Switched on Pop - Shawn Mendes and the Rhythm of Rhyme

Episode Date: July 16, 2019

Shawn Mendes’ hit song “If I Can’t Have You” is so ridiculously catchy that Charlie had it stuck in his head after the first chorus. How is that possible?! Declamation, or the way that text is set to music, is a big part of the song’s appeal—every word that Mendes sings is perfectly in rhythm. In this episode we use Mendes’ latest track to explore creative declamation throughout history. How do artists from Whitney Houston to Queen to Taylor Swift keep finding new ways to sing the word “somebody”? Why did the composer Georg Friedrich Handel get in trouble for a bit of awkward text setting in one of the most famous pieces of Baroque music? And, does Beyoncé even know how to pronounce “sandcastles”? Finally, Mendes’ hit leads us to ask: is “incorrect” declamation is something to celebrate, or criticize? 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 musicologist Nate Sloan. And I'm a songwriter Charlie Harding. Charlie, today we delve deep into a song that is making its way up the billboard charts by a young artist named Sean Mendez. It's called If I Can't Have You. And I'm interested in this song, not only because it has one of the funkiest catchiest hooks I've been exposed to.

in a long time. Yeah. But because it masters one of the dark musical arts that we have yet to really discuss on this show. What's that? And that is declamation. Ah, yes. I would say what's that, but I actually think I know what it is.

Well then, Charlie, I'll put you on the spot. And please, like spelling bee style, give me a definition for declamation. Declamation. It is the way in which music and music. words are set to each other. Great, beautiful. Wow. Excellent. Yay, I pass. I'm actually very impressed. Okay. So even though declamation might sound like a very technical, high concept and kind of, you know, irrelevant maybe aspect of music, I think by the end of this episode, you'll see that is actually a core part of how we appreciate a song. First, let's listen to the chorus of this

track if I can't have you. All right. Now before we even get to the way this song uses declamation, the way it sets words to music, let's just talk about some of the other effects that make this such an undeniable earworm. One of them is what we just listen to. One of them is what we just listening. to the chorus, which is the very first thing we hear in this song. Ah, chorus at the top. I think he performed it on Saturday Night Live. And upon the first time I heard this chorus, which is the intro, I was like, oh, that is a jam. And it's been in my ear ever since. It belongs to a rare class of pop song where you only need to be exposed

to the chorus one time and it will get stuck in your head. It is intense virality. It spreads quickly. I'm going to stop using all these disease metaphors now because I actually think it's a great song. Okay, so why is this song so effective? This chorus that we start out with is really big and brash and confident. So the first thing I think is like, okay, it grabs us, but then immediately when the verse starts,

the whole energy level drops way down. Let's have a listen. Everything means nothing if I can have you. I'm in Toronto and I got you. this view but I might as well be in a hotel room yeah it doesn't matter because I'm so kind to spending all my nights reading text from you this is classic Sean Mendez yeah and there's only one way to go from here and that's up the energy just needs to increase also shouts out to Toronto a city that doesn't get nearly enough love in the pop

canon in my opinion. Okay, now the pre-chorus starts to raise the energy level, and Charlie, I want you to pay particular attention to what happens at the very end of this section. Sure. Oh, this is cool. We get almost a hint of the chorus to come. He says the title of the song. Yes, okay, but it's not the exact same melody that we heard in the chorus.

It's very reminiscent. Let's play them back to back. First the pre-chorus and then the chorus. Okay. Okay, what stands out as a big difference here? Two things. One, different register of voice. In the chorus, he's much higher up.

He has an angelic voice. Second is that it's pretty clear that Sean Mendes wants us to pay attention to these words. They're extremely important. I think this is a very deliberate decision made by the songwriter, Sean Mendez, Teddy Geiger, Scott Harris, and Nate Mercero. Because this song is a great example of using, you know, an economy of material to generate a really effective pop song. So we're hearing this melodic line in a low register at the end of the pre-chorus. And then we're hearing it a higher register at the end of the chorus, which we already got at the very beginning of the song because it started with the chorus.

So we're really getting this kind of drilled into our brains. And it is the central message of the song. Everything means nothing if I can't have you. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely in my head. As I said, this is a song that it doesn't go away. Now, another important part of this little tag here is the way he's pronouncing, the way he's declaiming the words here. And we're going to get to that.

But there's one other place that we hear them, one other place in the song that hammers home this central message. And that's the bridge. I'm trying to move on, forget you, but I hold on. Smart. Everything means nothing. Everything means nothing. If I can't have you,

now I can. Smart. Oh, it just keeps coming back in all these variations. Yes, everything means nothing. Everything means nothing. And then at the end, that tagline, again, that now iconic kind of tag, which takes us into the final chorus.

Before we get to that final chorus, though. Let's hit pause for a second. Okay. So we've talked about how this song is really effective because it has this really confident brash chorus and then it drops down energy in the verse and it reuses

melodic material over and over to make sure that it really gets stuck in your head at the same time you kind of feel the energy cresting upward and then you get that payoff of the familiar melody. M-Mu-Mu-Bravizumo. This is great stuff. And yet

I think there's one other thing here that is part of why it's so successful. And that brings us back to declamation. It's been declared. Okay, let's focus in on the chorus, and we'll listen to the penultimate chorus this time. And as we do, let's just think about how they are setting words to music. Oh my gosh, that is such a great down chorus. It's really cool, right? I feel like his voice is actually even more ecstatic at this moment.

Like you can hear it's almost like he's running while singing this and all of his breath is being spent on every single word. I love that. I love that. And let's talk about those words. Like not just the content of them or the melody of them, but actually the rhythm of them, how they're laid out. I can't write one song that's not about you. That's a really beautiful line. And the way it's set, it highlights every single lyric.

Like, every single word gets its own little place in the narrative. Yeah. Everything is landing basically on the downbeat, except for that one little syncopated moment. Yeah. So that's one part of declamation. But the other part that I really want to dive deep into right now is, accent patterns.

I don't know what that is. Yeah, it's not something we necessarily consciously think about as we're listening to music like, oh, wow, Sean, your accent pattern on that chorus was just lovely. But it's a huge part of the way we understand music, especially in terms of how music relates to speech. How a musical text reflects

the way that you would say it just in conversation. I'm not sure I follow. I know. This is complicated stuff and I appreciate that you're being honest about your inability to keep up. Because, okay, so here's an example. Like, what if I didn't pronounce that line the way that I would just speak it to you? Like, I can't write one song that's not about you. I changed the accent pattern on one word. Did you notice that? At the very end, it's not about you. Right. So the word about. has, or a boot, as our friend Sean might pronounce it, has a very clear accent pattern.

It goes, unstressed, stressed, about. Right. So the accent, the stress is on the second syllable of that word. Right. And if you do it backwards, it almost sounds like Siri getting things wrong when it's read back to you. Yeah. It's like a little robotic and just like there's something slightly inhuman about the way

when you said it wrong. Yeah. And this goes for any regular word that you might use in a sentence suddenly becomes very strange when mispronounced. You know, it's just like, it's very, it makes, it's very uncomfortable, I think, if someone started speaking to you that way. Deeply. What has someone done with Nate? Where is he what has happened? And yet, the same rules do not necessarily apply in music.

You can change the accent patterns of very familiar words. And all of a sudden when you sing them, we don't have that same reaction. We don't go like, oh, what's wrong with Nate? You know, music can change the declamation of words in ways that are like transformative. And in order to illustrate this, let's step away from Sean Mendez and the genius of, if I can't have you for a moment. Okay. And let's move to another song that's currently atop the charts.

And that's Taylor Swift's. You need to calm down. Charlie, let's just listen to the very first couplet of this song. Somebody. Somebody. No, no, it's not. Okay, so that's great. Patron.

You have ice. You've noticed the right word, somebody. Somebody. What's the accent pattern in the way we say the word somebody in normal conversation? So stress is on some. Stress is on some. Somebody. Yes.

Exactly. What about when Taylor Swift sings it? Somebody. No. Incorrect. I do not agree. Is it somebody? Yes. You want to listen one more time? Yeah. Wow, that's interesting. It almost has like a Caribbean kind of accent on it. You are somebody. Glad you said that because that's a whole other aspect to this discussion that we won't really be able to get into in our time we have.

but the way that different accents have introduced creative mispronunciation of English words into our pop lexicon is like a whole fascinating other discussion that I would love to have someday. Yeah, I feel like in this case, Taylor is just, she's just stressing it in a bizarre way, like not trying to imitate another culture, I don't think. You know, she's not one to not do that. I think what's going on is that she's trying to get the rhyme with the next phrase, which is, but you're taking shots at me. Oh, somebody, me. Yeah. Right. So she's stressing the rhyme.

Like, pay attention. Something's going to rhyme with somebody. Somebody. Fascinating. Let's just stick with this word somebody for a second. Because there's three different ways to accent this word, right? There are three syllables. You can put it on the first syllable, the second, or the third.

We've heard Taylor do it on the third. Yeah. Let's go to another creative mispronunciation. of somebody. This is Gochier's somebody I used to know. Okay. What do you think? Which one? First, second or third? Second, somebody. He gives you like three extra chances too, because he'll say it again. Second syllable, somebody. Yeah. Okay, so we've got Taylor Swift, somebody, goche, somebody, and let's see if we can't find someone pronouncing it in the quote-unquote correct way. I found one, but I really had to search

Whitney Houston, I want to dance with somebody. Now, the chorus of that song also does the second syllable with somebody who loves me. So that's also on the second syllable. But if we go to the bridge of that song, we get the accent on the first

syllable. All right. Somebody. Somebody. I mean, it's almost like she's stressing the first and second. Yeah, I hear what you're saying. I mean, which means maybe you could also do somebody. Somebody.

You could do accents in any permutation on any one of the syllables and multiple accents. Okay, I'm glad you said that because I do have another iconic song featuring the word somebody. Queens, somebody to love. I don't even know how to say somebody anymore. Okay, so check this out. They start with this breakdown and then they build it up. And each time here, it's on the second syllable. somebody somebody somebody huh now something's going to happen they're going to switch the pronunciation

somebody somebody first syllable accent somebody somebody somebody somebody oh what's it going to be what is it charlie i'm going to declare that a triple accent at the end a triple the rare triple declamation on the word somebody every syllable was equally important at the end somebody somebody body to love. Okay, so we've discussed the ways that musicians can creatively mispronounce a single word, somebody, changing the declamation and ringing all kinds of different musical meaning out of it. I want to take a quick break, and when we come back, we're going to do three things to take home this declamation discussion.

First, we're going to talk about the history of declamation, because this idea of mispronouncing a word, that's only very recent. for a long time it was completely verboten. Then I want to think about like, is this good or bad? Like as in should musicians be able to take this kind of license with natural speech? Finally, I want to return to Sean Mendes and think about how he uses declamation to make if I can't have you a hit, all that and more. When we return, Charlie, I'll see you soon.

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Honest to God, like fucking skinny. I want to be jacked. Without context, tone and sculpt are rooted in diet culture. We're inheriting a lot of nonsense that makes specifically women feel like they have to shrink in order to expand. And I'm just saying, no, let's just like lift heavy shit and like take up space. That's the expansion. I'm Robin Arson and this week on Project Swagger, I break down the strategies that helped me build confidence and feel at home in my body, especially after two babies. Listen now at Project Swagger, wherever you get your podcasts. Yes, that's right. It's time. for classical masters. We've heard that musicians can creatively mispronounce words in all sorts of ways,

but for a long time, this was not done. Like, this was one of the first things you learned as a musician for centuries, was how to properly set music to text so you don't have these kind of embarrassing. I mean, that's how it would have been seen, like, oh, man, you know, Count Casualdo. During Counterpoint class the other day, he made the word somebody, sound like somebody it was every all laughed it was so embarrassing you know i mean i might be embarrassed if we were having a conversation about declamation i kept calling it declamation that would be a little strange yeah exactly so that's clearly not the case anymore as we've heard through taylor swift when he

used in goche so like what changed in order to answer that i think we need to go back to one of the most famous oratorioes of all time and that's hondel's messiah Hallelujah. Thank you. Thank you. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. But it's not the famous hallelujah chorus that I'm interested in. It's another air from this multi-part work called the trumpet shall sound. Oh, and it shall? In this piece, we get a rare instance of Handel using incorrect declamation on a word.

Oh, Handel. You're going to get your knuckles wrapped with a ruler. First of all, let's just listen to it because it's actually very subtle, but it's caused a lot of consternation within broke musical circles over the year. And the word we're going to be especially interested in is a tuffy. It's a big, fat, five-syllable word, and it's incorruptible. Ooh, that's a funky word to put in a holiday piece. A lot of it is liturgical text, Charlie, so he doesn't necessarily have a lot of options here. He has to follow the sacred text, you know. I mean, those texts are all translated.

He could have just updated it. Well, not only are they translated, Charlie, but he is of German birth, and he's working in London and trying to write this oratorio in English. So he's got like, he is, yeah, his work is cut out for him. Early, let's listen to how he's corrupted. Okay. Are you not shocked, Charlie? Speechless.

I know. He's spalveragasting. He sets it in core. Tibble. Tibble. I think you feed that to your animals. I know. It's just, I mean, it pains me to listen to.

Well, it's particularly bad to mess up incorruptible. Like if you're speaking about the divine and you say divine is incorruptible, you're like, oh, shoot, you really disrespect the divine. That's a very astute observation. And in fact, for one scholar of this brook choral music, that is exactly the point. Oh, is Handel like an atheist and trying to insert his little rebellious art in the Messiah? I'm pretty sure Handel's a good man of faith, but the idea is that even though the pronunciation can be corrupted, the dead remain incorruptible. Yes, yes, yes, I see. But he's saying the word twice in the first time that he didn't even finish it.

Was that right? Or did I hear it not correct? Maybe hard to hear, but he does finish it. But he has a melisma stretching out one syllable into multiple pitches. which kind of obscures it. Oh, interesting. Yeah. But, sorry, we're not done.

People have a lot of opinions about this. The great conductor, Nicholas Harnencourt, said that it's not a mispronunciation. It reflects how the English pronounced that word at the time, which was in the French manner, which was very, you know, stylish, I guess, in the early 1700s. Incorruptible. Yeah, right, right. Whatever Handel's intentions, people have found this to be really awkward. And so if you listen to most recordings, I would say like 90% of recordings and performances,

they actually change that. They actually correct that little part of the Messiah in order to get the declamation to be more aligned with the way we would pronounce the word in natural speech. And now you don't even notice. It's perfect. Incorruptible. For sure. And again, it's just such a small difference of one accent, incorruptible or incorruptible. and yet this has become like a huge issue for people.

You know, I think people should let up because as we're going on this discussion, the grammar police of deciding how people should say certain words seems to be just another way of enforcing forms of cultural normativity. I mean, speech in particular and dialects are one of the clearest ways that people create boundaries between different people. And so if people want to say incorruptible, I'm down. That's cool. Why not?

I love that, Charlie. And that becomes a perfect segue for us to time travel through centuries to a modern, iconic mispronunciation of a word. What are we hearing here? We're hearing what I think is one of the worst songs ever. written by Beyonce. What? Wow.

Are you serious? I mean, I think the beehive is going to come for me, but yeah. I'm going to come for you. What are you even talking about right now? This is the only bad song on Lemonade. And it's, for me, I was the one that actually told you about this one. I lost it when I first heard the way that she says, send castles. And it actually, like, created this, like, mental rub in my.

brain. Like the word is wrong and set to the music in the wrong way. And I couldn't, I could never get over it. But Charles, I throw your own words back at you that we don't, we can't be the grammar police. We have to accept unconventional declamation. I think this is the modern incorruptible, sand castles. Like, like, if we, if you can learn to accept and embrace sand castle, then, then you are, are opening your ears to like all kinds of. musical invention. It never makes me happy to say it, but I think you're right. And I'm sure there are those out there who are similarly just like grimacing and clutching their earlobes as we speak because, you know, I don't know, musical theater is a good example. That's a genre where you really

need correct declamation. Otherwise, people are going to be like what, like literally what is happening right now. Like I can't understand something. But I don't know. The world of popular music allows for that. And let's bring it all back to Sean Mendez and if I can't have you, right? He is using perfect declamation in this chorus. Every word is set firmly on the beat, literally like every pulse of the song, I can't write one song that's not about you. It's perfectly metric. Every word is pronounced the way you would expect it to in natural speech. It's like, I think it's really effective. Why? Because it reflects his determination. Yeah, we can hear that. I mean, even the melody is a single note melody. Everything's on the downbeat. Everything is declarative.

Yes. Meanwhile, what's happening around him. Let's listen to that chorus one more time. So when I said earlier on, this is a classic Sean Mendez song. One of the main things that I think he has perfected is the four-to-the-floor EDM kick drum in an acoustic fulky kind of setting that contrasts the idea that you're going to get

big powerful energy with something which is still kind of like restrained and reserved and especially in the verse less so than in the chorus you're like that kick drum is moving it's going to do something and here I think sort of in the background there are all

of these syncopated elements that are filling in the space between what he's saying and that creates the energy and build that we finally get in the course. Yes, yes, snaps, Charlie, preach, amen. Hallelujah. This is what is so cool about the song is that he, in this crazy, syncopated, multi-instrumental world, he, like, has this almost monomaniacal sort of focus and clarity on what he wants and that's you. That's you, Charlie. He wants you. Yeah. Oh, thank you. And then all of a sudden, that moment we keep talking about everything means nothing if I can't have you. At that moment, everything drops away and you can really like feel that palpably, like his sense of clarity

and determination and conviction. So declamation is not just like an arbitrary feature, I think, of how we understand music. It's like a core part of the way we react to the social. So, song and its message. With a deeper appreciation of declamation, especially in Sean Mendez, I can now start to see the way in which the simplicity of that chorus matches the emotional state that he's in. I mean, as I was saying earlier, like, it sounds almost like he's running out of breath. He's sitting every single word and all of the air is coming out such that by the end of

the chorus, when he, when he says, you know, he says, you. Just that, you know, to everything be meaningless if he doesn't have that person, he's kind of like trailing off as if he's running out of breath. He's stated everything exactly as he means it and he has to catch a breath. Yeah, that's great. That's great. It feels utterly natural in the way that he would speak, accepting that there are many ways that he could say this. But in this case, it sounds like Sean Mendez said it. There's one exception to the perfect declamation in this song.

It's a foil. And that is in the second line, can't drink without thinkin about you. Thinking. Okay. Yeah. Thinking should have the stress on the first syllable, thinking. But instead, for him, it's think in. What if we're having like a think in where we're all getting together at a think tank and we're going to have a drink?

We will drink at the think in. That's very generous. But I do, I mean, once again, we're in. in the world of Sam Castle again. Like, does this take us out of the song or not? Does it speak to the messenger song? I don't know. I don't really have, surprisingly, I don't have a thought on that.

It seems like there are times where people change declamation to match a rhyme, as in the case of Taylor and Sean Mendez. You're right. There's definitely an instance. Drink and think need to rhyme. So he has to put the stress on in. Yeah. In the Beyonce, it seems like she's probably shifting. the declamation there so that the stress of the beat of the music hits in the right place in the word.

So she had to do sand castles just so that the whole thing matches where the music is going. It's almost like the music was set and the words had to match it. So like in either case, we're trying to fit something in a situation that it doesn't quite normally fit. But it also sounds like there's, I mean, if you look at the Handel and I'm sure countless other pop examples, it can just be a form of creative expression or speaking in the way that you speak. Yeah. You know what? Maybe one way to make a verdict here is to put a call out to our listeners to recompose

sandcastles with the quote unquote correct declamation. And then we can compare the two and see and see what we think. I'm willing to be won over. Until then, I encourage everyone out there to write to us whenever you find an example of particularly just creative declamation, pronunciation of a word that you never could have imagined, and that I would imagine somehow works in music. Let's create the compendium of great wild declamation in the world of pop.

It will be a playlist we'll call the particular declamation playlist. Sounds wonderful. This has been fun. Switch on Pop is produced by me, Nate Sloan, and me, Charlie Harding. We're produced by Bridget Armstrong, Megan Lubin, and executive produced by Liz Nelson and Nishak Kerwah. Brandon McFarland is our editor and mixer,

and Sarah Terry is our community manager. You can find more episodes at switchonpop.com on Iheart Radio, radio public, the Apple podcast app, Spotify, basically wherever podcasts are found will be there. Don't forget to hit us up on social media at Switchdon Pop on Twitter and on Instagram. We would like to hear all of your declamation playlist ideas. Playlist ideas. There's so many variations.

We're going to be back again another week next Tuesday. And until then, thanks for listening.