Switched on Pop - SZA's Endless Melody

Episode Date: January 18, 2023

Why does SZA's latest album SOS hit different? It's the way her melodies don't repeat where you expect them to, defying all the rules of pop songwriting. We break down how her endless melodies echo the intimate themes of her most recent release, and how they connect to genres ranging from gospel to Wagnerian opera. Songs Discussed SZA - Kill Bill, SOS, Shirt, Notice Me, Seek & Destroy, Gone Girl, Low, Smoking on My Ex Pack, Ghost in the Machine (ft Phoebe Bridgers), F2F Sam Smith & Kim Petras - Unholy Taylor Swift - Anti-Hero Jazmine Sullivan - Girl Like Me (ft H.E.R.) Summer Walker - No Love (ft. SZA) Jessye Norman - Isoldes Liebestod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And I'm songwriter, Charlie Harding. When we hit play on the number three song on the charts right now, number three on the charts, number one in our hearts, Charlie. Yes, yes. We hear something that doesn't obey many of the rules that a top 10 hit is supposed to follow. What surprises me about the beginning of this song is the way that it uses melody. Yeah, it's very meandering. It wanders. It winds and it wins. It does not repeat, which is maybe the number one thing we would expect from a hit song, I think, is this sense of

repetition. You provide a phrase of melody, you repeat it, you get the listener familiar. Like, that's the whole game. This song doesn't do that. I don't know where it's going to go. We're listening to Kill Bill by Siza, and this is the big single off her recent album, S-O-S. Much Requested episode. People have been waiting years for this release, and listeners and critics seem to agree that it's been worth the weight. This album is thick with juicy samples and stretched out beats, incredible rhythm. McDexterity, but Charlie, what I want to talk about today is Sizz's unique approach to melody, the thing to me that makes her stand apart from pretty much anyone else out there right now.

I'm glad you brought this to me because I have to be honest about something. This is a safe space, Charlie. Siza hasn't always connected with me, and I think it's over exactly this issue. Sometimes I don't know where I am. I'm a little lost in listening to some of her songs, because I'm not. I'm looking for that hook that repeats that I can sing again and again because I'm a simpleton. I just need the hook. You've come to the right place, Charles, because we will help you get your grounding in this episode.

We're going to unlock the secrets behind Siza's endless melody. These melodies that don't repeat, don't go where you expect them to. It sound almost like stream of consciousness sometimes. And in order to explain Sizz's endless melody, we have to dig into the themes and messages of the album. Cizza has described SOS as an album featuring, quote, bizarre acts of self-embarrassment. And that gives you an idea of the kind of radical honesty and openness

that we're going to find on SOS, something that I think is established at the very beginning of the record, The first track, the title track, SOS, begins with the sound of sonar. You're not fooling me. That sounds like Morse code. Whoa, wait, Charlie. That sounds like a call for help. An SOS.

Not sonar, Morse code. I used to be a wilderness guide. No, I know these things. Yeah, exactly. I think I actually remember this. SOS is long, long, long, short, short, short, long, long, long, which is what we hear at the start of this. You almost got it.

Three short, three long, three short, but basically the same thing. O-S-O-S-O-S-O-M-God. You're making it seem pretty obvious that this is the case, Charlie, but this is kind of blowing my mind. I think it's something I'm tuned into because as a mega-Beatles fan, I know that John Lennon's initials in Strawberry Fields Forever in Morse Code. So whenever I hear those little sort of non-rhythmic beeps, I'm looking for it. That little dat-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. That's John Lennon signing his initials.

That's cool. I know exactly the part of that song you're talking about. I never connected to Morse code, just like I didn't connect the opening of Siza, even though I probably should have gotten it the more we're talking about it. It's all good. Sodar, Morse code. Someone's asking for help. And the Morse code intro is immediately followed by what sounds to me like something being launched into the water,

maybe like a big splash. All right, musical detective. What was that FX? That was maybe he said jumping off the diving board from which she's sitting on the front of the SOS album cover. And then it sounds like there's like a cannonball and then a beat drops.

Interesting. A depth charge, perhaps? A depth charge. There you go, yeah. I had the same reading. Charles, the cover is her on a diving board, maybe photoshopped onto the ocean. And you do get the sense of

that this album starts with her, sending out a distress signal and then diving in. Diving into what exactly? I think her subconsciousness, her past, her history, her fears, her joys,

her anxieties. Yeah. Check out the very end of this opening track, SOS. We get two more sounds. Okay. That's terrifying.

We have the cocking of a gun. Mm-hmm. followed by a meditation bell or gong. Yes, yeah, exactly. A Tibetan singing bowl. And I feel pretty confident identifying that final sound as such because I know Siza is into Tibetan singing bowls because she likes to play them and sing on Instagram live,

which is a real treat to behold. There's even one video where she duets with Lizzo on the flute while playing her Tibetan singing bowl. Okay, so we've got the Tibetan singing bowls. We've got the gun cocking. We've got the jumping in the water. We've got the SOS Morse code. What does this all have to do with how she sings melodies? What's going on?

If this album represents a dive into her psyche, an embrace of both the pain represented by the gunshot and the pleasure, represented by the Tibetan singing bowl, then Siza's endless melody is the path that will take us through this psychological journey. It's like she sings on the track shirt. Feeling lost, but I like it. Okay, I'm getting it more.

These sounds are ones of danger, some of healing, there's anxiety in the air. There are melodies that are running away from something or chasing towards something. And so she's singing melodies that are running away from those sounds or maybe chasing something, trying to go somewhere.

When we listen to a song like, Notice Me, we hear one of those melodies, Charlie, one of these melodies that meanders, that doesn't travel where you expect it to. And I think as listeners, we feel a sort of, intimacy with Siza when we hear that. I'm like myself I can rock which you can decide right no either way I'm buzzing through tonight. It's very disarming I think because there's not a lot to lock onto here.

It's really like listening to a friend kind of pour their heart out to you and they're not like perfectly structuring what they're saying. They're just letting it all loose. But there's kind of like a theme to what she's talking about and she's emphasizing it using these accented melody notes where there's sort of these high notes that come in and say, this is important, this is important, this is important, but it's not happening in the same place each time. It's keeping me guessing, leaning in closer, listening more intensely. That style results in sections of these songs that are the most beautiful, catchy, hokey thing that you've ever heard in your life, and it lasts for about five seconds, and then it's never

heard again, which is, to me, perfectly represented by this pre-chorus in Notice Me, where, where she does what you're described, she kind of ascends into the higher ranges of her voice to accent certain melody notes. Stop it. She's not going to give me

that note again. I want that note like 17 more times. And that's exactly what 99% of artists would do. She gives us this indelible melody and then it's like, okay, I'm moving on to the next thing. And if you want to hear that again,

you'll have to go spin it back yourself. And it's not just in verses and pre-choruses where Siza unleashes these meandering endless melodies. In the choruses of certain songs, it can be really hard to get your bearings because she doesn't give you any clear repetition. Take a song like Seek and Destroy. So it's just the words I want to do it to you, but happening all over the place in different ways, different times.

It's very suggestive. Though in the fuller context of the song, I think it's more about, like, revenge than it is about maybe something sexual, which it sounds like you have in mind. I was thinking about revenge. What are you thinking about? I'm thinking about what you're thinking about is what I'm thinking about. Okay, okay, okay. There's another version of this song that's like, do it to you, do it to you, do it to you, do it to you, where all of these lines kind of arrive in a very steady and predictable way. But in Sizz's version, it's like, do it to you. Long pause.

I want to do it to you. And you're like, whoa, where does that go from? It acts kind of like the kick drum does in a lot of her productions, where it's like you get the downbeat and then you're waiting for the next one. And it happens on some syncopated, interesting place. The rhythm keeps you interested. And she's doing the same thing in her vocal. That fragmented approach to melody,

we also find on a track like Gone Girl. And there might even be a lyrical reference to She's Gone by Hall and Oates here. That might be another story though. This is the most repetitive that I've heard her where some of the melodies are the same. True. The lyrics are obviously the same.

She's doing a lot of one of my favorite things to do, rhythmic displacement, taking a little idea and placing it on a different rhythm each time to keep you guessing. And even when you think she's doing a repetition, it's some meaningful variation of the thing she's done before. This is a diabolically displaced chorus, as you say. It really keeps you on your toes. It's hard to lock in.

It's a little disorienting maybe to listen to, which I think is part of the point of these fragmented choruses. and these endlessly melodic verses, they put you on your back foot and they draw you deeper in to Sizz's world, the world of the gun and the world of the Tibetan singing bowl, the world of the distress signal, and the world of the diving head first into the water.

And so Siza's melodic transparency and candor makes her a different kind of hitmaker. If we listen to a lot of other hit songs on the charts, they'll use something that we've talked about on the show before, a technique that's usually attributed to Max Martin, and it's called melodic math. If you listen to Antihero by Taylor Swift, you can hear the imprint of Max Martin's melodic math in the chorus. Oh, Shirley. It's me. Hi, I'm the problem. It's me. And then the next line will have the same syllable count at T time. Everybody agrees. It's very satisfying.

listen to very effective, very well-worn playbook. I love Tea Time. Now, Sizzas songs hit different, so to speak, because they don't follow this use of melodic math. Now, I want to be clear, there are exceptions. Like, that number three hit song that we listened to at the very start of the episode, Kill Bill, it does have a very mathematically melodic chorus, which incidentally, is so much fun to listen to and so dark at the same time.

Right. It has this little melodic sequence that da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. And it does that in a bunch of variations. But even she can't bring herself to sing it exactly the same way. There's all these little melismas and extra little neighbor tones and changes just to give it some extra spice. And then as soon as the chorus ends, we're back to an endlessly melodic. second verse. You're helping me understand that she's got this balance of, if you're going to wander on a journey, you have to get somewhere eventually. And so she's sometimes going to give us some melodic math, something that we can sing back.

That's why it's so cool to see her charting so high because She's creating these pretty prototypical hooks, but then surrounding them with these meandering, wandering, melodies. I've described this as a pretty unique sound, which I stand by. But I do want to acknowledge, like, I think Siza is influenced by some important sources in her artistry here. And when we come back, I want to dig into what some of the antecedents for Siza's endless melody might be. Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it.

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And one of them is all over this album. I don't think I'm original in saying this at all. It's the influence of hip-hop flow. Yeah, surely. This is something Rihanna spoke to DJ Jazzy Jeff a few months ago about how rappers' favorite singers usually sing like rappers. Mary J. Blige, for instance.

I feel like Siza is in that category. She's like a rapper's singer. And songs like Lowe off SOS really capture the influence of hip hop flow on her vocal approach. Yeah, she collaborates later on the album with Travis Scott, and here she's even using vocal processing, which feels very akin to how he would process his vocals. He probably does it because he doesn't have maybe the vocal chops and melodic sensibility that Siza does.

She doesn't need it, but she's using it because it sounds great. In addition to that, her delivery, the syncopation, the swagger that she brings to the song, feels like almost a hybrid between singing and rapping. On other tracks on the album, there's no ambiguity. She's just straight up rapping. Check out smoking on my ex-pack. I'm bobbing like psycho. You gasping like Texaco.

Infection like micro. You test it out my go. You push it out mic pop. I'm fucking on hard drops. I got your favorite rapper block. So the influence of hip hop is all over this record. But let's peel back another layer. When we listened to the first song, SOS,

we focused on the sound effects, the Morse Code, the Tibetan Singing Bowl. But there's also a sample that provides the backing for the whole track. It's a sample from the 1970s gospel group, the Gabriel Hardiman Delegation. It's a song called Until I Found the Lord. And I think that's an interesting clue to where Siza might get some of her melodic approach because gospel is another style of music that's all about endless melody.

That's all about improvisation and ad libs and ornamentation. And if we go to that original 70s gospel track, we hear a singer who, Could, like, be a guest on a Cizzer record. Nate, this is taking me way back. Back to when I first met you, studying maybe modal counterpoint. You know, so much of music based off of religious text has to work with an economy of words because sometimes those passages are very short. People make songs that are 20 minutes long just using the line Currier-Layzon, and that's it. You got two words, and you've got to stretch it out.

You've got to praise all the way through just a few words. It's all about the embellishment, the individual emotion you bring to those words. And of course, contemporary R&B is very indebted to gospel for those reasons. Surely. And so I think that's the next place. we should turn if we want to understand Siza's style, because some of her peers in the R&B game are also leaning into this endless melody approach. I think of someone like Jasmine Sullivan and her song, Girl Like Me. or summer what I did to lose. Why in the hell you paint you?

Why you don't love me no more? Yeah. I don't need... Or Summer Walker, who even features Siza on her track, No Love. Okay, hip hop, gospel, R&B. I don't think those are particularly surprising, though. I think it's cool to see how they're connected. I want to throw out two more influences that might seem a little bit more out of left field.

But we get a clue when we get about halfway through the album, and Siza gives us a guest artist who seems a little unexpected in the context of this album. This is on the track, Ghost in the Machine. Did we just take an indie folk rocket ship into the universe of Phoebe Bridgers? Indeed, we did, Charlie. And her appearance kind of ushers in this little sweet within SOS, the album, of Sizzah leaning into her indie rock pop punk emo influences. The next song is called F2F. And check out this chorus.

Okay, I definitely hear the pop punk and the indie rock influence. how do those bring a meandering melody kind of vibe? Well, let's go back to the featured artist, Siza brings in on Ghost in the Machine, Phoebe Bridgers. On a song of hers like motion sickness, there's the same kind of meandering melody that never quite goes where you expected to. One more, Charlie, can you indulge me?

Of course, this is fun. The great opera composer of the 19th century, Ricard Wagner. If we're talking about endless melody. We have to talk about Wagner. Oh, yeah. We have to talk about the Leibestode aria from Tristan undiesolde, right? Sung here by the incomparable Jesse Norman. There's countless ethical and moral reasons why I don't enjoy Wagner, but, uh, you know, that meandering melody of his is part of why I think I never really got tuned into his works.

Again, I'm just such a, I'm basic, man. You're the mayor simpleton. You need simple, repetitive blocks. A lot of math, man. Little, uh, little Lego pieces that go perfectly together. Okay, but I accept the challenge. There's a lot I've really enjoyed about Siza here. How do you think I should listen to works that aren't giving me that pop sensibility,

the nice repetition, the easy handholding? What approach should I take? Well, Charlie, just as these are, artists are embracing a kind of radical honesty and openness the way Siza is just like unlocking her entire life for you in her songs. And singing in a way that reflects that, singing in a way that is sometimes messy and open-ended and unrepeditive. Maybe that's the way we need to listen ourselves to open ourselves to going on this journey with these artists and seeing where that might lead. Switched on Pop is produced by Rihanna Cruz, engineered by Brandon McFarland, edited by Art Chung, illustrations by Iris Gottlieb, community management by Abby Barr.

Our executive producers, Arna Kroh, and Hanna Rosen, a member of the Fox Media Podcast Network, and a production of Vulture. You can find more episodes of Switched on Pop wherever you get podcasts. Head to Spotify, head to the Apple Podcast app. Go to our website, www.switchedonpop.com. And hit us up on social media. We're at Switched on Pop on Instagram and Twitter, and we want to know what track off SOS have you been viving with? What is your endless melody?

Also, a little reminder on our website, Switchedonpop.com. We have some new merch, some beautiful, beautiful totes that have squiggly, gorgeous, multi-colored line drawings that wander and a journey, kind of like those melodies. I see what you did there. We'll be back again next Tuesday with a new episode, and until then. Thanks for listening. Thank you.