Switched on Pop - How to 'Feels' the Groove

Episode Date: September 22, 2017

How does a song with nonsense lyrics capture our attention, making us want to move? It is called the groove. Enter Calvin Harris' "Feels" (ft. Katy Perry, Pharrell Williams and Big Sean). Known for mainstreaming EDM, Harris throws out the software and picks up hardware instruments on this track. Upon first listen, this might seem like a sleeper hit, but as the loop repeats, you're going to want to move your feet. With intricate rhythmic interplay, the bass, drums, keys and guitar seem to talk to each other. Listen closely to hear how he does it. Also, we'll reveal why Katy Perry is so into going fishing. FeaturingCalvin Harris - Feels (ft. Katy Perry, Pharrell Williams and Big Sean)James Brown - I Got The FeelingJames Brown - Get Up Offa That ThingDNCE - Cake By The OceanGeorge & Ira Gershwin - Blah Blah Blah (performed by 2012 Original Broadway Cast) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's free for iOS users. Charlie, I have to admit something. What do you got? I don't want summer to end. Oh, I live in Los Angeles and you live in cold New York. I'm so sorry. Well, not yet, but I can feel the seasons changing. And I'm not ready.

I'm not ready to give up on summer. And the song we're going to discuss today is an outgrowth of that. unwillingness to let go because this song captures so much of the effervescent joy of the summer season. Today, Charlie, I want to talk about Calvin Harris feels featuring Farrell, Katie Perry, and Big Sean. I'm so excited to talk about this album. Though I love autumnal weather and pumpkin spiced everything, I think we can get there later. later in the season, I'm down to Basque in the warmth. Exactly. And Basque is the right word because when this song comes on like it did for me constantly

on the radio, I rented a car this weekend, which meant I got to listen to the radio, which is the most pure form in which to consume popular music. So anytime I get a chance to drive, it's like, ha. And this song came on over and over again. And every time it was just like the sun coming out, kind of kicking back on a beach somewhere. Yeah. So the question, I guess, is how does this song do that? How does this song transport you to that, like, capricious, carefree place?

This is something not only on my mind, but on the mind of our listeners, Charlie, I wanted to share a brief excerpt from something that Jennifer wrote to us about this song, Feels. Jennifer writes, I was hoping you would do an analysis of feels for my husband. He's befuddled as to why he finds it so appellate. appealing, even though he thinks Farel is an amazing talent. For the record, I do too, but all I can think about when I hear the song is how does Katie Perry manage to pronounce feels like fish? I didn't recognize that. You will not be able to unhear it now that it's been suggested.

That's wonderful at all, but you've got to tell me where are we going with this? Where we're going is to try and answer the question, why is this song? appealing despite the fact that you can hear the chorus as don't be afraid to catch fish a very popular summer pastime nonsensical sentiment and nevertheless when this song comes on you are transported to your happy place all right let's do it so two questions part one why is this song so appealing musically what's happening that draws us in and part two why Why do we stay there in that magic musical place despite the fact that these inane lyrics are constantly threatening to take us out of it? Wonderful.

So where do we start? In feels, as soon as the beat drops, you are immediately grooving to this song. Ooh, wait. There's this strange introduction before the thing where you're in this ethereal otherworldly space, almost like you're in the transport and then boom. I like that. This is kind of like a mothership connection, psychedelic portrait your painting. Exactly. And that's appropriate because the parliament funkadelic reference that you're hearing here is, I think, making up the backbone of this song. The one word answer to why this song is so appealing would be funk.

I have to interrupt and say that I love the name of this album. Funk Wave Bounces Volume 1. Do you have a clue of where that comes from? Actually, I was hoping that you would help break down each of those elements for us. Okay. Funk. It's the feel of the song. Wave is a file form that you export a Pro Tools project to.

Bounces is when you take a whole bunch of music tracks as a producer and then you export the wave, the process is called bouncing. And then volume one because why not? Right. What it sounds like is somebody produced a session. They didn't have a name for it. And so they needed some reference on a file and a folder on their Mac. And so they call it Funkwave bounces volume one because it's funky. It's a bunch of wave files.

They were bounced down. And it's the first volume. So we'll get more of it. I agree. It's that once totally prosaic. Yeah. And at the same time, also kind of a beautiful funky statement in itself. Right, of course, because when you just hear it funk wave bounces, it makes sense. It's funky. It makes you like want to wave and it's bouncy.

Let's go deeper into this notion of funk for a second. And let's focus on one of the most dominant aspects of it that we hear in this song, the interlocking groove. Yes, that's what I've been picking up on. In order to understand the effect that this song has in us, we're going to have to take this dominant groove and break it down into its. constituent parts. Drums. Bass. Guitar. Keys.

Yes, when these instruments interlock each one playing their own independent pattern, but that perfectly links up with its neighbors, then we experience this sensation where my words start to fail me because I would say your body sort of takes over. Right. I don't want to rely too heavily on a Cartesian mind. mind-body divide in discussing this, but we can't deny the purely somatic experience of listening to a funky interlocking groove. It's what I love about this entire album. It holds true to its promise of being funk wave bouncy. All of it is just so much fun. It actually surprises me that

you even wanted to analyze it because it is such a visceral experience for me listening to this. It's so much fun that I couldn't even turn on my analytic brain. I love that. I definitely to want to ruin it by putting it under the microscope, but let's just get to know each of these individual parts a little bit better. Once we do, we can hear how they both operate on their own and in conjunction with one another. This is cool because we don't usually do sort of rhythmic analysis on the show. We focus a lot on harmony and melody. This is going to be fun. Now that's a pretty funky baseline on its own. Oh, yeah. And it has many of the characteristic aspects of a funk baseline. It's got a lot of rhythmic motion. Yeah. And at certain points, towards the end of the phrase,

he'll take a note up and down the octave very quickly. Yep. But as funky as this baseline is, its funkiness is compounded in a sort of synergy when we start to layer on other instruments. Right. The closest layer would have to be the electric piano, the keyboard part. Yes, definitely. So how are these two lines different? They start and end together, but the middle is a little bit different. I put you on the spot with that one, Charlie, because this is a very subtle distinction here. Yeah? What Calvin Harris does is just take out the keyboard for part of the baseline.

So the keyboard is doubling the baseline. And then for the middle section, it just vanishes. So we hear it appear in sort of the beginning of each phrase and then reappear at the end of each phrase. I think the bass plays more notes than the keys play at one point. Yeah, the keys are almost perfectly doubling the bass, and then they're out of joint. They're interlocking at certain key moments. Right.

Okay. So this second level is just sort of ratching up the rhythmic intensity just a little bit. The groove will become much more dynamic when we throw in the guitar. Right. So the guitar is playing on every offbeat, emphasizing an entirely different rhythm, because the bass and keys are sort of landing first on the onbeat and then they syncopate a bunch before they eventually come back around to playing on the on beats

and then the guitars are hitting all the off beats. Yes, exactly. So it's this constant back and forth. As soon as the bass stops sounding, the guitar fills in the space. Yeah. But on its own, as you mentioned, the guitar line is actually very decentering. Because, like you pointed out, there are no strong downbeats. if we just listen to this guitar line on its own.

It's a reggae guitar flick. Yeah, you're right. It's totally that chop on the upbeat. Highly syncopated, kind of hard to grab onto. So when it's melded with the bass and the keys, it gets more stability, but we still hear it as this highly syncopated pattern within the overall fabric.

The guitar also does this wild thing where it's playing all these off beats, but it's playing on the two and the four. and then once the bass and keys come back round from their syncopatedness to playing on the onbeat again, then the guitar starts doing a syncopated thing. So they switch roles at the end of the loop. Oh, you're absolutely right, Charles. Once again, keeping me kosher. Yes.

So here's another even more complex interlocking effect that we get right at the end of each one of these phrases. It almost feels like they're talking to each other. One is stating this syncopated phrase, the other is using the quarter note rhythms of the track, and then they switch in conversation with each other. Yeah, I love that. It's like these instruments are in dialogue, and the drums are kind of the last part of this puzzle. They're, in fact, probably the most stable rhythmic element. Right. If the guitar line that we just talked about is constantly playing the off beats, the drums are totally.

centered on the downbeats. Yes. So we have this great clarity of interlocking between the drums and the guitar, back and forth, back and forth, that kind of conversation you were talking about. And there's enough variation within it that you don't get bored. Right, even though the same pattern repeats over and over, the tiny differences, the tiny variations in each pattern kind of keep you hooked. And you know what, I'll say that's in part a testament to.

Calvin Harris playing the instruments of this song live himself. This sounds a lot like a live band because it was, or it was a one-man band. At least he recorded and mixed this entire song. And further testament to his skills because he has been known as one of the major producers behind bringing the big, crazy, synthy sounds of EDM into the mainstream. And this project is completely subverting our expectations by bringing the BPM way down, referencing much older material and bringing back live instrumentation and fewer synthesizers, really demonstrating his powers as a producer.

Absolutely. And that style he's referencing, that funk style of the 1960s, like so many of the greatest parts of American music is very much indebted to African and African American musical traditions. This interlocking groove we talked about was really established as the dominant trait of funky music, probably by James Brown in the 1960s. And you want to talk about Calvin Harris's feels? Well, James Brown had his own funky song about feelings. I got the feeling. And when we hit play on this one, you're going to hear a very similar approach to the Calvin Harris aesthetic. Drums, guitar, and horns and vocals, all are interlocking in these complex grooves.

He has got a feeling. Oh man, the funk is instant. Yeah, right away. Partially because the drums introduce so much of that interlocking rhythm just within themselves. And then the other instruments, it's so rich. It is. And it's hard to say with any clinical precision why these kind of interlocking grooves have such a powerful effect on us. So I won't try.

I won't go into the cognitive aspect of it But I will say that we can see the The etymology of the word itself is so Closely related to moving your body To the semantic element Because when you think about funk itself Was that refer to sweat, stank You know, just the smell of close quarters

Late Night Hot Dancing Right And the use of this term goes further back than you might might expect to the first decade of the 1900s in New Orleans where a music that would start to sound like jazz was being developed at the funky butt hall. And wait, wait, wait. When did the funky but hall exist? Oh man, I should have I should have hit the books before I said that. But I think it was around until 1906.

Whoa. Yeah. I think a modern dance club should probably take a cue and reuse that name. Yeah. Because I would definitely line up to get into Funky Butthall. I'm not sure I would stand behind you. That's a really bad joke. One other element that I'm hearing in this James Brown track that I think we should bring back into feels is the interplay between lyric and rhythm. And one thing that we didn't acknowledge was the way in which the singer brings in another connecting rhythm that locks in right in its own space.

And James Brown was a master of that, right? He used all of these utterances to grab our attention. Hey, uh, yo, all of these things. Part of the reason I think the feel, groove works so well is you have this very basic loop that just repeats itself over and over. And the repeat actually happens on this big downbeat. The bass just goes, da, da, which I would typically find too strong of a cue. It's almost on the nose. Right, right.

But just as the bass is doing that, in a sort of James Brown fashion, Farel jumps in and sort of stumbles into the next line. So the verse almost begins before the loop has restarting. There's just like cross fading between one loop into the next and the lyric starting and then the loop begins again. And you can kind of almost never quite find your balance. And I think part of that is what makes you continue to move. You've got to catch yourself.

And it's a testament to how. powerful those vocal rhythms are that the meaning of the song might not even matter. The actual lyrical content might be sort of subordinate to the pure sound and drive of the vocal melodies. And that is what I want to explore in the second half, Charlie. Let's go catch fish. I'll see you there. I'll get my rod. Three new elixires perfum intense. Solar, Magnetic, BOL. Pulsed in the banner,

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comer records. We are back to discuss Calvin Harris's Feels featuring

Phrell, Katie Perry, and Big Sean. And returning to Jennifer's question at

the top of the episode. Yeah. Why does this song appeal to us so much

even when when its lyrical content is so... I'm glad you said that because there's a quotation I want to use to frame this discussion from the poet E. Cummings. He wrote, since feeling is first, who pays any attention. Who pays any attack? to the syntax of things. Let's roll that back one more time. Since feeling is first, who pays any attention to the syntax of things. Thanks to my partner Whitney for introducing this brilliant poem to me.

What is the syntax of things? To me, this means the feeling you get from language is more important than its grammar. It's meaning. And Cummings, of course, in his blank verse is always trying to do this, is trying to break the sense of language. into its primal feeling. I wonder if pop music isn't trying to do something similar. We've seen time and time again on this show that pop hits often don't need great lyrics

to be successful. Sure, of course not, especially when they've got a great groove. We've seen many examples of this in the work of the Swedish songwriters we've profiled. Well, dangerous here, because now you're moving between what are great lyrics and perhaps what are intentionally grammatically chopped up in order to match the rhythm before some syntactical rule. Well, that's exactly what I mean, though. Since feeling is first, who cares about the syntax of things? And feeling in this case, I guess, would be that musical groove.

Syntax would be lyrics that actually make grammatical sense. Okay, sure. So when we listen to the song by Joe Jonas and his band Dunce, or sorry, D-N-C-E, cake by the ocean, we heard a smash hit with a completely nonsensical chorus. And I think songwriters have been clued into this fact for a long time, into the idea that the feeling is more important than the syntax, that the sound of the words, the feeling of the words, is more important. and the sense they make. George and Ira Gershwin wrote this amazing parody of a pop song back in 1931 that is simply titled Blah, Blah, Blah. Really?

Yeah, let's spin this one. Tra la la la la, la, Merry month of May. That's wonderful. It's the catchiest song I've ever heard. Right. I mean, they're just kind of thumbing their nose as anyone who thinks a song needs great lyrics to be a hit. It can literally just be blah, blah, blah, blah, moon. Oh, and it's so well performed.

So I think Feels is definitely in this great lineage of songs that put feelings before syntax. Farrell has some wonderfully convoluted lyrics here, like when he sings in the second half of the first verse, So I respect you, want to take it slow. I need a mental receipt to know this moment I owe. That's a wild jump of place and metaphor. I can't even follow it. Can we try and break that down for a second? I need a mental receipt to know this moment I owe.

But a receipt would seem to suggest that you don't owe anything. You've already paid. Yeah. An invoice, perhaps. invoice wouldn't sound as good. Right. So maybe here we have an instance where the proper clinical term would be invoice, but maybe singing that just doesn't feel as good.

So we're just going to throw syntax to the wind and go for this incredibly baroque line. I need a mental receipt to know this moment I owe. Oh, it's a great line because it has all of these teas for articulation, adding rhythm to it, right? I need a mental receipt to know this. moment I owe. And there is this alliteration. Yes, totally.

Asinence alliteration, we have those O's over and over again to know this moment I owe. Oh, so a little slant rhyme as well. Internal rhymes, yeah. It's a beautiful lyric. It just doesn't make any sense. And that doesn't matter. No. By grabbing the mental receipt, it creates a setup.

for more metaphors about money. It ain't what it costs you. It might be a dollar, he says. We later hear all sorts of, in Big Sean's verse, all these lines about the beautiful clutch bags that he carries and flying first class and how that's no big deal. Do you like getting paid or getting paid attention? Came through in the clutch, one of the lipstick and phones,

where your faith, cologne just to get you alone. So be afraid to catch me. So it sets up opportunities for further metaphors, even though it's kind of off. Yeah, absolutely. I don't want to suggest that this is completely without any meaning. It's just, I find it fascinating that you can have these phrases that you would never really say in the real world, I guess. That would sound very awkward if you use them in conversation or in a speech, suddenly become beautiful when sun. Oh, the Cummings quote is making sense now

Because it's about the feel of the lyric It is not about the syntax No one needs to pay attention to this syntax It doesn't matter It's just good Yes, since feeling is first Who pays any attention to the syntax of things? It's privileging everything but syntax

It's privileging rhythm and rhyme And all of these great forms of writing I love it And that's why even if you hear the chorus of this song as sung by Katie Perry, don't be afraid to catch fish. That interlocking groove will nevertheless get under your skin

and put a smile on your face. Ooh, interesting. Yeah. Someday I would love to write a pop song with the most intentionally indecifrable and tortured lyrics possible and see if they couldn't still get people moving and dancing. Can I present to you a completely unfounded

and potentially preposterous grand theory that connects the rhythm and the lyrics of the song. Always in forever, Charlie. So you didn't want to go to why is it that the interlocking rhythms of a funk beat guide us to move said, you know, that's probably beyond the intent of our show. I think that there's something that connects the rhythm and lyric here, which is I feel as though we want both symmetry and asymmetry at the same time in the right balance. And that the rhythm, introducing things that are on the down and off beat and then wildly syncopated,

gives you both a grounding and a sense of being elevated and a little bit lost and always trying to find your footing. Likewise, in the lyrics, when we have these moments where there's some sort of resonance lyrically, but then also some sort of grammatic dissonance, it just clicks in our mind. We're more likely to remember it. If Katie Perry were to sing this song like a Broadway singer, enunciating every consonant

and drawing out every vowel. Like blah, blah, blah, blah, moon. It might not have the same effect. I know you're not afraid to catch fields. I know you're not afraid to pop pills. And it's not to dis-brivolve. odd way, right? There's a reason why annunciation is very important in stage

performance so that people can understand what's happening. But when you're listening in your headphones, those things that are a little bit off really grab your attention. So there seems to be this connection between symmetry and asymmetry, which motivates, feels. The feeling of funk, the feeling of movement,

the feeling of all of this. I hear what you're saying. You know, it reminds me of something that Micah Salkind said on the episode about house music that you did while I was on my sabbatical. He said something that I never quite put together, which is why do so many dance songs have very simple lyrics? The answer is that when you're dancing, you can't focus on very complex lyrics. Maybe there is a strategy here. I said I wasn't going to reinforce

notions of a Cartesian mind-body divide, but maybe there is, maybe the malapropism is an bleakness of this language help sort of turn off your left brain a little bit. I love it. I feel that my consciousness is so limited. I can only do so many things at once. I definitely can't do that like tap your head and rub your belly thing at the same time. That's not possible. If I can't do that, how am I going to dance and sing at the same time? It's actually part of why when we watch great pop stars on a stage doing incredible dance numbers and singing or even lip syncing we are wowed because that's not possible. Yeah. Well, Charlie, I hope you caught all the feels in our discussion of this summer hit.

Let's get all the feels we can out of it as the seasons change. Let's let this interlocking groove and nonsensical grammatically corrupt lyrics wash over us and take us away from the coming fall. Winter is coming. Sorry, Nate. It's going to be nice and pretty here. in Los Angeles, you're going to have to come drive out in L.A. Just what important actually a little sub-reference in this song, Katie Perry says, Rye Drop Top and Chase Thrills, which I feel like is a great reference to her music video of Teenage Dream. So you're just going to have to come

visit me in Los Angeles. We can find someone who has a convertible and drive around in Malibu and listen to Funk Wave Bounces Volume 1 and relive summer over and over again as it snows back in New York city. I'll take you up on that. Though I want to, I'm not, I'm looking forward to the crop of autumn releases. I'm a big fan of the sounds of fall. Word. We'll have much to chew on. No doubt. Before we go, we have a really awesome recommendation that we want to make. If you are into Switchdown Pop, you really should be listening to the Dissect podcast. Yes. Dissect is a podcast where an entire album is broken down with incredible detail and finds all sorts of amazing nuances. The first season was about Kendrake-Klamars to Pimp a Butterfly, and the second season is out now

about Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Go check out Dissect Podcasts on Apple Podcasts, anywhere where you get your podcast and you can find them on Twitter at Dissect Podcast. Definitely. This episode was produced and edited by... me, Nate Sloan, and me, Charlie Harding, and our wonderful editor-engineer Bill Lance. Our design is done by Luke Harris, who was recently married. Congrats, Luke.

Congratulations, Luke. We are a proud member of the Panoply Network, where you can find more of our shows. You can continue the conversation on Twitter at Switched on Pop or by sending us an email at contact at switchedonpop.com. We can also go to our website, www. www.switchdonpop.com. Thanks for listening.