Switched on Pop - Dua Lipa's Minor Mantra (w Emily Bootle)

Episode Date: December 28, 2017

Charlie talks laments, Baroque opera, and gender politics in Dua Lipa's sleeper hit "New Rules" with writer Emily Bootle. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Attention Spotify. Has given the new Good Girl Jasmine Absolute of Carolina Herrera, a fragrance intense with character curman and addictive. Imagine a jasmine emvolventy, caramelized and tonka-tostata.

A combination that seduce from the first instant and a wayla. Good Girl Jasmine Absolute hypnotic irresistible. Discover it today and let you turn around for

your passion in a new with Shopify and batte records of the business with the form of power of the world.

You've heard well the best conversion of the world the incredible system of the paygo of Shopify

facilita the website on your social and the website and in the music for your

ears. No, you'll make more world your business is a

super success with your period of a year per

a month on Shopify.coms bar records. Welcome to Switched on Pop. I am a songwriter

Charlie Harding and I am very pleased to be joined by Emily Boodle, a London-based musician and writer who has written some amazing series of pop essays for noisy vices music publication, including subjects such as the science behind Why Despacito was such a big hit and the theory of Rihanna's success. Emily, what a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. You recently wrote a fantastic article about Dua Lepa's song.

new rules. Thank you. I was so taken by this article. I just, I had to speak with you about it, both because it reveals really the essence of this really unique song and because this was a track that was one of my favorites of the year that we never got to speak about. So I thought, what a great opportunity to do an extra little episode about Dua Leap's New Rules. Yeah, it's a great track. I think it's top five of the year. It's really, really good. So wrote it down and read it out, hoping it would say me. Too many times. My love's like nobody else.

Nobody else. I'm to myself. Don't pick up the phone. You know, he's only calling because he's drunk and alone, too. I have to kick him out again. Three, don't be his friend. You know, you're going to wake up in his back. So what was the first thing when hearing the song that grabbed you?

To be honest, the first thing is, the weird drop just before the chorus, which I didn't actually mention in the article. Can you describe what we're hearing there? It's really weird, and I did kind of want to write about it, but it's just too difficult to explain musically. What is it? I can't really work out. It's just this very syncopated kind of displacement of the rhythm. The whole track kind of cuts out, and then it kind of jars, and then it kind of launches into the chorus. When I heard that, I was just like, oh, what's going on?

Because it's not just an ordinary pop song. I love that moment. I'm curious to see if we can make some connections to what it means with the rest of the underlying message. So maybe you could share, what is the song about? So the song's about Jewelipa has had a failed relationship or she's been dating someone. I don't know how serious it is. And he doesn't love her. back, I think, is the general vibe of the song. And she keeps coming back to him and she can't

break the cycle. They keep getting back together and then they're on and they're off. And she's created rules for herself in order that she doesn't get with him again, basically, I think. Right. So at first glance, it's maybe sort of a typical on the nose breakup anthem. Yeah. But you describe this differently and say that it really distinguishes itself from the typical female empowerment, Spotify, playlist. Yeah. What is it doing that makes it its own creation? Your typical song about an ex can be quite one dimensional.

So I mentioned Christina Aguilera and Little Mix in the piece. And they both kind of thank their ex for how they've made them a better person and like turn it into a positive thing, which is obviously great. And we need pop music to do that for us. Oh, for sure. But New Rules has this sense of acceptance about it, which lots of songs don't have. You described it as almost pragmatic. Exactly, yeah.

It's so down to earth. There's not a lot of romance. I mean, there are glimpses of romance, but she's being very practical about everything, and I love that. But I do think it's got this real sadness to it as well, which just makes it more complex and feel more profound, I guess. She's setting up these really pragmatic rules about how to deal with the aftermath of this relationship. Yeah. We talked about Demi Lovato's sorry not sorry, which is this sort of like, yo, I'm way over you and I'm not even sorry about it, right? Yeah, exactly.

I love that. But this is kind of like dealing in the gray area of it's over, but, you know, maybe it's still like not potentially completely over. So I got to like set some clear boundaries about how this is going to work. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. How do you think that it conveys its message musically? I think that's really interesting because it's obviously this like really upbeat driving pop track that you want to dance to. Yeah. And that's the kind of practical getting on with it side, I think. And then she has this amazing kind of ethereal vocal, which...

That's so good. It is. It's really spectacular, especially when you watch the video. If you haven't watched it, it's amazing. It's fantastic. Her vocal kind of floats over this powerful, backing track. So that kind of gives it two different feels at once, I think. How would you describe the backing track? Well, it's got that tropical house thing that, you know, a lot of pops going for at the moment. And there's a few kind of specific musical things that I really like about the melody and stuff as well. What are those? Like when she says, he doesn't love me, the melody descends. And then the second time that she says that, she says, but I do, I do, I do.

And the I do's are an upwards lift, the melody, which is just a really nice disappointment and then a rise of like, but I, I love myself. A nice little counterpoint. I'm let down, I rise up above. Yeah. I love that moment. I think one of the things the song does so well is establish tension and take us places

that we don't expect. Exactly. We open up with, as you. pointed out this tropical house, synth pluck line, very syncopated rhythm, which establishes, okay, a dance sort of feel. And by the time we get to the second half of the verse, that moment where that descent happens, it feels like the whole thing is almost like sighing. Like, oh. Yeah, exactly. You can hear that bass just go, bing. Yeah, it is. It's sighing. And there's even these chorus of singers, yeah. And that's why it feels, I think, kind of resigned. Yeah. Just like,

letting go and like releasing something and this whole song is just one big sigh like oh why is this happening but it still has this real like beauty to it i think as well and then by the time we get to the pre-chorus we get the opposite we get this rising up above yeah what's going on in the pre-chorus that is establishing tension well there's an ascending baseline which is quite nice and like obviously quite a common technique but i think that's really nice just this like moving up the scale every half bar or something. Yeah, every other note, it goes up the scale. And even though it repeats itself, it feels like it's continuously rising.

It's like building to this moment that we mentioned before, they kind of drop into the chorus. And that's when she's sort of stating her thesis, though, is during that pre-chorus, right? Yeah, exactly. And she's getting stricter as the music becomes more tense and, like, the harmony becomes closer knit with the rising bass line. It's like she's becoming stricter with herself and like, no, no, no, no, you can't, you can't, you can't. Because she names each of these three rules. Yeah.

Right. Yeah. She's like one. Yeah. Two. Three. Yeah. And when she sings each of those rules, I think she's singing the exact same note, right?

Yeah, exactly. It kind of comes back down to that bass. Yeah. So like as this tension is being built up in the baseline, it's rising up and up and up. She's just asserting herself. Like one, I'm doing this, two, this, three, this. Yeah. ignore the background.

That's really true. Yeah, exactly. Again, her vocal is kind of fighting the backing track in a way. So then when we land in the chorus, you say just before the chorus was the first moment that caught you. Yeah. This weird stutter of a drum fill. Yeah, exactly. What do you think it is? What's it saying?

Well, I've been thinking about it. And I think it's almost like your friend slapping you and being like, no, don't do it. It's kind of like this jarring back in the way. to reality. Because a chorus is always such a huge release. It's as though she's written her rules and maybe she was about to do something that she would regret. And this moment happens and then it's like, no, I've got new rules. Back to reality. Oh, that's fantastic. I don't know, probably reading way too much into it. But like, like, no, that's exactly what we like to do. It's fun. So when we get into the chorus then, how do you hear,

what the narrator is feeling. It's a repetitive melody. And again, it's just the tone of her voice is so ethereal and kind of mystical almost compared to the backing track. It's like, again, she's kind of at odds with the world around her maybe, and like she's so resigned to what's happened.

And like, she's trying to break back into reality, but it's consumed by this sadness, I think. she kind of restates her thesis over and over again here, right? Yeah, exactly. So I think that's one of the main things to take from this track is she's basically practicing. Then when you watch the music video, you see her practice kind of pay off at the end. Yeah, okay. So I want to talk about that.

Yeah. We've got these new rules. She's going to count them. When we listen to it, she might sound isolated. But the video here is really important. We don't usually go into the imagery behind a song, but it's a really profoundly special video. Yeah. What are we looking at?

So it's a kind of sleepover scene in a hotel. With all our best friends. Yeah, exactly. Well, who knows who they are? Sure. But we assume they're her best friends. It's quite interesting because the video for Little Mix's hair is also in a sleepover context. But I think with the Little Mix track, it's just Little Mix in the video.

and we all know who Littlemix are. Sure. Whereas in the Deweepa video, we don't know who these women are, and they're all dressed quite similarly, and they're doing similar movements, and we're just not quite sure, like, of their relationship. But basically, at the beginning,

it's Deweepa is lying on a bed, kind of looking quite tragic, and her friends are comforting her, essentially, is the scene. Right. You said that there's sort of a moment of transformation that we see in the video. What takes place? Throughout the video, we see her friends stopping her from doing the things that she doesn't want to do.

She leaves the room and her friend marches her back into the room. She picks up the phone to call him and her friend grabs the phone from her and hangs up. Right. And then as the video goes on, Jue Lepa takes on that role herself and starts doing the same thing to her friend. So her friend tries to pick up the phone and the Juehlepa is the one who grabs it off her and hangs up. Her message is spreading. Yeah, exactly. And then she also just starts smiling and she's kind of more confident and she puts shoes on, which is, I don't know, maybe meaningful in some way.

And then she draws the curtains to the room and suddenly they're outside and it's sunny and they're by the pool and everything seems a lot brighter, basically. Yes. So the rules pay off. Exactly. And that's the moment. And there is also a weird thing with flamingos. I don't really know what that's about, but they're there in the video. We'll have to ponder that one.

One for another day, maybe. The case of the unknown flamencos. Yeah. We like to do a bit on the show we call classical masters, where we dive into the classical past. Yeah. And make seemingly absurd, but very real connections between music of different eras. Yeah, I love doing that too.

You compare this song to opera. Yeah. What is the connection here? Well, I wanted to do a piece about this song, and Noisy wanted to do a piece about this song. Yeah. I normally write a kind of harmonic analysis of a pop song. Right. Like Despacito, which I think your podcast on Despacito, there are a lot of overlaps with my article on it.

New Rules is such a conventional harmonic structure that there wasn't a huge amount to talk about. Mm-hmm. And I listened to it, and I just thought this sounds like a lament. Huh. Yeah, describe the lament. So I think it comes back to what I was saying before about this sense of sadness that's just intrinsic to her vocal. Then there's the bit where seemingly out of the blue, she just says, my love. And I just think that's such an operatic line, really.

It seems just slightly incongruous with the very millennial feel of the rest of the lyrics. Yeah, it feels like she's almost like breaking through the radio and trying to reach out to that long, lost, forgotten love. Exactly, yeah. That's very operatic. It just felt so tragic and romantic and operatic. So she says, my love, he doesn't love me. And in all these other breakup songs that we've been talking about, they don't often state that so outwardly.

I don't know, it's just such a tragic thing to say. I think it's that really made me think she's really kind of grieving for something. That's why I made the connection to opera. Specifically to Dido's Lament, right? Yeah. And Dido's Lament is just because A, it's obviously just the most tragic piece of music ever. And I think there's something to be said for melodic word painting and Dido's Lament as well, like the ascending and descending lines. So there's that. But it's also, like I said in the piece, just about resigning yourself to what's happened, rather than trying to put a positive spin on it, just saying this has happened and it's really bad.

And I think both Dido's Lament and New Rules say that, basically. But thankfully, end in a very different way. Yeah, exactly. I mean, let's not go into what happens to Dido. Dido is a tragedy. I think out of new rules, we see these rules are spreading. And I think by the end of the song, I'm hearing that she has really sort of moved through this gray area and from the imagery in the video that she's spreading that message to her friends.

Exactly. Yeah. So it's all a happy ending in new rules, which is great. It is a pop song after all. Yeah, precisely. Did you have any other favorite musical moments that you wanted to share before we go? Just what I said before about the upwards lift on I do, I just think is really cool because I think that line, I do, is ambiguous in a sense because we're not sure whether she's saying,

I do tell myself or I do love me when he doesn't. Does that make sense? Yeah, I like that there is an ambiguity into how we can read that. Yeah. It suggests that there is an unknowing in the track. It reinforces this idea of being in the in-between. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

And I think that's what it's all about ultimately is this conflicting feelings. And like we've talked about her kind of trying to get back into reality, but it's very much on the edge in a lot of ways. And I think that's why it's so different from lots of pop music. because although I love pop music and it can be beautiful and moving and amazing, it can also be very one-dimensional and reductive. And I don't think new rules is reductive. I think it kind of perfectly sums up all the nuances and the horrible bits about dating and being heartbroken, basically.

Yeah, that's fantastic. Well, thank you so much for sharing your really expert insights. Listeners can go check out your article on new rules over. on VICE's blog, noisy, where they cover great music stuff, and you've got other fantastic writing there. Thank you so much for joining us on the show. We'll definitely look out for upcoming writing from you. Thank you so much for having me. It's been really fun. Thanks, Emily. Thank you.