Switched on Pop - Finding Equanimity In 'No Tears Left To Cry'

Episode Date: May 17, 2018

Ariana Grande has returned with a track that is jarring yet simultaneously catchy. She uses sophisticated musical techniques to tell a story of healing, resiliency, and hope after the attack at her concert in Manchester. Listeners will learn techniques like tempo rubato, modal interchange and amen breaks, which weave together this equanimous narrative. Songs featured:Ariana Grande - No Tears Left To CryAriana Grande - Into YouAriana Grande - Break Free ft. ZeddThe Winstons - Amen BrotherThe Prodigy - MinefieldN.W.A. - Straight Outta ComptonOasis - Do You Know What I meanFuturama Theme Song    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. Nate, there is a new song by Ariana Grande that is utterly jarring and totally captivating at the same time. It's the first single off her new album. The track is called No Tears Left to Cry. Let's just drop the needle and take a listen to this track.

All right. I'm ready. So what's your take on this track, man? I am, in short, feeling this. Feeling this. Okay, yeah. This is a really powerful song. This is a song about moving on after tragedy. I don't know if you picked up on that.

Wait, no. I honestly could not tell you a single word from the song beyond no tears left to cry. I have no idea what she's saying. And I don't care. I am just here for the groove and the chords and her vocal delivery. Please tell me what this song is about. I think that's exactly what she intended, because this is actually the first release since the Manchester bombing at one of her concerts last year.

Of course. I think what she's trying to deliver is a message which is both appropriate to the context of that absolute tragedy. But what she's really trying to establish here is a general overcoming of adversity. So that you're focused on, no tears left to cry, a general message of optimism and the beauty of her voice and production of this track is exactly what is intended. I believe. What I want to examine today is this challenging question of how do you hold an equal measure absolute sorrow on the one hand and on the other the human capacity for hope and overcoming grief. Whoa, yeah, that is a great question. I'd no idea. That's where we were headed, but I am down. Yeah, take me there, Charles. Well, the thesis of the song, I think, has stated really right at the top of the track.

Right now, I'm at a state of mine. I want to be in. like all the time. Ain't got no tears left to cry, so I'm picking it up and picking it up and picking it out. Okay. A bit of resolution and resilience there. Yeah. This song maintains this tension

of both sorrow and hope, the sort of middle state that we can call equanimity. This is a track by Ariana Grande, Savon Cotecha, Ilya, and of course Max Martin, and these excellent songwriters and producers wouldn't stop at the lyrics

to get their message across. this message of equanimity and resilience is embedded all throughout the music in the tempo, in the harmony, in the melody, in the form, you're going to find it sprinkled everywhere. And so I think our job is to figure out, well, how exactly does this song evoke

this deep emotional feeling that you established you heard without even understanding the lyrics or the context. So that's what we're going to do today. Right. Okay, let's dig in. I put out a call to our listeners on Twitter to see what caught them about this track. And a lot of folks picked up on a lot of these sounds.

So what I want to do is actually start with some of the voices of our listeners and what they're pulling out of the track. So this is Monica Weatherly and Jake Bookbinder describing how the music works so effectively for them. The opening of that song is beautiful. She opens with a slow melody and sustained chords and then picks that melody up at a faster tempo. The tempo at the beginning is in true rubato. Ooh, okay. Beginning of the song, something compelling. It's pulling us in.

and this interesting term, Rubato. And this is not domo auregato, Mr. Robato. This is Rubato. Maybe, Nate, I think you might be able to define this term. We're just going to gloss over that pun. I don't know, maybe that's too generous of a description. Rubato literally means stolen time. And what it connotes as a sort of technical musical term

is that the performer is able to move. through that section of music at any flexible tempo which suits them. And how common is that in pop music? In contemporary 2018 pop music, very uncommon. Very uncommon. So much of the music we listen to is perfectly quantized to a click track and has no stolen time whatsoever. All the time is accounted for.

Well, let's listen to the introduction of this track and hear a bit about what they're talking about, this stolen time, this rebrand. Otto. Let's drop the new. Okay, wow, yeah. I might not have detected that at first, but thanks to your crowdsourced musicology here, Charles. I can hear now that the accompaniment is metrically, perfectly steady, but then Ariana Grande's vocals in the intro here move faster and slower through that section kind of as she pleases. As the section moves along, as we get to the section on, we're picking it up, picking it up, picking it up, the tempo,

also changes and picks up. So we begin in this ballad, this very sorrowful stolen time that I think emphasizes that sort of first half of that thesis. Right now I'm in a state of mind. Oh, uh-oh, what kind of state of mind? I want to be in like all the time.

All of sudden things are maybe getting better. The tempo is starting to pick up. Ain't got no tears left to cry. Ariana is sort of getting closer and closer to the tempo. And then I'm picking. it up, picking it up, picking it up, picking it up, and the tempo takes us somewhere else. And so we're at the beginning led to believe we're in a sorrowful ballad, and yet quickly we are taken somewhere else. Cool. Yeah. So there's a real payoff to this slow beginning. Here's Jake

and Monica again describing why it works so well for them. And obviously that serves as a really deceptive opening because when you first hear that beginning, you don't think that Arianna's about to speed the whole thing up. Beautiful way to open and build energy for that song. They make you wait for it. They leave it coming and it's totally satisfying when you finally get that chorus. Deceptive and satisfying at the same time, our songwriters are taking us somewhere really unexpected.

And they first do it by playing with our sense of time. We're going to get a really satisfying chorus later on. But before we do, uh-uh, we are going to be just, completely shooken and taken into a totally different direction. Are you ready for that? I don't know. Let's find out. So this intro establishes a sort of ballad feel. It's slow. It's sorrowful. We're picking it up. And we go somewhere very jarring. We go into an entirely new key. Ah. Oh, is that what's happening here? Yes. Let's listen again to the transition from the intro and then

into the verse and see what happens. I'm picking it up. Picking it up. I'm living, so we turning it up. Yeah. We turning it up. Whoa, wait. Yeah.

How high does it modulate? We stay in the same key, but we have moved to the parallel major. The song had started in a minor. We are now in a major. We have shifted from the sorrow into the hopeful. And she does this by changing chords in a subtle yet very powerful way that suggests a shift and tone for the entire song. And to give you a sense of this,

let's just sort of tune in what was happening originally in the intro that we started with. Okay, we get these three chords. A minor, G, F, descending down, played straight on the beat, held out, resonating. And then in the verse, using the exact same set of chords, yet radically transformed, we move the track from this darker place

into a more ascendant place. Because we have the same set of chords, but they're in a order and they're in a major key. Moving from the sorrowful minor to the happy major, we get A major, F major, and then G major. Whoa, Charles, this is so cool. Right, and these chords are not only the same ones yet moved into the major, they're also syncopated now, and they are more short, they're staccato. For me, this sort of makes them feel more cheery and upbeat. Okay, so moving out of the Rubato Stolen Time intro. We not only have a pickup of tempo,

we're picking up the syncopation of the rhythmic phrase, and we're picking up the key itself, lifting from minor to major. Yes. Cool. Yet we haven't achieved total transcendence. We haven't moved from one place to the other. Rather, I think what the songwriting team behind this song is trying to do

is, as I said, give this equal sense of sorrow enjoy this equanimity at the same time. And one of the ways that they do this is by using chords that are actually a little bit more ambiguous and a little bit more tense than a nice little major progression. I don't know if you caught onto that. Right. No, no, no. It's dissonant. Even though it's still kind of upbeat, there's a darkness there.

Yes, each of these chords are not just straight major chords. They have an additional note on them, an add two note. Basically, there's this additional interval in the chord that adds a sense of suspect. adds a sense of tension, leaves us hanging there. So our listeners can get a sense of this sound, get it more deeply in their ear. Let's just play that interval of a second,

this little tense moment that's added to the chords. That dissonance is literally in every one of these chords in the verse. Crunchy. It's like Nestle crunch. It's so crunchy. I love it. Yeah, it's gnarly. It's good.

It's meaty. It's very rewarding, but it does have this, like, there's a little crunch in there, for sure. So if we were to play a major chord, a major chord is just going to sound like this. Yeah, that's not crunchy at all. That's like a plain Hershey's milk chocolate bar. And then you add in the second and it sounds like this.

Whoa, yeah, that's super crunchy. That's like, that's a hundred grand right there or something. That is very, yeah, I'm into it. So let's put it in the context of the progression. And I like your metaphor without this second, this dissonance, you get something which is a lot more milk toast. Here's that major progression on its own. Meh, right?

Yeah, it's all right. It's all right. It's okay. Let's get the full context of that crunch, that dissonance. I want that nougat. Yeah, give it to me. Ooh. Ooh.

Yes. Yeah. That's going to satisfy your craving right there. So if you think in the song we've moved on by modulating into the major key into this happier place, actually underlying it, there is a little bit of angst still, right? Yeah. A little bit of that. original incident that we heard in the intro.

I dig it. I dig it, Charles. I'm on board and I'm hungry. So feed me. Well, you are going to have to take a second to be satiated. The change in chords is perhaps made only more jarring by this really bizarre move that Ariana makes in her melody that takes us into another dimension. And it's going to have to wait until after the break. Painful. All right. Let me grab a Snickers and I'll be right back. Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step as a podcaster? Well, you have to ask lots of questions.

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and hope, right? Quick time out. Equanimus? Equanimus. Can I just pull up Miriam Webster's real quick? Please. Is that verified there? That's a clonimus.

Because I want it to be. I want it to be real. I'm just not sure. Equanimous, calm and composed. Shut up, really? Yes. Okay. Are we guessing on the pronunciation or is that,

are we committing to equanimous? No, I'll play the Google read of it right now. Aquanumus. That's a fantastic word. I'm much happier knowing that word exists. I don't think I've ever outworded you, so I'm very pleased about this. I'm going to just proceed. I'm just going to let this one sink in for a second.

No, no, no, no, just keep, let's go. Let's go. This is my thesis, equanimous, both holding the sorrow and the hope equally in a calm and measured way. And I can hear this thesis stated directly in the lyrics of the verse, right? ain't got no tears in my body I ran out but boy I like it I like it I like it

You hear the past She had been crying Ain't got no tears in my body Sort of like the past But now she's moved on And she likes it She's moving on to a better place But these lines are made

Only more powerful By the way that she sings them Let's take a listen Ain't got no tears in my body I ran up before I like it I like it I like it

I like it I like I have a lot to say about this melody because it's really... There's a lot going on here. But I think that our listener, Jake, actually does a really good job of breaking this down. I want to go back to him for a second. First. Okay.

Another thing is the mode mixture in verses. The chorus is solidly in A minor. But the verse progression of A major, F major, and G major allows the melody to bounce between A major and A minor almost every other beat. And boy, I like that. I like that I like that Which I believe is something that's taken from blues music But obviously it doesn't sound like blues

Ooh, the reveal Whoa, okay So we're not in major or minor But kind of in the slip stream between the two Because we're using chords that are borrowed From each major and minor mode Yeah, exactly Ariana and her team are using this songwriting trick

called modal interchange in which the key of the song seems to be slipping and moving between these two different modalities in the major in the minor. We thought that in the verse we had shifted to major but actually when you listen to her melody perhaps we're getting

slightly more ambiguous information. I want to slow this down though for a minute because I really want this to sink in for people and the ideas of modal interchange can be somewhat difficult and also debatable and I'm interested to hear how you hear it. Okay. So what Jake is telling us is that in the first part of the song, we had these minor chords. Eventually, we shift into a major. Let's just hear those again. The intro, minor, and then the verse major. Okay, so maybe earlier I've deceived you. Because I had said that we've gone from an intro with this sorrowful minor key into a verse with a happy major key. Yet it's not that simple. Because Ariana is doing all sorts of stuff to continue to mean,

this ambiguity, which I think is, again, that underlying thesis, this equanimous sorrow and hope at the same moment. And she's doing this in her vocal production, in her melody. I want to pull out sort of two particular moments that she's got. So let's just listen to that verse one more time and see what we're hearing. What do you hear in that melody? I hear like at the beginning just one note repeated over and over again, super syncopated, super forceful. And then it kind of like explodes into this little burst of melodic arc. Coleman Max Martin Trick doesn't a lot of the Taylor Swift tracks we've taken apart.

Indeed. Having a single note verse is really great because it gives you room to expand. and also enables you to have really syncopated and fun lyrics. But this is also the first point of departure from what we might expect, because what is that note that she's singing? I believe that's the second degree of the scale. It's the second degree of the scale, that same weird, crunchy note that had been in those chords.

And typically, a song is going to start, a pop song, usually going to be on a chord tone, the one, the three, or the five of a scale. But we don't get that. No. We get something which is a little bit more. ambiguous, right? Oh, okay. I know where you're headed. Okay, go, go on. Right from the start, we don't know exactly what direction we're going to go in. And then to close out this phrase of single notes, she actually gives us more information. She starts to jump around and play some other notes,

right? Right. And those notes, I know what you're going to say. Those notes are minor notes. They're from the A minor scale. Ah, they are also from the A major scale. She jumps back and forth. And that's what Jake was trying to get across here, that she does a little bit of both. You can't quite understand which one's going to be. Interesting. Let's zoom into this. Okay. All right. I think it's really important to get this. All right. Yeah, no, a minute to win it, Charles. So let's isolate that verse melody on the piano and play it here. Okay. Ooh. You're right. Yeah, major and minor. Wow. Okay. Yeah. I also actually created a nice little clip of what it might have sounded like had a not started on that second scale degree. Let's take a listen to that.

Not as ambiguous, not as rewarding, right? Nope, not as good. Milk chocolate, no chocolate. So that's the milk chocolate again. But we want to focus on the second half here. We've got the sense that that first half of the melody that really establishes tension by not landing on a typical chord tone. In the second half, this is where we get that mixed information,

this modal interchange information that's going on. So I slowed that down and just really zoomed in very closely. Let's take a listen. Ooh. Yes. Wow. Charles, you're doing the Lord's work here. You're right. When you slow it down, you can really hear major, minor, back to major. It's like she can't make up her mind. Yeah, I don't mean to be pedantic, but for folks where this does not feel as familiar, I want to zoom in even closer, get rid of

the underlying chords and just hear that a major, a minor tonality back and forth. Yeah, yeah, no, this is great. And if people are still having trouble hearing it, I want to isolate even deeper right into that top melody note, really loud, and you can hear that back and forth that she's establishing. Yeah, there it is. That oscillation from major to minor and back. It's very unusual and feels very compelling. It makes me wonder, though, with all of this sort of shifting of modality,

with all this harmonic and melodic tension in the song, do you think it's really fair to call it equanimous? Or is this just, like, totally jarring? Well, Charles, you've put me on the spot. What I'm hearing you say is like, we have a set of chord changes that is kind of ambiguous. Right. But you could, with a vocal melody that was very declarative, you could kind of plant your flag that is to speak, like, on major or minor. Right.

But that's not what Ariana Grande chooses to do, but rather she concox this very specific melody that manages to thread the needle and not really commit to either tonality. Yeah, right. So, yeah, I think equanimous, I don't know. Do I want to say it? Yes, do I know if that's it? I don't know, but there's something calculated going on here, certainly. It's got to be calculated. When I first heard this song, I found that shift to the major parts of the song, actually

very kind of like, whoa, what just happened? Like, I was really kind of taken out of my seat. But for every other part of the song, I think that equanimity is an appropriate term, because the songwriters do everything they can to make everything allied and smooth together. Because there's this really jarring chromaticism and key movement happening in a pop song, which, you know, it's not that common in pop today, like especially right now. I think that Ariana and the rest of the songwriters wanted to make sure that the rest of the song was quite Spartan so that your ear would not be totally taken into left field and you'd change the track.

And I think they do this by making every part of the song just sort of smooth right into each other. And this is a very strange technique. I think especially for Ariana, who is known for making pretty compelling dance tracks, right? Right. So you're saying this is like a little more organic or something. Certainly in the instrumentation choice,

we have a real bass, we have what sound like some real drums. There are definitely some synthesizers in here. But I'm especially listening to what's happening rhythmically and in the drum production. This is not a typical dance track. There are no synth risers in Ford on the floor sort of kick drums like you would have gotten

on a track that we broke down a handful of episodes ago into you. Whoa, whoa, wow, that thing rising up. Similarly, on her song, Break Free with Zed, we would expect some more EDM-style snare fills and other synthizers to establish this intense tension and eventually release

into a major hook. So rewarding. Right? That kind of thing where you get just that great payoff does not happen in this song. But because No Tears has all of this strange harmonic

and melodic material which is creating all this tension, I think the listener really wants more fluidity through the track and so you're not getting these sort of epic rises and falls instead in the transitions from verse to chorus,

things stay pretty stable. Let's listen to that. Not much of a change, right? Yeah, no, it's just like a little toggle. Something just like flicked, but it wasn't this dramatic like now we're in

Zanadu or something. There's already so much happening here. I don't think we could afford it. It would be too much, too maximalist. However, I think that at the same time, the song is extremely rewarding. You opened up saying that you were hearing something that caught your ear and was fun and interesting and there was sort of a groove to

it, right? Yeah, absolutely. Are you familiar with what's happening in the drums? I guess I'm not. I mean, I thought we, you know, hit it off, but I don't know, I wouldn't say we're familiar. The first date. You've heard this drum track somewhere between 2,500 and 2,800 times. It is the most referenced drum beat in the history of popular music. Okay. Still clueless? Yeah, there's a big question mark over my head. These drums are reminiscent of the Amen break. Do you know the Amen break?

I don't. Teach me. Teach me, Charles. I'm really excited that I get to share this with you because in many ways it's the thing which is keeping consistency through the no-tears track. It's the part that's really making you groove. And she does want us to groove to this. Oh, yeah. And it's actually the most referenced, most sampled track of all time. I think it was about 2,800 times. The Amen Break comes from a song called Amen Brother by the Winston's from the 1960s.

This loop is the backbone to so many genres, especially breakbeat and jungle music, also used throughout techno and hip-hop. Let's play that All-Men break, and I think you're going to be like, oh yeah, I know that sound. And George Sylvester Coleman, who is playing this drum break, which you immediately recognized. who unfortunately has not actually received any royalties for the amount of times he's been sampled, has been transmuted in so many different ways. We're going to get to how No Tears plays it, but I think it would be interesting to see what is No Tears referencing through the history of popular music? These beats are so popular in dance music.

Take a look at the Prodigies Minefield. Yeah, there it is. And if that's not getting you moving, you should listen to Straight Out of Compton. Same. Right. Yep, there it is. It has gone so far to have been quoted by indie rock or I guess 90s rock. I don't know what you'd call them.

Oasis on Do You Know What I Mean? Same drumbeat. And if you think that this has gone to commercial, check out the Futurama theme song. Yep, it's the zealig of drum samples. The second animated TV show reference you've made in as many episodes, Charles. Just to point that out. Is that right? Yeah.

I think you've been watching a lot of cartoons. God, it must be a sad moment of life. The escapist moment, perhaps. Yeah. Appropriate. I think we should obviously hear how this almond break has made it through popular music and transformed till we hear it today on No Tears.

This is obviously not a sample, but you can hear that same kind of groove to it. And there's, again, I mean, this is a pretty intentional reference, I think. Yeah. No, it's that DNA of the original Amen break carries through each of the examples you played. Yeah, and so this drumbeat just kind of goes straight all the way through the song. It's one that we love so much that we just have in our ear. It's usually played at a faster tempo.

Here, they really slow it down. But we have enough of a dance feel that the song is engaging, but it's mellowed out at the same time. Again, sort of equanimous. Yeah, I love, keep saying it, Charles. I love it. I reached out to one of our favorite contributors, Micah Salkheim, who has been on a handful of episodes. Senior correspondent. Senior correspondent.

I wanted to see what he thought made this track so wonderful. Let's hear from Micah. So even though we will probably have to wait until the second single from this album to have the real gold, this track has this amazing two-step B and has, like, like four hooks, no bridge. You just have all hooks. And that's what we love Ariana for. I'm going to agree here that the secret sauce is that the hook just keeps on coming back over and over and over again. I think Mike is right that we probably are going to hear an even sort of bigger, danceyer track out of her next singles. But this one works, even though there's so much weird, jarring harmonic and melodic material, they give us the hook so many times that it's very pleasing.

Yeah, no, you just kind of get lost in the first. form of this song. As you saw from the outset, I did not retain a single lyric. I am just here for the kind of sound bath that Max Martin and Co. and Aria Grande are here to take me in. I love that metaphor, the sort of sound bath. It's just sort of washing over you. And in that transfixation of the song, I think that you might have missed something really essential. In fact, the moment of transformation from sorrow to joy, it's a secret bridge. Do you hear the bridge?

No, I didn't see. Show me the secret bridge. So just as we get transformation in the beginning of the song by speeding up the tempo and the feel, we're going to get further transformation in a moment which other songwriters are going to question me

on whether this is really a bridge or maybe it's some sort of post-chorus. I don't know. Let's take a listen to what seems like one of the last choruses, and you'll see it's not the same. That is not the chorus. Yeah. No, that's something else.

You know what that is? What is that? That's the pre-chorus. No. Superimposed over the chorus. This is the pre-chorus. Now listen to that bridge one more time. Yeah.

Okay, that checks out. So what have they done? I guess they've overlaid the chorus with the pre-chorus? Is that right? Yes. But shouldn't that surprise us? Because wasn't the chordal progression in both the verse and the same one that's in the pre-chorus, it's different than the chorus.

It's major. The chorus is minor. Should they work together? Yes, because of the modal ambiguity. But isn't that as an amazing trick? We have taken this information which feels declarative about moving on, this coming out, can't stop now, shut your mouth over this seemingly. major information earlier in the pre-course,

and we've put it back into the context of the sorrowful minor. Right. Yeah, no, that's deep, Charles. I mean, that, I have to say that is equanimity in the sense that it's realistic, I suppose. I mean, the difference between some of the other things you played for us, like, you know, break free into you

is those are sort of unambiguously and unapologetically transcendent songs, whereas as you've shown, because of the modal mixture here, because of the melody sort of oscillating between major and minor, because of this sort of almost monotony of the Amen drum break carrying through all the transitions of the song. We don't have that sense of like transcendence. Yeah. We don't have that sense of overcoming.

But maybe that makes it more striking, actually, because it's more real. Yeah, you're probably right. I mean, I think I had sort of alluded that there was a transformation, but I think you've captured it better. It's sort of like when you think it's one thing, it's the other, and then it's the first thing again later on, and they keep switching back and forth to the point where they collapse. You know, I took this term equanimity from the sort of Buddhist concept of being able to hold joy and sorrow equally at the same time in feeling them fully without collapsing into either of them. And I think it's such an appropriate artistic statement as the, you know, this first song after a really tragic moment. for our honor and her fans and for people's lives. And it seems that she wants to put out a message that says,

hey, we can move on and recognize the past. I like that, Charles. I think you've articulated what drew me to the song in the first place in that it's like a jam. It's a bop. It grabs your body. Yeah. But it has like a tinge of that sorrow you were describing that maybe elevates it

or lodges in your nervous system. way it might not otherwise. Connects to the human spirit. It's very powerful. Absolutely. No, this was fun. Thanks, Charles. And thanks to Jeremy and Monica and Micah because that took a village. There was a lot going on in this song and only through our sort of captain planet coming together. I think did we actually uncover it all? Absolutely. This episode of Switched on Pop was produced by me, Charlie Harding. And me, Nate Sloan. We are edited and mixed by Bill Lance. designed by Luke Harris. We are a proud member of the Panoply network. Reach out to us anytime it's contact at Switched on Pop or Twitter, Switched on Pop.

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