Switched on Pop - Is There An Indie Rock Conspiracy? (Featuring Joywave)

Episode Date: May 15, 2019

Many people write us with musical maladies and conspiracies. A recent one caught our attention. Daniel Armbruster, lead vocalist of indie band Joywave, has been hearing the same melody in tracks across the Alternative Songs charts. He believes that this hook could be the secret to securing a spot on the Billboard 100. Nate and Charlie investigate this issue, traveling from the contemporary charts all the way back to a fundamental musical scale. The stakes are high: is it possible to hack your way into a hit alt-rock song? Songs Discussed Young The Giant - SuperpositionCold War Kids - FirstSir Sly - &RunJoywave, KOPPS - TonguesMaroon 5 - Moves Like JaggerLady Gaga - Bad Romance AJR - Burn the House DownTwenty One Pilots - ChlorineThe Black Keys - Lo/HiBillie Eilish - Bury A FriendCatfish and the Bottlemen - LongshotCage The Elephant - Ready To Let GoPanic! At The Disco - High HopesSHAED - TrampolineOliver Tree - HurtThe Lumineers - Ho Hey 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. Today, Nate, we have a musical melody. Our friend, Rob Bonstein, who's been a longtime friend of the show, brought to us another friend who had a musical issue that needed solving. And it goes extremely deep, and I need your ear. Whoa, all right.

I'm intrigued. Let's jump right in. Hi, my name is Daniel Armbuster. I'm the lead singer of hit, alternative rock group Joy Wave. So you have some sort of wild theory about alt rock. Is that right? Yes. I don't know what to call it.

It's unique to alternative music. This is not 100% true, but I would say it feels like 60% true that like any song that goes like top 10 at radio or like number one does this thing where it's like, do do do do like anything of do do do do do it has that somewhere in the song like in the chorus as like a quote unquote catchy melody and we have songs that do that occasionally too and in noticing that I have also noticed that basically any song that we do that in gets chosen as a single or performs better than than other songs which is horrifying because like you know as an artist I'm like chasing a feeling or a message or something.

I don't like to apply math to it. So a good example of it would be Young the Giants' song Superposition, which went to number one like a couple months ago. And the singer Samir is a good friend of mine. And he was really surprised that the song went to number one. He's like, I'm not sure why that's the song. And I'm listening back to it. And it has that moment in the chorus of like,

God, do do do do. I'm like, oh my God, I think that like it's literally a prerequisite at this point where it's, I don't know if it's subconscious in programming director's brains or something that when they hear that, they're just like, oh yeah, this is catchy or something like that. Wow. Okay. So do you know, so that happens in the chorus of superposition? I want to pull that up and listen to that real quick. Wait, it was just really quick. Yeah. Let me do it more time. Let me do it more time. so it's in the middle that one yeah, and da da da da da da da da yep and so that that I think is like actually like an okay

you said it but there's some songs dude that like just bash it where it's like there's like this Cold War kid's song I think it's called like first maybe and the chorus is literally but da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da it's like the whole thing And that also was like a smash hit for them. Okay, let me hear this. And then the song,

And Run by Sir Sly. And that one went to number one also. So to me, it's like really becoming a thing. And it's almost like a cheat code to like alternative success. Is there a way that it's used? like does it typically occur in a certain place? Like, how are you identifying its usage? Because I hear it and I like roll my eyes at this point,

especially when it's like in a big song. But like our song Tung does it, which is our biggest song. Wait, let me hear that. That part? Yep. And does it always happen in like, is it always sort of staccato and fast in that sort of way?

Or can people do it in the long ways like, the sur sly one was the, was half the speed, but like the same intervals. Is the timing always sort of the same? Like, even though it's half speed, they're all consistent. They're all the same rhythm, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's usually not like,

you know, like it's usually, they're all like even lengths usually. Oh, interesting. On one hand, this could be like something which is so derivative in all of music that it's nothing in particular, like there's nothing particularly interesting about it, but you say you're identifying it more frequently

and with a specific genre of music. Is that right? Yeah, I mean, I think so. And do you listen broadly outside of your genre? Yes, and I hear it way less in other things. What? It could be complete nothingness. It's just something that I have felt like

is very common in like the choruses of alternative songs, I guess. What would you call this? I don't know. The alt squiggle. But I think that that Colworkids chorus is probably the best example of it.

Right. This is a really worthy investigation. I feel like at this point, I need to go and consult with Nate, my fellow musicologist, and go do some deep listening. Maybe your ear is just sort of trained to hear this melody. I'm not sure.

It's entirely possible. I mean, like I said, knowing that our song, Tungs, which is our best streaming song, uses it probably makes me overly sensitive to it in the way that, like, people who drive yellow cars notice when other people drive yellow cars. You know, it could be totally nothing. I'm going to go talk to Nate and report back to you to see what we find. Cool. Sounds good to me. The alternative squiggle. or the big nothing entirely possible. Is it the alternative swiggle or is it the big nothing? That's what we're investigating.

Love it. What do you think? To keep this medical metaphor going, we have to do some diagnostic tests and see whether this is in fact an actual musical malady or not an instance of musical hypochondria. Okay. So, yeah, I thought what we should do is try to figure out first, like what is this melody, see what it direct. arrives from. Right. I think we could maybe even look into some science around it.

And I think what we have to do is definitely a lot of listening and see, are we hearing it? And is it happening in a preponderance of songs on the alt charts? Okay. So first, what is this thing? It's a motif, maybe. It would be a good description. What is the arc of this motif? The contour is, it goes up and then down.

Is that, is that satisfactory? Yeah. Okay, so let's go to the joy wave and see if we can figure out what this melody is. Okay, great. So let's start here. Patient Zero. First of all, that's a catchy number. It is a nice song.

I like that. So I guess we're hearing this melody that goes, da, da, da, da, da, da. Yeah. So it's a five note motive that goes up and then back down. Yes. And it uses the notes of the pentatonic scale. Yes, what's that? Okay, we're going to go there.

We're going there. Okay, so hit pause for a second. Yeah. in our diagnosis. Yeah. And let's talk about the scale from which this motive is drawn. Yes. The pentatonic scale.

Okay, that's, well, we have a clue to the nature of the scale right in the title, right? Yes. Penta, from the Greek for five. Very good, Charles. So this is a five-note scale, and it's like kind of one of the most elemental scales we use. It's smaller than the conventional major or minor scale, which have seven notes. So it's like a little more compact. It's a skill that you find like in every culture around the world.

It transcends geography and time. It's kind of this amazing folk tradition that you'll encounter from Asia to the U.S. to South America. It is like a powerful human scale. I think we need to hear it. Let's do it. Yeah. Beautiful.

There it is. I've never played a. I have short pentatonic scale on the piano before. Oh, you're natural. That's great. So this is just everywhere. Yeah, absolutely. This is, like we said, you know, part of all folk traditions, or many, I should be more specific.

And, you know, if you listen to the pop charts, you're going to hear pentatonic scale over and over and over again. So might we have a case where it's like my finger hurts and I think I have, like, I'm dying and I have to go to the ER, but actually it's just like, pain that everybody feels to use our medical metaphor like is this thing just so common that perhaps

there's nothing here? It's possible but let's say let's let's continue to examine yeah so we're in the pentatonic scale it's this thing which is in every musical cultural more or less yeah and you said let's describe the contour one more time so

we'll go from the first note up to the second note of the scale and then back down to the first note and then further down so we're kind of going around the horn now to the fifth note of the scale and then down to the fourth note of the scale and then back up

to the fifth and then back up to the first note again. Okay. So that's what it is. It's pentatonic, ubiquitous, and it has a particular contour. And I wanted to figure out, like, is there anything about

this sound that perhaps makes it perform well? Right? Before we even go off and listen, in other places. Like, is this in and of itself sticky? So, I consulted a psychologist. Oh, nice. Cool. I'm very curious what you discovered. Okay, so Dr. Kelly Jacobowski from Durham University, published a piece in psychology of aesthetics, creativity, and art. Love that journal. Called Dissecting an Earworm, Melodic features, and song popularity, predict involuntary musical imagery. Whoa.

Came out in 2017. And here's what she found. Songs that were earworms had more or less four characteristics, as my reading goes. First, faster songs, more likely to be earworms. Okay, so like upbeat songs. It's harder to make a ballot, it sounds like, to be a true earworm. Second is that the melody has to be generic and easy to remember, but it should have some kind of unique characteristic that sets it apart from other.

songs. And here's what she says. So these musically sticky songs seem to have quite a fast tempo along with a common melodic shape and universal and unusual intervals or repetitions like we can hear in the opening riff of Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple. Okay, okay, I'm with her. Or in the chorus of bad romance by Lady Gaga. Yeah. Okay, so we've got faster songs, generic, easy to remember melody with maybe something interesting about it. And she goes into a little bit more detail. This is the third characteristic. It's the melodic contour.

She says that songs are stickier when the first phrase rises in pitch and the second falls, as in something like a twinkle, twinkle little star. Right? Oh, come back down. Or she says, like in a song, like moves like, change. Jagger. Some kind of arc shape. Yes.

And usually that there ought to be in there, maybe an unusual interval structure, an unexpected leap perhaps, that gives it some sort of characteristic identity, which I think we can hear in something like moves like Jagger. It's a big jump at one point. The last characteristic of a near worm is exposure. And basically the more exposure

to earworms that you have, i.e. you might be a musician. The more likely you are to get earworms. Yeah, that makes it sound like a communicable disease. Okay, great. So I'm hearing, working backwards, exposure, some kind of melody that goes up and returns back down, unusual intervals.

And what was the first one again? Fast tempo. Fast tempo. Yeah, that all checks out. In the case of the joy wave song, if we take these criteria, let's go down. Faster song? Yeah. That's a nice brisk, cunebriot tempo to it, yeah.

Generic and easy to remember melody. Yeah, yeah. It's already in my head. And it's the pentatonic scale. It's a thing which is universally ubiquitous. Melodic contour. Not quite. I mean, it's not twinkle, twinkle.

Right? I think if we take that idea and we work to sort of consolidate it, we could say that this phrase does, have a up and then down movement, right? Right. Doing this. Up, down. Yeah, it's different. What connects twinkle, twinkle, little star and moves like Jaggers, that they start on one

note, go up past that note and then return back down to that original note. That's true. This song goes up and then goes below its original note. Yeah. And I would say that perhaps this is not an up phrase and then a down phrase. It's sort of like a quick single motif. Sure. Yeah.

So it's like, okay, so we're a little if you're on here. And then here's the tough thing for Dan, exposure. He's a musician. Perhaps he's sort of more predisposed to hear this thing, which might be just ubiquitous amongst all music because it's the pentatonic scale or maybe there's something there. When we come back from a quick break, we're going to listen a little more deeply and see whether or not there is a real malady. Cool. Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step as a podcaster?

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Yeah. is not always the same in the tracks that were brought to us. Well, I think the biggest outlier in this respect is the first one actually by Young, the Giant. That seems to be the most distinctly different from the rest of them. Okay, so this is complicated. It's a different motif, but it's the same arc. Right? It's different notes, but it's making the same arc.

It's a little bit different, isn't it? It's quite a different. Yeah. But it has this like starts on a note, goes up, and then it rises down. But then it rises up one more time. Right. Before making that sort of final descent.

Yeah. Where I think the melody before was more like. Mm-hmm. With different notes. With different notes. Yeah. Oh, okay. So okay, yeah.

Okay. So this is definitely a different melodic motive. Okay. But it is interesting. I don't want to, you know, we're not sending Dan and. joy wave away. It's because this might be interesting to think about why

one would hear that as being of the same akin to these other motives. And probably that has to do with the fact that we're still using the pentatonic scale. Ah, okay. So even though this is a different

melody that starts on a different note of the scale and has a slightly different contour, it's still drawn from the same five note cloth as all the other ones. Huh. Okay. I'm still sort of uncertain in any sort of particular diagnosis

here because I think we can't know if this is a viral effect amongst the alternative charts in the way that he says unless we do some further listening. The best way to test this theory is just to go to the Billboard alternative chart. Listen down and see what we hear.

Great. First song is chlorine by 21 pilots. Sipping on straight chlorine. Do you hear any hint of it? Negative. Okay. I don't know why I had marked that I heard.

That motive, da, da, da, da, da, da. That's drawn from the pentatonic scale as well. Okay. And it goes down and up. I don't know. I'm feeling very uncomfortable here. Okay. I think we're, you know, we might be in danger of betraying the musicological equivalent of the Hippocratic oath if we say that these are things are exactly alike.

Okay. So let's go to the next song. Great. let's go to the black keys low high what do you hear this is drawn from a close cousin of the pentatonic scale which is the blues scale which is like the pentatonic plus this extra funky blue note an extra note between the third and fourth notes of the pentatonic scale that gives it that that kind of tension and and dirty like funky feeling all right nothing there not quite no how about long shot by catfish and the bottledon.

There might be some overlap here. There's a pata. That penitonic enchippet is there for sure. Yeah, a little bit, right? Okay, okay. We're warmer now. Yeah. One for four on the alternative charts.

I listened to High Hopes of Panic of the Disco. I didn't really hear it. A song called Hurt by Oliver Tree. I didn't really hear it there. I didn't really hear it in Bad Liar by Imagine Dragons. I wanted to go back and just like get it, make sure I had it in my ear. Okay. And Dan did give us one other song in which to define this little motif.

Okay. Yeah. Okay, this is interesting. This Lumineers melody in the chorus at least. Yeah. Da da da da da da da. Yeah. Is the same as the young, the giant melody.

But it's not the same as the joy wave motive. Oh, okay. Huh. So a pentatonic sound that goes up and then down, but using different scale degrees. Yeah. I mean, it's very similar to the Young, the Giant motive, but it's different from the other ones. Huh. This disease is mutating.

I mean, I don't want to step back and, you know, pronounce a firm diagnosis, but my suspicion here is that what's happening is that, you know, within the ubiquity of, you know, of the pentatonic scale, these phrases do kind of blur together in a certain way, where they start to resemble one another, the same way that if, you know, everyone's wearing a slightly different shade of, you know, purple or something, you're just like, you start to think, oh, my God, everyone's wearing the same shirt or something. That's, I don't, I'm not necessarily going to stand by that analogy, but, you know, I think this is mistaking a general property of popular music for, for a specific, you know, kernel of melody that reappears again and again.

So given what we've looked at so far, do you feel like you have a diagnosis? I feel like we can, yes, we can make a diagnosis. Okay, let's call Daniel. Hey, Daniel. Hi, Daniel, Nate here. Hey, what's going on? What is going on, Nate? Well, I think this is kind of crazy.

I feel like I'm like giving a patient a diagnosis or something. It's like, are you sitting down? like are you ready to hear what we have to say yeah my my life is a lie so we just had a really fun session kind of breaking down your your hypothesis that the alternative charts are all kind of drawing from the same melodic well at this moment and i think what we concluded was like there's definitely a lot of truth to what you're hearing but that it might not be that all these songs are using the same exact musical motive, but maybe we're thinking that it's, what's going on is that all these songs are drawing from the pentatonic scale, one of the most sort of elemental,

popular kind of ear-wormy scales that you can use. So, so, you know, between the, like the young, the giant motive is slightly different from your joy wave motive in terms of its melodic content. it has a we were talking about like how maybe there's the same contour of going up and down but ultimately what maybe connects to them more than the exact notes is the fact that they're both drawn from the pentatonic scale

which is like if I wonder if we could rephrase your your hypothesis to be like if you want to hit on the alternative charts use the pentatonic scale yeah penitonic is so hot right now everyone's talking about it's on everyone's lips

So how are you feeling on hearing this news? Are you relieved, disappointed, confused? What's going through your head? Just like intrigued, I guess, because, I mean, as I described to Charlie in our initial conversation, I am certainly not an expert. Like, I'm a guy who's figured out what works for me and my vision and what I want to say and a lot of other types of music or, like other things remain mysteries to me. So I kind of like that as opposed to, you know, trying to know everything about everything in music. So, but the fact that like, you know, a lot of these songs are like drawing from a pentatonic scale is interesting and makes a lot of sense. Yeah. So it sounds like

things are alive and well in the alternative charts that we don't have to be worried about some sort of larger conspiracy happening, some major malady, but rather, some sort of actually sort of beautiful universal melody that just continues to persist from what the ancient Greeks all the way to today. I mean, that's good to hear, you know? We can all rest easy. Yeah, I thought there was like a shadow organization kind of running things. So it's a release that that's not happening.

We have yet to identify Specter. Or that you're part of it. Ooh, it just got deep. We wouldn't, we wouldn't tell you if we were. I know. That's kind of what I'm thinking. Yeah. I think we should go, Nate. I think he knows too much. He's on to destroy all traces. Well, we're glad to report that everything is going to be okay.

Yeah. And this was, you know, I'll say this is just a really fun investigation for us. So thank you for bringing it to our attention. No, it was great. I mean, I got to hire private investigators that I didn't have to pay to look into a hunch I had. So this was really fun. Thank you guys for doing it. Any final conclusions? Dr. Sloan. I'm feeling like this was an enjoyable ride. You know, maybe not the Blockbuster Illuminati, you know, shakedown we were hoping for initially.

But yeah, I think I've learned about the mechanics of songwriting in 2019 and the sort of, so that's something very new, and then something very ancient. The universal and sort of timeless truth of the pentatonic scale is the catchiest scale that one can use. And, you know, if we didn't just look at the alternative charts but looked at any charts, I'm sure we would hear it all over those as well.

I feel like I'm getting from this that oftentimes when we hear things that we love repeated somewhere else, it can be easy to think, oh, oh, that was maybe taken. In reality, there's a lot of stuff which is just come and practice, and that's the beautiful thing about music, is that we are brought together by it because of our familiarity with something, even when a pop song is novel, it's just released, it usually is referencing and citing all sorts of things we know,

whether those are harmonic, melodic, tambril, generic, and that's part of what we love about it as well. And so I think when those moments occur to us, which are like, is that coming from that other thing? It can be exciting to maybe explore other music, and frequently it's not something that, I don't know, I'm really, frankly, that worried about because I think it's just part of music.

Indeed. can we also put out a call to anyone listening to share their own musical maladies with us and we'll give them the same treatment let's keep doing it all right switch on pop is produced by me charlie harding and me nate sloane we're a vox media production we are edited mix and mastered by brandon mcfarlane what's up brandon our community manager is sarah terry our executive producers are nashot kirawah and alison rocky you can find more episodes anywhere you listen to podcasts and you can always reach us on Twitter, Instagram, the other things too. We'll be back again in another week and until then. Thanks for listening.