Switched on Pop - "Prince Ali" and Why We're All Music Theorists

Episode Date: June 25, 2019

Fans are not happy with Will Smith's update of the classic Disney song "Prince Ali" in the live-action Aladdin. Their complaint? The new "Prince Ali" is slow, sluggish, and dull. Indeed, the Smith version is 8 BPM (beats per minute) slower than Robin Williams's 1992 original—a subtle musical detail. We dig into the properties of tempo and key to understand why people have such a visceral reaction to a relatively small change and consider whether it suggests that we—meaning all of us humans, from musicians to amateurs—are more musically literate than we think. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you're tired of endless scrolling to figure out where to eat, same. I'm Stephanie Wu, editor-in-chief of Eater. We've just launched the new-ish and way better Eater app. It has all the restaurants we love, gives you personalized picks wherever you are, and serves up smarter search results just for you. You can find my list of the best places for martinis and fries in New York City. And save your favorite spots, share lists, follow editors, and book right in the app. the eater app at eater app.com. It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switched-on-Pop. I'm musicologist

Nate Sloan. And I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. Okay, Charlie, today I want a talk about a song that's both new and old at the same time. Okay, and it's giving people a lot of feelings. Okay, there's a new Aladdin movie out, right? I've heard. Live action update of the 1992 original. Yep. And there's a lot of reactions, both positive and negative, but I want to focus in on people's reactions to one of the most famous songs from this iconic Disney movie musical, Prince Ali, because as soon as this new version by Will Smith dropped, people felt some kind of way. People had strong opinions about this, and I think it's interesting, not just that people have opinions, okay, but that people are responding to something like a very subtle and yet profound musical element. So I think in a way

that people are having such a strong reaction in this new version shows that we might all be music theorists, whether we know it or not. This is great. So you're telling me I can expand my armchair music theory to just like pure music theory. Yes, yes. Whether you think you're tone deaf or not, chances are you might know a lot more about music than you think. Because when we spin this new version of Prince Ali, I don't know, I'd be curious. You might not even hear a difference, Charlie, but people out there do. Okay. Let's listen to the Will Smith version of Prince Ali from Aladdin.

Okay, I don't think I'm in the majority here because I really like this. Okay, good. I mean, you may have not seen the original Aladdin in a long time. It's been since I was adolescent. Yeah, since it came out. Okay, so let's refresh your memory. Let's compare now this new version to the original. Prince Ali, Fabulous, he, Ali Abba, Guam, Genia Fletch, show some respect down in one knee. Now try your best to stay calm, brush up your Sunday salon,

and come and meet his spectacular quarterie. I mean, on one hand, I love hearing Robin Williams is just amazing. Classic, yeah. But I actually think I like the new one better because it actually sounds more live action and the old one actually sounds more cartoonish just in its production. Like the symphony and the new one is big and brassy and I like that. Okay, fair enough, Charlie. But there's something very subtle going on too.

and it has to do with tempo. Tempo. Yes. Okay. So I want to just dive into the world of tempo for a moment. Yeah. What is tempo? Tempo is the speed at which the pulse of the music moves along.

Great. Okay, so right. Music has a pulse, just like our bodies do. Yes. Music has a pulse. At least pop music. Not all music necessarily. Yeah.

But pop music always has a pulse. Yeah. And we actually have a way to measure that pulse. And we call it BPM, or beats per minute. So if you have a faster BPM, it'll sound faster. The rate will go by much quicker. And if you have a slower BPM, it'll go a lot slower. And so that's the way we perceive tempo and time in music,

is how fast a song is beating at, essentially. And this is already kind of like a slightly ineffable quality. Because how do you detect tempo in music? Like we've defined it. How do you identify it? How? I honestly haven't really thought about that. Like I feel like it's something which is deeply ingrained.

Like you can just count it. I don't know. You feel it's where you tap your foot in a song. It's where you nod your head. It's where you kind of tap your hand along. Like it's, you're right. It is this sort of primal fundamental relationship we have with pulsing music. Right.

People immediately recognized that this new version, compared to the original is slow. They said it sounds kind of sluggish, kind of unenergetic or something. So on the one hand, tempo is just kind of this mysterious ineffable quality. And yet at the same time, the fact that people immediately recognize

that Aladdin, this new version was in a new tempo, shows that we have a very close analytical relationship to tempo. Like, check it out. So beats per minute, we said, refers to how fast a song is public. at. Yeah. So let's go to the original Prince Ali and kind of see how fast its BPM is. Prince Ali might as he Ali a barb- Two, three, four, one, two, three, three, three, four, one, two, three, three, three, okay, nice. Good luck, medium pace. Yeah, so let's call that, that's going to be about one, ten BPM. Okay. Now let's go to the newer version.

One, two, three, four. This one is definitely a little sluggish. Yeah, yeah. But it's subtle. It's at 102 BPM. So it's only 8 BPM different, which is not huge. That's not something I would typically feel like I would notice. Yeah.

I guess what it signals is that the original version is so ingrained in people's consciousness that they can tell that this new one is, even though it's at just a slightly slower tempo, they can immediately recognize it. So there was like a mass reaction against this? There was a lot of noise on Twitter and on Reddit of people just as soon as this song came out, just being like, no, this isn't working for me. Did people know that it was tempo? I don't know that anyone used the Italian word tempo in their criticism. But I think that's what they were feeling, whether they identified it or not.

Yeah, that was a big part of it. I'm sure they're also reacting to the live action visuals and how those are different. But I think there's something just in the music. I mean, we have a very visceral relationship with tempo. There's actually a study that shows that there might be a relationship between the tempo of the music we gravitate to and the way we move our bodies. Like scientists have determined that humans like to walk at a rate of about 120 beats per minute. That's you walking as a New Yorker. That seems fast.

Like this feels like a very urban, like Western centric. I'm curious in like hot, cold climates. I bet people go slower and hotter places. I'm sure that the study has lots of holes that we could find. But let's say for the moment that humans like to walk at 120 BPM or thereabouts. Yeah, okay, fine. It's interesting. You actually find a lot of pop music that clocks in right at 120 BPM.

When you open any music software, like Pro Tools or Logic or Ableton, all the tools that people use to make music, they usually default to 120 beats for minutes. Like an opening project, 120. Okay, so that's interesting. And I think we can find that borne out if we go to one of our favorite pop artists ever. Yeah. Lady Gaga. I love Lady Gaga.

Loves 120 BPM. Does she? Some of her biggest hits all clock in at that exact beat rate. At the default. So let's check out, you know, just dance. Okay. And then move on to poker face. And then move on to bad romance.

One, two, three, four. One, two, three. Four, one, two, three, four. They're all the same. Yeah, just dance, poker face, bad romance. These all clock in at exactly 120 BPM. They blend perfectly together. And she seems to like to start her songs with these like, I don't know,

Synthi, bright, grab your attention. Yeah, yeah, totally. No, I mean, she's got a playbook. So is Gaga intentionally trying to, take advantage of our preferred walking tempo in making her hits? I don't know, but it is interesting. Like, you know, maybe you're familiar with some of the Italian words for different tempos, right? Yeah, I think they all begin with A's. Some of them do. Some of the faster ones, like Allegro and Allegretto. Yeah, and And Andante. Okay, well, actually, that's the one I'm interested in.

Undante. Would you know what Andante refers to? I can't remember my 18th century classical coursework. That's completely fair. I'm putting you on the spot today, and it won't be the last time. Andante referred to what people thought of as a walking tempo in the 1700s. And that correlates to, in terms of BPM, much slower than that 120 BPM we were just talking about, something more around like 72 BPM. You can hear this in like an Andante by Mozart. That's beautiful. It's slow, though. It's slow. It is not just dance. This is not Nate Sloan walking through New York City getting to a subway train. It sounds like the Italians in the classical era may have walked significantly slower.

I think you might be right. I think this is what the history is telling us. Like, people have just started, maybe we just move at a faster pace than we used to. Like if walking pace back then was this leisurely da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And now today it's like, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Hey, we have modern health care. They didn't have vaccines. Like, they were probably sick all the time.

They all were like just like trying to get by. Totally. I mean, I guess what we could say is. is that tempo is this fundamental visceral thing, but it also changes as society changes. And like the kind of tempos we gravitate towards change. It's a cultural phenomenon as well. I think it's technological too. I mean, we've got fast highways. We can walk on sidewalks. They had like cobblestone streets and you had to like trip over mud and horses and you had to go slower to get by. Okay. So I totally agree. I want to put now this idea to the test. Like we've already determined that Aladdin

fans immediately were able to recognize that the new version is 8 bpm slower. Well, maybe they didn't know it was 8 ppm. Right, right. Something was off. So I'm curious if we can do the same thing. Okay, Charlie, I told you I would put you on the spot again and the moment has come. Okay. But you're just a guinea pig.

This isn't, it's not a test. It's just an experiment. Okay. Can you recall the tempo of a song you know and love well? Okay. I really love sweet Judy Blue Eyes by Crosby Still's Nash. Yeah. Is there young in that one or no?

I think that's pre-young, I believe. So I was like, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-do. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Okay, that's about 140 BPM. Ooh, that's pretty fast. I think that you, I think you might be honest on me. All right, we're going to pull up sweet Judy Blue Eyes now.

Okay. Assuming the whole thing's in the same tempo, actually. Oh, yeah. But we'll start. I think you're doing the beginning, right? How do you think you did, Charlie? I think I did pretty well. Oh, yeah?

Yeah, I'm going to make a guess, though, that I am Price's right rules wrong. I bet I went over and it's under. Nope. You were under. This is at about 152 BPM. Whoa. Oh, my gosh. Wow.

So you were a little low. I'm actually surprised because my main instrument is guitar and guitars are usually ahead of the beat playing too quickly. The drummers are like, slow down. Maybe you were hedging your vets being a little conservative. Maybe he's a get older. I'm slowing down like those classical Italians. Yeah, as you should be, man. Absolutely.

Can I try one? Do me something contemporary. Something contemporary? Should we do talk by Khalid? Great. Yeah. Okay, I'm going to guess it's right here. One, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four. This is already too fast. All right, but I'll stick with it. 142 is what I said for talk. And let's see, let's go to the tape. I'm already sure I'm way too fast. Okay, so it looks like it's about 136. So I was too fast.

You were too slow. I did just come over and you pour yourself an extra cup of coffee. I am well caffeinated. That's true. Okay, so inconclusive, I would say, this little experiment, I highly encourage people to try the same thing at home, see how well you can recall beats. We can also do the opposite, though.

We can do the Prince Ali test, so to speak. Would you recognize if a song you know well was sped up or slowed down from its original recording? What's going to happen? You're putting me on the spot again? Yeah, I'm putting you on the spot again. All right, let's take a song from a recent vintage that we both know and love, Redbone by Childish Gambino. That is definitely slower.

That is like going back to our... last episode that we did about slow underwater wobbly intros. Estelle Caswell from Vox's earworm taught us about songs that are chopped and screwed where they're slowed down and this has clearly been chopped and screwed.

This is like this is super wow. Yeah, you're absolutely right, Charlie. So you detected that immediately. So interesting. So perhaps our relationship to beat is something where we can tell when we hear it. Yeah. But we might not be able to conjure it from memory. We're also not drummers.

All the drummers listening are definitely very sad about us. Okay, let's bring it back to Prince Ali now because, again, the new version with Will Smith is only 8 BPM slower than the original and yet people seem to notice immediately. Thus, perhaps proving my theory that we are all secret musicologists. But I have more than tempo to support this because there's some other changes that have happened in this new version that I think people are picking up on. So let's take a quick break and then return to some of the other musical elements that reveal us all to be music literate, whether we know it or not. 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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Okay, so Charlie, as I said, tempo is not the only thing that has changed from the 1992 original to this new live action version. We've got some more in-your-face changes as well. We've got some lyrical revisions to this new version of Prince Ali. Okay, so instead of the original lyric, which went, he's got slaves, he's got servants and flunkies, the new version goes, he's got 10,000 servants and flunkies. How do you feel about them like writing out the history of slavery in this song? Yeah, I mean, I don't know.

On one hand, I don't necessarily approve of whitewashing, and not just with Aladdin, but in general, the troubling racial politics of Disney at large. Right. I'd no longer try and use that word slaves. If anything, I'd use the word enslaved peoples, which actually attests more to the humanity of people who have been enslaved. And also, not to be crass about it, but would probably be like a fumbly kind of lyric to replace here. Yeah, and we need to keep the rhyme with monkeys, so Flunkies has to stay in there. It's perhaps an inelegant solution. One that I think isn't even nearly as effective is this other lyrical revision in the song.

Originally it went, heard your princess was a sight lovely to see. Now in the new version it goes, heard your princess was hot. Where is she? Wait, this feels like it's like regressive sexual politics and like I feel like we've replaced the male gaze with just. like an obvious exclamation of noting someone only by their physical attraction. Yeah. Well, it's, it is what it is, man. You know, I do want to call attention for a moment to the composers behind Aladdin.

Alan Mencken, the musician, and Howard Ashman, the lyricist. I mean, these two individuals who maybe none of us are really familiar with on a name basis, are like the architects of the entire. Disney Sound. They did the score for Beauty and the Beast, Little Mermaid, and part of Aladdin. Alan Mencken continued to score many Disney films, but Howard Ashman died of complications related to HIV partway through the production of Aladdin. So Prince Ali is one of the few songs that he actually completed for that. This is a Broadway duo. Yeah. And you can hear in their lyrics like the love and the reverence they have for a clever turn of phrase.

Like, check out this stanza. Prince Ali, handsome is he, Ali Ababa. That physique, how can I speak? Weak at the knee. We'll get on out in that square. Adjust your veil and prepare to gawk and grovel and stare at Prince Ali. There's so many beautiful interior rhymes and sort of like, it plays with all my expectations of what's going to land where.

There's alliteration. It's very clever. It's very adept. And Mankin is a brilliant composer. But, you know, again, people recognize immediately that something has changed. And it's not just these lyrical changes. And it's not just the tempo.

It's something else. We are also dealing with a key change here. Oh, I didn't notice this. Yes. Okay, so the original Prince Ali is in the key of B minor. But the new version, key of B flat minor. So we've gone down one step. Yes, from B minor to B flat minor.

It's both so subtle yet so powerful at the same time. Yeah. I think it's also worth noting when you used to slow down records, you would do it by playing a record at a slower RPM. Right, yeah, revolution per minute. And it would both slow it down and decrease the pitch. And with digital technology, we can decrease the speed without decreasing the pitch. But here they've actually kind of done both,

which almost feels like it really has been slowed down on a record. They've slowed down the tempo and they've descended the key. And it changes the quality. Like, I feel like the first time, like when you play the original key, it feels like, yeah, play it again. It's like, I don't know, it feels like bright and, I don't know, exciting. Compared to. Yeah, I mean, that's like, it's darker, it's moodyer. I agree.

I agree. And it's interesting. You know, keys are like one of the most fascinating musical properties because on one hand, every key has this absolute difference. One is higher or lower than the other. Right. B minor is higher than B flat. but at the same time, they're also relatively equal. And what I mean is you can play the same exact melody in B minor,

and you can play it in B flat minor, and they sound relatively the same, but absolutely different. I'm already confusing myself here. But it's a difficult, you know, it's one of the more rarefied musical topics, which is why I think it's interesting that people seem to be glomming onto it.

You know what I? I mean, like, this is something that is one of the things that you study for a long time when you're learning music theory. But people are just immediately recognizing whether they know it or not, ooh, this sounds a little lower, a little darker, a little more melancholy, perhaps, than the original. Well, I feel like one way of sort of like playing that out and taking it to its logical extreme to make it a little more obvious to hear is if we go into even like lower and lower keys. Okay.

One of the things that happens with the human ear is that we actually have trouble discerning really low notes. True. Right? And so, like, as chords get lower and lower, they get harder to hear and they get, like, muddier. Okay, so let's bring this original B minor key. Yeah. And let's bring it down. Maybe here.

Yeah. Okay, let's see how this sounds now. Ooh, it's like, that's really brooding. That was E flat minor, yeah. Yeah. As you go further down in absolute pitch space, it gets muddier and, and, and, you're, you're, and, you're, and darker and maybe even heavier, kind of in a way. Yeah.

And beyond this, like, I know that people have often very personal relationships to certain keys, especially musicians. Like, I think we've played on our show a clip from the movie Spinal Tap in which there's a great scene in which they talk about, D minor is the saddest of all keys. But, like, also some musicians have, like, synesthetic qualities where they see certain keys as colors. Oh, interesting. For me. Wait, are there examples? Can you think of anyone in particular? I believe Jimmy Hendricks claimed to have synesthesia. I think also maybe Charlie XX has some sort of synesthetic relationship to music.

Maybe even Lord. I don't have that, but I do have, certain keys have very strong feelings for me. I think because of my main instrument as a guitarist, like if you play the key of G, it's like bold and prassy and big. And a lot of that has to do with the way that a G sounds particularly on a guitar. And when you play a G on a guitar, it just has this big resonant sound. And so I think I've like associated, if I hear the key of G, it has that big, yeah, big bold sound. Interesting. Yeah.

Whereas, you know, I think a lot of jazz and soul musicians tend to gravitate towards more flat keys, like B flat and E flat. And if you listen to someone like Stevie Wonder, there's a ton of flat keys. And I wonder if that's in part because flat keys tend to use more black notes and being visually impaired. Maybe Stevie Wonder gravitates towards those kind of sonorities. Because they might like help guide the hands? Yeah, perhaps. I don't know. But to go back to your point about spinal tap, I mean, that has a long history, that idea of like certain keys having certain emotional valances.

Like there's this amazing musician and theorist named Mark Antoine Charpentier, who in the 17th century actually came up with all these different moods that each key represented. This goes back to like the ancient Greeks who would give you know different properties, different scales. They're like, if we're going into war, you have to use the Dorian mode or something. If you're like trying to. There's a Phrygian mode as the war scale. Okay, maybe you're right about that.

And then there's one if you're trying to make some fall in love with you. You have to use the Ionian or so. So this continues, you know, in 1682, Charpentier is like, take our B flat. minor key of this new Aladdin, he would call that obscure and terrible. Oh, that's why people don't like it. It's obscure and terrible, which also means he probably didn't like jazz much since B flat is the most common key in jazz. C major, by contrast, is gay and warlike. Oh, yeah.

Wow, warlike. Yeah, I disagree. What else do we have? B minor, that's the original Aladdin key. That's solitary and melancholic. Okay. Well, I feel like a royal is, despite all their... power often quite solitary.

Yes. Or perhaps it's time to step back and say, like, is there any validity to this idea that different keys have different moods? I mean, it's obviously, there's both an objective and subjective side to it. Whereas, like, saying earlier, the objective side is that if we go really, really low in some keys, they become harder to hear. They don't translate as well over certain speakers. And perhaps if we go to high, we also might encounter the same problem.

Yeah. Maybe it loses a little bit of its gravitose up there. There's no royal weight to that. And that also interplays with where the vocalists sits. You know, you want to put the key, needs to fit the vocalists. And if it's not sitting right with the voice, then that will feel wrong. So there's like there's an objective side to it. But I feel like to your point about, what is this guy's name?

Mark Antoine Chaupentier. Your mix from the Italians, the French. Yes. Okay. We're covering. Yeah, we're pan European here, baby. But I think he's probably inappropriately assigning entirely subjective experiences to music upon these keys. And I think it's okay that we can all have our own subjective experience.

But it does feel as though with Alibaba, there is a like mass conscious subjective experience of the new one isn't as good as the old one. Yeah. And I have to imagine that has to do with like we said tempo, but also key. I think I think if we zoom out again now and like go back to this idea of like why people had such strong. immediate visceral reactions to this new Prince Ali. It shows that our appreciation of music isn't always superficial, even if we're not like trained musicians. I think it shows that we are so deeply tuned into these subtle musical qualities of tempo

and key, whether we know it or not. Again, we are all music theorists. It's a beautiful thing. Switchdown Pop is produced by me, Charlie Harding. And me, Nate Sloan. We were mixed and edited by Brandon McFarland. And our community manager is Sarah Terry. And our production fellow is Megan Lubin.

Our executive producers are Nishat Karwa and Liz Nelson. We're a production of Vox Media. You can find more episodes at switchedonpop.com or at IHeartRadio, the Apple Podcast app, Spotify, or any other place you find podcasts. We'll be back again in another Tuesday. And until them, thanks for listening.