see. No, I want Just as long as you stand Oh, this is a great connection to I'm the One Because it's just that solo bass

With a little bit of metallic percussion In the background, they're totally connected. Whoa, that's crazy. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And again, I think so much of the power of the song comes from this movement from one home to minor six away and then gradually our return through four and five back to one.

In this case it happens a lot slower too and you really feel each of those chord progressions. Yeah, totally. And again, there's so much drama. I mean, when we, that first time it drops down from the safety of one to the uncertainty of six, I mean, there's so much pathos. And then every time he comes back to that one,

just as long as you stand by me, you're like, yes, I know. I know. As long as you take me back to one, I'll stand by you. Like, it's so effective. This is probably best personified in a song we talked about in episode 50, Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, where he literally says the minor fall and the major lift, which is the movement from the six to the four, five, and back one. He writes it into his lyrics, the movement of sorrow to back.

into happiness. Right. And then as in Cohen and all of these songs, then you, as soon as you get back to happiness, then you immediately go to minor again. That's the game of these harmonies is home and away. When Stand By Me came out, you can find countless 50s and 60s songs using this chord progression. Yeah. In fact, it's sometimes called the 50s chord progression. That's how it's. Oh, so I wasn't off in my own. Oh, that sounds like a 50s thing. Yeah, yeah. Okay. And indeed, it's the progression of this song that is the bane of every pianist's existence, heart and soul. Oh, no, no, don't play it. But it also appears in some unexpected places, just to pick a couple examples, just because

they're great. Sting every breath you take. Trolley, were you aware this was a 1645 chord progression? This is, I believe it was a police song. The police song. It's a hard thing to say, uh, the police. I play by the police and it is wonderful. I would like to hear it again.

And again, just like in Stand By Me, this chord progression just works its magic. Yeah. Because we get that uncertainty from the move to the minor six. And then he actually does something interesting. He kind of speeds up the chords as they get back to the one. So the anticipation of this promise that he'll always be watching, whether we think that's cool or creepy.

Yeah. You really feel it, right? You feel his determination. as the chords move back to that one chord. And in every breath you take, it's also driven heavily by the bass. Sting is a bass player. And so we have that great bass line,

which is driving us through that chord progression, just like we heard on Stand By Me, and the connection to I'm the One, the really bass forward songs. Yeah, totally. And back to our friend Jean-Philippe Rameau, who established the fundamental bass as the source of the power of tonal harmony.

I don't know that. The ubiquity of this chord progression is kind of amazing. To the point where I can think of three songs, at least, that we've discussed on this show before that make use of this 1645 chord progression. One came up just in our last episode. No, really? Yeah. And I hesitate to play it because we've discussed my complicated relationship with it. But remember Marvin Gay by Charlie Puth and Megan Trayner?

Yeah, of course. Well, this makes sense because he was trying to make reference back to early rock and roll, and so he used that court progression. Totally. Very, very pastichey in that case. Let's not even play it. Let's just keep moving on. Whitney Houston, I will always love you. Get out of here, really? I cannot lie. And in this song, it's really, you can hear the walk down to the six and then further down to the four and then rising back up to the five to take us back to the one. And this is such a great use of this chord progression because again, the sentiment of this song

I will always love you fits so perfectly with the idea of this chord progression always coming back to one again and again supporting Whitney Houston's statement. One other really interesting use of this chord progression is a song we talked about way back when We Are Young by the band Fun period featuring Janelle Meney.

Remember this one? Yeah, of course. And when the chorus of the song hits, we have a massive 1645 core progression. And it's really effective. Again, it's crazy that this core progression has been around at that point for like 80 years. Yeah. And it still has so much power.

This is a great example. I feel like I have a very different emotional relationship to We Are Young. It has this anthemic quality. it's able to use the same characteristic core progression, but take me to a different place. Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think the valances of it in this song are manifold because in a way it's like this idea of we are young,

it's kind of like maybe hearkening back to 1950s kind of teenage innocence. At the same time as the whole song is like very jaded and kind of mature and bitter. So it's like it's totally anthemic, but also maybe kind of an ironic use of the chord progression at the same time. And then I just have to point out that this chord progression is so inescapable that even our friend Justin Bieber himself, this is not the first time that he's used it. Really?

No, of course he's not. His first big hit, Baby, is a classic 1645 chord progression. And in this case, I think we can hear Bieber very deliberately making use of this chord progression to access his fans in a very direct way. I mean, this is an example of this core progression being as simple as possible, with the exception of I'm the one probably. This is just like textbook. We have a really simple melody.

And this is another cool thing about the core progression is you can sing the same melody over each of the chords. and then every time you move to another chord, it kind of has the melody takes on a different meaning. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, it makes it so that it isn't purely derivative. Yeah, it's open to so many different ways of moving through it. Indeed. And in this list, we have only scratched the surface.

So what I want to do is actually share a Spotify playlist of the 1645 songs that I've identified. But what I hope to do is to, add any other examples of this chord progression that people know of out there and will create the 1645 master list. It's going to be like 10,000 songs long. I'm very keen to taxonomize all of these different songs. Okay, well, so I feel like I'm, I like going through the history of this progression and seeing that it is a foundational element of popular music. Do you think that I'm the one actually employs it in an effective way?

That's a great question, Charlie. And the answer in a word would be no. How come? Here's why, because I think as the examples that we've just looked at hopefully show, this core progression works especially well when the lyric message of the song is taking advantage of the chord progression's inherent narrative. Right. Which again is this progression from home to away and then gradually back to home.

I think especially with that important step that step out into the rainstorm, this sort of sorrowful element. You have mixed emotions that are happening. Yes. Whoa. Every breath you take is a great example because it has the sort of love song plus creepy quality to it, which I think is drawn out really effectively in the use of that six chord. Yeah, yeah. The sorrow chord.

Oh, that's so true. There's kind of a duality to a lot of these songs that take advantage of that chord progression, whereas I'm the one is just one dimensional. It's just braggadocio and megalomania. Super summer jam. Yeah, it doesn't have that rainy moment. And it doesn't have that minor vibe. And that's why I think this song is so interesting in a way,

because it's not a good song. And yet it's popularity. and its kind of undeniable has nothing to do in a way with the melody, with the lyrics. It has something to do with something in the bedrock of this song, something that Jean-Philippe Rameau discovered

back in the 18th century that chords work on us in this way that just can overcome every other aspect of a song. The power of that harmonic journey over and over again is something that we just endlessly gravitate. That and the fact that you took five of the biggest stars in the world of R&B and hip hop and you put them all together. That didn't help.

That didn't hurt rather. Doesn't hurt. So again, we're going to post a playlist featuring a nice set of these one, six, four, five chord progression songs. But please, if you know them and as you're listening to a song, this will happen to you often now, you'll be listening to a song and you'll think, wait a second, I've heard this chord progression before. It's I'm the one. and everything I've ever heard. And when you do, simply just shoot us a tweet or an email or add it to the Spotify playlist because we eventually will get every single song in the history of music that uses this

question. You're responsible for maintaining that. I can't even, I can't. Until then, I remain musicologist Nate Sloan. And I'm Charlie Harding. I do some stuff on the side too. We also have a great editor named Bill Lance and a great designer. name Lou Harris.

You can find more episodes of our show online, Switchedonpop.com, iTunes, Stitcher, all those good podcast catchers. And as mentioned, 1645 core progressions, give them to us. Twitter at Switchedonpop, Facebook Switchedonpop at gmail.com. Wave us down on the street if you see us and say,

hey, I just heard a song. And anything else we need to say? I don't know. I think we'll be back in two weeks. And until then, thanks for listening. Thanks for listening.