Switched on Pop - Selena Gomez: Bad Liar, Psycho Songwriter

Episode Date: July 13, 2017

Selena Gomez's "Bad Liar" stands out on the charts by doing things a little differently: it's a subtle, at times even awkward, summer surprise. Breaking down this pop morsel reveals it has teeth, thou...gh—and not just because it borrows a bass line from the Talking Heads' macabre "Psycho Killer." This is a fun one. Come along for the ride.  Featuring: • Selena Gomez - Bad Liar • Julia Michaels - Issues • Selena Gomez - Same Old Love • Talking Heads - Psycho Killer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Convierte your passion in a business with Shopify and bathe records of with the form of pay with a better conversion of the world. You've heard of the best.
Starting point is 00:00:08 The Mereverion of the world. The incredible system of Pago of Shopify facilita the site web, in the social and in any place.
Starting point is 00:00:18 That is music for your ears. No, you'll be more vets. Your business is a super-exit with Shopify.
Starting point is 00:00:24 Empecia to start your period of month in Shopify. coms. Bar Records. If you're tired of endless scrolling to figure out where to eat, same. I'm Stephanie Wu, editor-in-chief of Eater.
Starting point is 00:00:37 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. Download the eater app at eaterapp.com. It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switch on Pop.
Starting point is 00:01:14 I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. Charlie, there's much to discuss on the charts today, but there is one song in particular that has inveigled its way into our hearts and minds. That song is Selena Gomez. as bad liar. I love this song. I'm not sure it's invagled me
Starting point is 00:02:01 because I'm not sure I know what that means, but I'm going to trust you. Check it out. You know, Miriam Webster has an app. You can look up every, it'll pronounce it for you. You can save all your words. That's how, that's, I'm just,
Starting point is 00:02:13 that's a free, but they're not a sponsor. I'm just offering that up to the world. It's a good way to build your vocabulary. Part of my interest in this song is that it lies outside of so much of what we've become familiar with. Like the stuff we talk about week in, week out on this show,
Starting point is 00:02:31 this song doesn't do a lot of that. And I think that's what makes it stand out in almost an inverse sort of way. If maybe a month ago, we talked about the sort of maximalist approach of fallout boy and Charlie XX. Yeah. This song is one that grabs our attention
Starting point is 00:02:50 not by its loudness and richness and fullness, but rather from sort of its subtlety and quietness and conversationality. That might not be a word, actually, so. One point for me. I totally agree with you. It's funny. The song is, on one hand, it's incredibly catchy, but you're right. It doesn't seem to do any of the things that we suggest make a great pop song
Starting point is 00:03:22 and what we've discussed and switch on pop in the past. why I think it's so successful because in terms of the music that we've just been describing and the message of the song, they work very well in tandem together. Lyrically, the song projects a sort of innocence and immediacy and even awkwardness of falling for someone, of developing a crush on someone. And musically, it does these subtle things to support that feeling. And as listeners, it puts us in that feeling. So we are experiencing that feeling of falling, of getting a crush of not being able to get someone out of your head. Okay, so cool. How does it do this? Let's start with the first verse, because so much goes down here. Let's just press play and listen to the first verse of
Starting point is 00:04:12 Selena Gomez's bad liar. I was walking down the street the other day trying to distract myself, but then I see your face. I wait. That's someone else I'm trying to play a goy, trying to make it disappear. But just like the battle of Troy, there's nothing to settle here. So what stands out here, Charlie? Because, again, we said from the beginning the song is a little different. What, in terms of the lyrics here, what stands out for you? Well, the first line is I was walking down the street the other day.
Starting point is 00:04:44 So that's kind of like almost like an old blues reference. I was walking down the street the other day. I know what you mean That seems like kind of one of these Almost stock phrases That you can't trace to any one person or song But it's just like in the ether Part of the earth almost
Starting point is 00:05:03 But then she totally deflects it in the next lines Right Walking down the street the other day Trying to distract myself But then I see your face Oh wait that's someone else I was walking down the street the other day Trying to distract myself
Starting point is 00:05:17 But then I see your face Oh wait that's something And just in that quatrain, we have so much going on that is different from so many pop songs because it's very, it's sort of stream of consciousness. Yeah. It almost sound, I mean, obviously this is a carefully composed and performed song, but the feeling that Selena Gomez gives us here is that like it's just all happening at, and we're just hearing it straight from her mouth.
Starting point is 00:05:42 You know what I like about that? It almost actually has the quality of literally walking down the street. Just things are happening all around you. You can't predict them. And yes. And it has that too, because. it's awkward and it's funny. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:05:53 Which is not something we hear in a lot of pop songs, which are supposed to be very self-assured, very knowing, very in control, and often very serious. This is kind of uncomfortable and humorous. And I think, again, in being the inverse of so much of what's out there kind of creates its own niche for itself. Oh, lovely. Okay. I like that.
Starting point is 00:06:17 And then we go on through the verse into the, uh, the next set of lyrics and Selena Gomez sings trying to play it coy, trying to make it disappear, but just like the Battle of Troy, there's nothing subtle here. But just like the Battle of Troy,
Starting point is 00:06:37 there's nothing subtle here. How about that Iliad reference? Right. And then we get another moment that's like, wait, is this a top 20 pop song? Or is this like a high school English paper? because why, like, that is not something you'd expect to hear.
Starting point is 00:06:54 The line itself is almost like a Trojan horse. What is this doing here? How did it end up? What is it doing in this song? It sneaks up on you. That's right. And then, you know, another thing about these lyrics, and we're still in the verse here. We haven't even gotten past.
Starting point is 00:07:10 This song uses vocabulary that is so rare to encounter. Towards the end of the verse, we have the line. call me an amenity, which is just a... I like that. It's a surprising word to encounter in a pop song. In my room, there's a king-size space bigger than it used to be. If you want, you can rent that place. Call me an amenity.
Starting point is 00:07:36 And it's kind of in the context of in my room there's a king-sized space, bigger than it used to be. If you want, you can rent that place. Call me an amenity. Wow. So that's like another kind of funny line. Like, just take this room and I'll be a perk or sort of. Like, that's a very convoluted metaphor, but it works for me. She also rhymes used to be with amenity.
Starting point is 00:07:58 That's a really creative rhyme scheme. Yeah, three syllable words, man. You can use them in a pop song. Speaking of which, we get to the pre-chorus, ooh, you're taking up a fraction of my mind. Ooh, every time I watch you, Charlie. Serpentine. Oh. Let's just pause for a moment to appreciate.
Starting point is 00:08:35 the melodious grandeur of the word serpentine. Wow. You know, I'm noticing now, we opened up with walking down the street the other day. So first we get like this blues reference, right? And then all of a sudden we're getting these almost mythological references of Troy, kings and snakes. Whoa, that's true. Yeah. And again, I think this brings us back to the sort of awkwardness of this song in a way.
Starting point is 00:09:02 And I say that in a good way, not in a bad way, because again, that caption. that captures the emotional terrain of like of developing a crush of falling for someone it is awkward and it has like this mythological scale sometimes right just like it it takes over your entire being oh absolutely and let me assure you charlie that every crush i developed and then acted on was mythologically awkward as in awkward and mythical proportions so the music itself reinforces this sort of awkwardness. Really? Okay. Tell me about it. Try and follow me here because I think it's a really subtle thing, but worth highlighting.
Starting point is 00:09:43 Because I think it gives this first verse a lot of its sort of nervous stream of consciousness energy. There's a kind of temporal dissonance between what the melody does and what the harmony does. Oh. Let's just focus on the harmony for a second. And harmonically, this song is pretty, simple it's actually just moving between two chords one lower chord the first chord we get which is a flat and then you can hear when it it actually moves up everything is is
Starting point is 00:10:18 the same as in the baseline is doing the same exact thing but it just moves up about four notes to d flat and then it moves back down and we can hear that change from this this one chord A-flat up to this 4-chord D-flat and back down. The melody, however, doesn't quite move at the same time that the chords do. The vocal melody actually moves a little bit earlier. Like the bass line, the melody is basically just two different phrases.
Starting point is 00:11:03 We have the first phrase that goes, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And then we have the second phrase that goes, Da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da and the first phrase is tied to that a flat major chord da da da that's part of that a flat tonality and then the second phrase especially because that second note da da da da da da is d flat that's the root note of the chord yeah that's tied to that that d flat chord so it makes sense that when the bass line is doing it's a flat thing the melody goes And then when it goes up to D flat, the melody changes with it and goes, da da da da da da da da da da da.
Starting point is 00:11:47 But that's not what happens. What happens is that Selena Gomez sings the A flat melody. I was walking down the street the other day trying to distract myself. And then on the line, await that's someone else. So this is before the harmony has moved to D flat. She moves to the D flat melody. So she's kind of anticipating where the chords are going to go. She sings it before the chords get there.
Starting point is 00:12:22 She sings it before the chords get there. So she's like almost in a rush or she's moving faster than the harmony can allow. It's like almost giving us a subtle signal that her brain is whirring so fast that it's going faster than even. the harmony can keep up with. That's brilliant because the chorus is, I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying not to think about you. Oh, I'm trying.
Starting point is 00:12:59 And yet, every time that she's trying not to think about the other person, she's, like, anticipating and rushing and getting, and landing on that person whether or not she wants to. She can't distract herself. Yes, yes, it's like a literal, a literal depiction of a mind racing. Yeah. Uh-huh. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
Starting point is 00:13:18 And then you can hear the harmony. He's like, oh, wait, we know where we're coming. It's getting to deep light, chill out. But she's already there. Cool. I love that. I was walking down the street the other day, trying to distract myself. But then I see a face.
Starting point is 00:13:32 Oh, wait, that's someone else. I'm trying to. And then I think there's one other sort of more macro element that makes us feel this sense of a sort of building crush, despite her efforts, as you point out, that she's trying and trying to trying to keep it together. She can't help it. That's done in a subtle way that the song continually adds elements. So we don't hear the same exact thing as the song progresses. We hear these different musical elements being added in, new drum patterns, new percussion sounds, new sound effects.
Starting point is 00:14:10 And in the second verse, we have Selena Gomez singing in all these kind of different voices. Yeah. What can possibly happen next? Can we focus on the love? Pay my kids. I don't know exactly how to interpret this, but part of me is like we're going inside her unconsciousness or something. And we're exploring all these emotions she's feeling, which again, like, cannot be contained and are sort of awkward. And we hear her voice start as her normal voice.
Starting point is 00:14:49 and then on the line what could possibly happen next she's her voice is doubled by this really low voice I don't know how to what I make of it but it's definitely awkward again to come back to that word and then immediately after that she goes
Starting point is 00:15:08 can we focus on the love and then her voice is this distorted kind of distant sound can we focus on love It's out of focus. Yes. Oh, Charles. Sorry, I just have to recover from that brilliant insight.
Starting point is 00:15:27 Yes. And now in this verse, so what's happened is that we've built up from the first verse. We've added more things. This crush is growing to spite her best efforts to contain it. And we're gaining access to more of her stream of consciousness, almost her multiple personalities. All of this, which is capped off. by one of my favorite moments in the song, the little drum fill at the end of this second verse that takes us into the pre-chorus to refresh your memory. Here's what that sounds like.
Starting point is 00:16:00 What could possibly happen next? Can we focus on the love? Pay my kids across your chest. Frily I'll be the broadshund. Ooh. Spicey. I saw yes. Just a little less than the half a measure drum fill. But you didn't hear it the first time and all the sudden there it is sort of supporting the idea that no matter how hard she tries, she cannot tamp down these emotions. I like how you get into these weird vocal transformations because you pointed out at the very beginning that this song stands out on the charts partially for it being quiet, more reserve, you know, her vocal sounds almost hushed, right? And then I think to make it just a little bit poppy. It uses some of those sort of more electronic music production techniques to just grab your ear and say, hey, I'm still in that realm of pop music. But she's using it not just to sound
Starting point is 00:16:59 alike, but rather to emphasize the quality that she's feeling within her song. It's really creative. Yes. And this is a nice segue to my final thought here, which is we've talked about the sort of uniqueness of this song. And yet it might also bear a strong similarity to another track that we've covered recently. What's that? Which would be issues by Julia Michaels, which similarly begins with a very sparse texture. And slowly builds and offers a very vulnerable kind of narrator. And at this point, would it surprise you at all?
Starting point is 00:17:53 to hear that this song was co-written by none other than Julia Michaels and her stalwart writing partner, Justin Tranter. Get out of here. That's amazing. I cannot. She has become the zealig of the show recently. Yeah. She is everywhere, everywhere you look, extraordinary. Interesting.
Starting point is 00:18:14 And she's making a unique sound for herself because this doesn't sound like anything else on the charts other than maybe her other songs. She's all far. Yes, I'm a bad liar. Charles, I've just laid out my thoughts on this. What's the, what's an anti-banger? I don't know what, what's this. We'll come up with that. Hush pop.
Starting point is 00:18:38 This hush-pop summer hit. I'm desperately curious to hear your take on it. Well, I like how you frame this as unlike much of what we're hearing in popular music. And it's brilliance as the way that it does everything. slightly differently or even extremely differently. However, the song is based on, well, almost a cover. It's sampling the talking heads, psycho killer, like their most famous song. And yet, it stands completely apart from the cover, which is its source material.
Starting point is 00:19:14 This is the brilliance of the song, and we're going to figure this out how it does it in the second half. Whoa, okay. See you there. of Calvin Klein, the new collection elixir, three new elixires perfum intense, solar, magnetic, ball. Pulsa in the banner,
Starting point is 00:19:32 do you know, discover your fragrance euphoria. Immigration may be Donald Trump's signature issue. President Trump is now targeting predominantly democratic cities for ice raids and deportations. Dozens of protesters clashing with immigration and customs enforcement agents in Minneapolis Tuesday.
Starting point is 00:19:50 We will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came. But what we want to do in this space is talk about America and politics beyond the current president. So what do most Americans think about deportation and border security, period? I think that Americans are definitely against the kind of violent displays that we've seen in the street from ICE. When it comes to the question of deportation, the answer is more complicated. My sense is that people want border at the border.
Starting point is 00:20:23 They don't like the idea of having no idea who's coming into the United States at any given time. The view on immigration from the bottom up instead of the top down. That's this week on America Actually. Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. Nate, you know I love pop songs,
Starting point is 00:20:42 which are their own totally whole, unique, creative output. And I think that Bad Liar, as we discussed in the first half, really does frame itself as its own kind of song. And yet, it's based off of a sample. The first thing that we hear in the song is the Talking Heads
Starting point is 00:21:03 Psycho-Killer bass line that drives the entire song. And yet, when I first heard Bad Liar, I had no idea that it was based on this sample. And I think what makes this track that much more brilliant is that not only does it stand apart
Starting point is 00:21:21 from the charts, but it is kind of of a cover, cover maybe is a stretch, definitely a sample. And yet, it completely distinguishes itself from the original material in every single way. So what I want to do is show that psycho killer and bad liar, despite having the same core baseline and rhythm throughout, are entirely different songs. Cool. All right. I'm ready. 40 years later, we're getting to the talking head. Yes. Okay. So, cycle killer, talking heads, one of their biggest tunes. It is in the key of a minor. And it is a weird and tragic sort of song. I don't quite know how to describe what it's about. By your silence, I hope you're not suggesting that I have any better interpretation because I'm similarly mystified. Similarly, in love with it, but completely. bewildered by its meaning.
Starting point is 00:22:22 Perhaps that's part of its brilliance. It's got French phrases. Strange vocal rhythms, fuffa fahs. What do you call those? Deck the Hall. Yeah, exactly. Duck the Halls. Deck the Halls meets Son of Sam.
Starting point is 00:22:49 Oh, boy. Yes, it is a strange song, and it is basically the inverse. of Julia Michaels, Justin Tranter, and Selena Gomez's Bad Liar. So let's break down how it stands out. Most obviously, from the start, Psycho Killer is in a minor. Bad liar takes the same thing, tunes it down one step into a flat. Yes, it does.
Starting point is 00:23:27 And plays the whole thing in a major tonality. So we have completely flipped this thing on its head from this sort of dark Psycho Killer. to a more introspective love song. Brilliant choice. They've also slowed down the track a little bit. It's a few BPM slower. But I think the thing that stands out most is the difference in harmony.
Starting point is 00:23:58 Right. The thing that really distinguishes Psycho Killer is its chorus. When it actually moves away from that main riff, it moves through a different harmonic progression. It goes from an F to a G, back to that A minor. And during that section, the bass actually picks up a different rhythm.
Starting point is 00:24:19 It has a very different feel. And I think that if you were to be at a party and a remix of Psycho Killer were to go on, everybody would start singing, not at the verse when they have that, just the bass, but later on in the chorus. Selena Gomez's track, Bad Liar, completely gets rid of that harmonic progression of the F to the G to the A minor, that psycho killer cascassee part oh yeah yeah totally instead she turns this song into a blues
Starting point is 00:24:47 in fact totally appropriate we were talking earlier about how the song opens up with I was walking down the street the other day which is a sort of typical blues line I was walking down the street the other day starting on the home key the one chord and then moves up to the four chord and it kind of just goes back and forth
Starting point is 00:25:08 so it's a shortened blues but that is a very standard blues progression. And she's done the exact same thing, actually, in her song, Same Old Love, which we discussed in episode 25. You can hear the similarity of moving from the home key up to the four chord back down.
Starting point is 00:25:35 And I think, even though it doesn't go through the whole 12-bar blues progression, we can say that it has a blues feel, I think, by the tonality of the bass and the sort of just the overall structure. Do you agree? I agree. Okay. So we've moved from what is a sort of a rock song with a really tonally unique chorus to actually a much more simplified and older progression, just a very simple blues. That's how it stands out in the harmony. But I want to move and talk about the melody because it does everything that Psycho Killer does, but yet again, basically in the inverse. It stands out by doing everything opposite. Right. Talking head song starts out with, I can't seem to face up to the facts. That's what David
Starting point is 00:26:24 Byrne is singing. And he is singing one note over and over and over. That note is the home note. It's an A. Indeed. Sina Gomez starts out somewhat similarly. She is more or less focusing her entire melody on one note. She says, I was walking down the street the other day. And she, she, She plays some other notes around it, but primarily it's kind of hitting this one note over and over and over again. It's not the home note. It's the third of the chord. It's a few notes higher than what David Burns sings. You might say, well, this is completely, this doesn't matter.
Starting point is 00:27:27 This is just random chance. I don't think it is. because in the chorus, what happens, David Byrne walks up to that third note and focuses his melody around the third. And what does Selena Gomez do? She actually also goes up, but she goes all the way up to the root chord, focusing on that A. And so she basically, where he has started on the home note in the verse, she uses the home note in the chorus. The core of these melody is very simple. It's really kind of one note over and over and over again,
Starting point is 00:28:27 but they flip which note they're using in the different structures of the song. That's pretty deep. So they're really kind of melodically turning the song sort of inside out. Yeah, exactly. Harmonically moving it from minor to major. Yep.
Starting point is 00:28:43 I mean, I don't, this would, I'm fine this to be a very compelling analysis so far. I think the key for me would be like, whether we knew, how well Gomez, Michaels, Tranter, and company knew this talking head song.
Starting point is 00:29:01 Like, if they're fans of the talking heads, if we can trust that they would know this song backwards and forwards. Well, I don't have any sort of special insider knowledge, but I think by the way that they are composing this piece, we'll see with further references that these are actually,
Starting point is 00:29:18 I believe, either intentional or like deep subcontinent. choices. Do you have any insider knowledge? I feel I think I read somewhere in researching this that they they were big talking heads buffs and that was part of the reason they came up with this idea of using the psycho killer baseline. Oh, okay. Great. You read somewhere. That's a really well fact check, Nate. Here we go. I can quote, oh, I can have a quote here. Okay, ready? Okay. Quote. Selena and Julia are talking heads obsessed, end quote. What's your source?
Starting point is 00:29:59 That's Justin Tranter in the pages of variety. Okay, great. Okay, they're great. They're fans. Well, that makes a ton of sense because on top of doing things in the inverse, they even, they make intentional references, I think, to each other. And we can hear this in the way in which their vocals soar up. They make it sort of an interesting, similar choice.
Starting point is 00:30:21 however they do it again in different places in Psycho Killer at the end of his chorus he does this oh ay ay ay ay ay ay ay ay ay ay ay ay ay ay ay right uh yeah wow way to commit absolutely
Starting point is 00:30:38 maybe slightly more beautifully in a higher key selina in her song actually does something similar and she however does it in her pre-chorus she doesn't do it at the end of the chorus She does it earlier, and she does this rising motion when she sings, oh, you're taking up a fraction of my mind. I'm not going to try to sing that one, because I'm going to really butcher it.
Starting point is 00:31:15 Yeah. Okay. So you're saying that's kind of the melodic peak of the Gomez song is in the pre-chorus, whereas in the talking head song, it's in the chorus. Right. And again, these songs are both building off of what is basically. fundamentally a one-note melody in the verse. And so there has to be at some moment, some rising tension, and they both use this sort of shooting up the scale. They just do it in different places. And so for me, I feel as though if I were a deep talking heads fan, I listened to this song a lot,
Starting point is 00:31:50 and I was thinking, how could I both reference it and adapt it? I would want to have that, ooh, I, I, yeah, yeah, I kind of feel, but I wouldn't want to put it in the same place because it would be too on the nose. So I think that's why they probably did something like this in building the melody up into the pre-chorus. So we've established that they differentiate themselves by putting the song on a different key, different BPM, different harmonies, different melodies. I think the most important way that Bad Liar is entirely its own track is in its rhythmic variation. Okay, take me. I want to hear what you have to say, please. Okay, so the Talking Heads version is a, downbeat rock song.
Starting point is 00:32:31 The bass establishes it. Oh, yeah. Later on, the kick drum comes in, and it's all just downbeat. Then the guitar follows, just chunking on, right, on those down beats, right? Right, this makes sense. Talking has its roots in punk music in its early incarnations, right? And so they are just playing a chugging along downbeat track. Totally.
Starting point is 00:33:02 Boom, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb. Yep, I hear that. It's a headbanger. Totally, yeah. Bad liar is a hip swire, because it is all about syncopation. Though the song uses that bass to establish a dot, da, da, downbeat, immediately the song opens up with syncopation, notes that are not on the downbeats. And we can hear this in the clap.
Starting point is 00:33:34 Yeah. Oh, wow, which comes in at the very first. line we have that totally offbeat clap interesting we also hear it the very beginning in her vocals when she says i was walking down the street the other day the words down street and other which are emphasized are all on offbeats i was walking down the street the other day trying to distract myself but then i see your face yes i'm sorry i had to just do that mentally in my head and confirm that what you say is true and that's absolutely right. If the pulse is here,
Starting point is 00:34:12 bum, bum, bum, bum, walking down the street the other day. Yeah, none of those line up. That's really interesting. A simpler way of writing, it could have been, I was walking down the street the other day. But instead, I was walking down the street the other day. Right, yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:34:31 It's a very cool way of singing. And what this is effectively doing is every rhythmic element in the story, song is basically filling a different placement in in the meter, right? So if you look at, if you were to look at where every hit is landing, they are, they are filling different spaces. And it just makes you want to move. Yeah. You know what it makes me want to do, honestly? What's that? It's walk down the street. Yeah. Swann your hips. This is like, this is Ondante, man. This is walking music. This is like, don't, don't, dumb. It's not, I wouldn't say
Starting point is 00:35:08 Psycho Killer is, but, um, Psycho Killer makes you want to like stomp down the street. This makes you want to sway down this street. Yeah, it's like you, yeah, you can't, or I, I, I, I, I, say, or I would maybe do a little kind of like bounce move or something, but yeah, totally. A saunter, if you will. Yeah. Well, and in the first half, you were talking about how this song just builds by adding new elements. As those new elements come in, they enter with increasing syncopation. Uh, so about a minute into the song when we get to the chorus, we get a kick drum. And that kick drum, again, is filling a bunch of different spaces that nothing else is really filling, emphasizing a new
Starting point is 00:35:54 rhythm, which is not that downbeat held by the bass. So basically, all of our expectations that were set up by the Talking Heads sample, which is a four on the floor, rock your head all in the downbeat. All of those expectations set up from the very start are thrown out the window as the song progresses and we get more rhythmic variation and all of these
Starting point is 00:36:25 strange elements that want us to saunter, not to head bang. I think it's just really brilliant variation on a song and makes bad liar its own thing very separate from the original material. Right. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:36:41 I love that. It's it's sort of grown from the same seed as psycho killer in the sense that they both emerge from this baseline but from there from that seed they go in such different directions while bad liar continues to make these elaborate references to its original source material that's really cool and i think we can actually identify the seed of an idea of bringing more sycopation into the song by looking back at talking heads in Psycho Killer, the famous moment in which
Starting point is 00:37:16 David Burns sings Fuffa Fafafha, fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa What musical idea is happening there? We have vocalese as in not singing actual lyrics but just Yes. You know sounds.
Starting point is 00:37:37 Dund dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun Uh, um, it's kind of a bluesy line in itself. Do do do do do do do do do. And yet I sense you're looking for something else. Tell me, tell me what you, what you isolate there. Do you hear rhythmic displacement? Yes, I do because it goes, fa, fa, fa, fa, fa, fa, fa, wait.
Starting point is 00:38:01 The emphasis of the fa's changes. Oh, right. So, yes. So it starts on, the first one is on the second beat of the measure. and then it's on the the first beat of the second measure. Exactly. So he emphasizes fa f f f f f fah
Starting point is 00:38:16 in the first time it lands on the second beat the second time it lands on the first beat. You call that rhythmic displacement, right? Mm-hmm. Well, let's go to the chorus of Bad Liar. What do you hear here here? Oh, I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying. I'm trying, I'm trying. I'm trying.
Starting point is 00:38:39 I hear rhythmic displacement. Oh, look at that. Yes. Look at that. Trying. So I'm trying is how many syllables? That would be three syllables. That's three syllables.
Starting point is 00:38:52 But she's singing in groups of four, right? Right. Yes. Oh, interesting. And so what ends up happening is where she emphasizes try changes every time she sings it because she's singing basically eighth notes here, but she's singing groups of three over eight. And so what ends up happening mathematically is that when she sings try, it changes where it lands on each beat. The first time, it's on the downbeat.
Starting point is 00:39:20 The second time, it's on the offbeat of two. And on the third time, it's on the four. So try keeps moving. That's super cool. Wow. Yeah. And that kind of goes back to what we were talking about in the first half of a sort of like a, certain disorder or something in the music or like things not lining up correctly. Totally. And that
Starting point is 00:39:52 mirroring her sort of mental state of like nervous excitement. Exactly. If she's really trying to not pay attention to this crush, she's not doing a very good job of it because every time that she tries, her trying falls on these different beats and it feels like she's fumbling. Dig it. I dig it deeply, man. That's good stuff. Isn't that really cool songwriting to both borrow the idea of rhythmic displacement from the chorus, the fa-fah-faz of Psycho-Killer, to bring it into the chorus of Bad Liar. And yet, the reference perfectly matches the mental state, the whole idea of the song of Bad Liar. You know, at this point, I want to offer another little bit of my research for this song, because I wonder if you're curious what David Byrne himself thought of Bad Liar.
Starting point is 00:40:42 Oh, I so badly want to know. Well, I have the tweet right in front of it. me get ready for this incredible comment from david burn quote i really like the song dot dot dot and her performance too end quote well he's not ever known to be a very enthusiastic person i mean i think that's about all you can ask for if you that's the i think that's the equivalent of getting like an oscar that's like David Byrne is much admired by, I think, I believe the two of us. I think his book, How Music Works is like switched on pop times a thousand, really brilliant sort of philosopher about music. So I think that's a definitely really kind review. Indeed. So wow, Charlie, there's probably more to say about bad liar, but we've already extracted a staggering
Starting point is 00:41:41 amount out of this little pop song. Still, if there's more, there's more. more you hear in Selena Gomez's later. Please tweet us, write us. Let us know what you think about her latest. And I think she has new music coming soon. So I'll have to be on the lookout for that as well. Yeah, just what a cool tune. I'm too, I'm curious about all the way our listeners hear it being both its own thing and a really creative interpretation of the reference. I'd love to hear what people have to think. So where can they find us again? That would be at Switched on Pop for the Twitter. Switched on Pop for the Facebook. You can email us at contact at switchdownpop.com. And that's about it. Cool. You know, I also wonder now, like, I want to write a song using this
Starting point is 00:42:29 baseline, too, and do something completely different with it. Ooh, okay, I'll challenge you to that. I want to hear it. All right. All right. We'll see if I could squeeze that in the next couple Maybe after a little vacation as we were, I guess we jumped the gun last time around. We thought we were taking this week off. We were wrong. Here we are. We made a show. And we are going to take a little bit of a break.
Starting point is 00:42:52 And we're going to be back in about a month. That's right. Until then, hit us up at all of the above. And before we go, many thanks to our stalwart editor, Bill Lance, our killer designer. Luke Harris. All of our podcast friends at the Panoply Network in which we are a part.
Starting point is 00:43:14 And thanks for listening. For listening.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.