Switched on Pop - The Weeknd: Dance of Deception

Episode Date: September 23, 2015

The Weeknd’s deliriously funky chart topper “Can’t Feel My Face” has sparked sweat-soaked dance sessions across the country, but dark notes lurk at the outskirts of this ebullient jam. Chromatic intrusions and Classical laments crowd the scene and invite more clandestine interpretations. What’s this song really about? The secret lies in the scale. FEATURING The Weeknd – Wicked Games The Weeknd – Earned It The Weeknd – Can’t Feel My Face L’Arpeggiata – Monteverdi ‘s Amor (Lamento Della Ninfa, Rappresentativo) Skrillex & Diplo – Where Are Ü Now (with Justin Bieber) * You can find more deceptively addictive songs in our Spotify playlist. **Alex Ross’s great chapter on the long lineage of the Lament is indispensable. Find it in his book Listen to This and a précis of it at his blog The Rest is Noise.  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. Download the Eaterer.

App at eater app.com. It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And just the quick heads up, this episode does include some adult themes. So if you have kids around, you might want to check out another episode. Perhaps Taylor Swift or Carly Ray Jepson would be appropriate.

Much better. This week we're looking at the weekend's hit song, Can't Feel My Face. This song will make your face go numb when we break down what's really. going on. So the weekend first burst onto the scene back in 2012 with a record called Trilogy, which featured this very distinctive, dark, self-destructive, druggie tone on tracks like wicked games. Hopefulness and positivity are not the first adjectives that come to mind when you listen to this track. Definitely a little moody. Yeah, no doubt. So probably where most of us are familiar with the

weekend would be from his hit song, Earned It, which was on the charts forever after being featured on the 50 Shades of Gray's soundtrack. It's almost like he's an evil mastermind singing, I'm going to care for you underneath this dark string lines. One thing I will say that I absolutely love about this song is the fact that it's in triple meter, which is very rare in our day and age to get a pop song that's not in duple meter. So if you're trying to locate the pulse of this song, you'll probably hear it going by at this rate. Dut, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. So because they're divided into groups of three of those pulses, we call it triple meter.

And that's just very rare, statistically speaking, to encounter in a number one pop song. So props to the weekend for bringing Walt's time back. Okay, so we got some classical references, some evil genius, some interesting contrast between his promise of love and yet this dark undertone. Interesting tune. This is just the beginning of the weekend's assent to pop supremacy. Yeah, absolutely. So with Can't Feel My Face, the weekend has really cleaned up his act for the pop charts. And of course, he hired the best producer he possibly could to help him out with that.

Max Martin, who I believe has more number one hits than anybody. Is that right, Nate? Anybody except two songwriters named Paul McCartney and John Lennon. Okay, well, that's pretty good. Yeah, third behind those guys, not bad. So let's take a listen to the Max Martin produced Can't Feel My Face. And I know she'll be the death of me, at least we'll both be now. And she'll always get the best of me.

The worst is yet to come. But at least we'll both be beautiful and stay forever young. This I know. This I know. She told me, don't worry about it. She told me, don't worry. My face will love. All right, Charles, what are you hearing here?

Oh, it's got that Michael Jackson feel, the disco, the syncopated bass. It gives me chills up my spine. What the song does so well right here is it gives you the sense of being in the moment, even just the lyric, right? I can't feel my face when I'm with you, but I love it. It's this momentary feeling, this physical feeling, something that we can all understand. Well, you know, it's funny because the song begins almost in the middle of a sentence. It begins with the word and.

It's like we're entering this song halfway through or something. In your world of the academy, they call that in Medius race. Oh, Charlie. Start in the middle. You're trying to seduce me? And then I also think structurally the song builds to that chorus in a really clever way. In terms of the saga of the relationship that this song is depicting, the verse is a sort of moment of lucidity. The weekend sings, I know she'll be the death of me, at least will both be numb.

And I know she'll be the death of me, at least will both be numb. And she'll always get the best of me. The worst is yet to come. It feels like we're going back to Wicked Games a little bit here. This is definitely some cold, hard self-reflection here. Yeah, but it feels like it's setting up the tension for this great release that we're going to get in the chorus. Yes, because then after the verse, we move to the pre-chorus. You can't just take me to the chorus right now?

Oh, you want to just skip the pre-chorus? You are so impatient. No, please tell me. What goes on in the pre-chorus? Well, in the pre-chorus, he says, she told me don't worry about it. She told me, don't worry no more. She told me don't worry. So if the verse is this moment of lucidity and sort of rational distance, then the pre-chorus is slipping back into maybe the old negative patterns of this relationship.

And then, Charlie, your precious chorus comes and it's just throwing all caution to the wind, you know. Screw my doubts. Screw the danger. I can't feel my face and I love it. Ah, so I guess the chorus doesn't pay off without that tension and seduction of the verse in the pre-chorus. Exactly. Well, by the time I land in the chorus, I'm just feeling pure joy. And I think that's what the weekend is feeling as well.

And, you know, that joy is so powerful that it almost carries the chorus into the air on wings. After the chorus, the first chorus ends, the beat drops off entirely. and it's like for a moment when the verse starts without any drums or instrumentation whatsoever it's like we're floating in space And then we land back in reality with another verse Well that is a brilliant effect I feel like I'm floating

Oh then it's so satisfying when it comes back on the fore I feel like I'm being pulled Pulled back and forth a little bit like we were and earned it But it's funny because the song has sonically such more upbeat references, like the Michael Jackson that we're definitely all hearing. Yeah, no doubt, though, if we go further back, Charlie, I think we'll start to hear some slightly more sinister musical references that we can pull out of this song. So are you saying that we should do a little segment on classical masters? Why not? All right, take me there.

So I'm Anna Mena. And like my music, my hair changes with me and has to be able to continue my rhythm. For so, potion 9 of Sebastian Professional has everything my needs. Nutrition Profunda, Protection contraband against the encrespaid, 99% less

of rotura and Puntas Abirtas Bajo Control. New Potion 9 of Sebastian Professional, the secreto professional of who don't see tendences,

but of who those create. Conviertes your passion in a business with Shopify and batte records of the business with the

form of the world. You've heard been. The Mereververion. The illusion of the world. The incredible system of Shopify facilitates

on your site web, in the website, and in whatever. That is music for your ears. No, you'll do more

whiltas. Your business will be a super-exitto- with Shopify. Empezae. Your period of per year

per year at a month in Shopify. com. One of the parts of Can't Feel My Face

that really jumps out is this baseline. In almost all the weekend songs,

he'll find this baseline that will just repeat throughout the whole track. I think it's part of what makes his sort of obsessive version of R&B so effective. It's just this relentless repetition. And on a song like this, the kind of quality of the baseline really reminds me of an old classical tradition called the Lament. Lament. Oh, man, this doesn't look like we're going in a good direction. It's not pretty, Charlie.

The lament was what a composer would write at, like, the saddest point in his opera. That's when someone like Monteverdi in his Lamento de la Nympha would introduce this repeating, descending bass line to highlight the ultimate melancholy of the singer. So you're saying this descending bass line. it really is actually dragging us down into a dark emotional place, whether it's the opera singer or here it's the weekend. Yeah, exactly. So in Can't Feel My Face, we have this baseline,

which continually repeats the seventh note of the scale, sixth note of the scale, and the first note of the scale. Oh, it's interesting because it starts on the descent. We're not even starting on the home note. Right. Yeah, that's totally true. We start on the descent, and then it actually goes back up to the home note and then starts the descent again.

Oh, this endless going back and forth of it. We're dropping down, picking back up, just like you were saying in the chorus where we're feeling up and then down and then up or then down. And it's happening in the baseline. Yes, this sort of Sisyphian cycle or something. So in the Monteverdi piece, it's a slightly different baseline. It's one, seven, six, five. as opposed to the slightly amended version and can't feel my face of seven, six, one.

But interestingly, the song we were just talking about earlier from the weekend's first album, Wicked Games. Yeah, it has almost the exact same baseline as Monteverdi's Lamento. Exactly. Oh, who knew that the weekend was such a classical master? So we can definitely put these songs, I think, in the long, tradition of the lament with its obsessive descending baseline. I noticed one other musical element, which I feel like emphasizes this darkness, this minor mood, there's this really cool, funky guitar line.

Do you hear that one? Oh, yeah. It feels almost like a Prince song, right? The whole line is an A minor chord, or I guess in the classical world, you guys would call that a pedal. We may, yeah. Which is when one chord or note sits and stays steady while other things move around it. And so even where he plays a few major chords here on the seventh, he's playing a G major chord,

there's always this A minor happening underneath. But it's got this funny disco rhythm. So I think that the A minor pedal and the guitar has that same tension of it's upbeat, but it's also minor descending moody and dark. Yeah, I agree. This song has two personalities, almost. Yeah, I feel like we moved from, what do we call it, abulient joy and now into a descending lament? Oh, things have changed.

I only really understood what was going on in this song when I was talking with my friend about it, and he looked at me with surprise and said, wait, you know this song is about cocaine, right? And I said, yeah, of course. Yeah, no, I knew that. Yeah, definitely. I'm a musicologist. I listen very deeply. I catch everything.

And then I immediately went home and Google, I can't feel my face. And one of the first things that comes up is this clip from the movie Blow with Johnny Depp. I can't feel my face. I mean, I can touch it, but I can't feel it inside. Oh, no. I feel like, now I know why I was feeling such. joy earlier. I didn't realize it was through the vehicle of hard narcotics. Yeah. Yeah, did you notice there's sort of, there's sort of a come down after you listen to this song? Like, you're like,

oh, I just want to hear it again. I feel so empty without it. Oh, man. Well, there's, there definitely are a lot of things that all of a sudden feel like are going wrong in the song. And it's all hitting me right now that, oh, it's all falling apart. Yeah. There's some weird stuff at the edges of this song that can only be explained by the fact that this is a secret drug anthem. So what's going on? Well, the first thing is there is chromaticism all over the place in this song. All right. Tell our listeners a little bit about chromaticism. What does that mean? So the song establishes a key, which in this case is A minor.

And then there's a certain set of tones belonging to the A minor. minor scale that you expect to hear in this song, that we would call those diatonic. Those are the notes that are in the scale. Exactly, yeah. Any tones that don't belong to that diatonic scale, these outliers, these moments, these tones full of dissonance and tension, we call those chromatic notes. Usually pop songs, you don't find a lot of chromatic notes. No, you probably have to go to, you know, our friends like Bartok or Chessacovic or something.

Right. But this song has them all over the pre-chorus and chorus. Where are you hearing it? In the chorus, we have this melody, I can't feel my face when I'm with you. Yeah. I can't feel my face when I'm with you. The notes on I'm are chromatic.

It's an E-flat, which does not belong in this scale. E-natural is supposed to be the note, the diatonic note of the scale. E-flat is chromatic. does not belong there. So what effect is this having? For the listener, it creates this subtle tension that you can feel that something is a little off, but you can't maybe put your finger on it.

It's even more pronounced in the pre-chorus where we have a really harsh chromatic dissonance of the flat two. Ooh, the flat two. Yeah, when he says, she told me don't worry about it. Oh. And right on worry, we hit B flat.

So a note that's only a half step away from our tonal center of A. Oh, so it's like you're almost there, but you hit the wrong note. Yeah, exactly. And so all of a sudden, when you start to listen to that lyric in that way, you can really see all the lies and self-deception that seemed to be contained within that line. She told me, don't worry about it, because that chromatic note is telling you, actually, no, you definitely should worry. Oh, right.

Because that B-flat is not supposed to be there. Oh. You've got all these flatted notes leading downward. It feels like it's pulling you similarly to that baseline. Yes, totally. So everything is just pulling us down. What happened to our upbeat song? It's all grumbling away.

Because I'm feeling it now, I had loved this baseline, right? This bump, bump, bum, sound. And now I'm realizing that the syncopation of it, which on one hand makes me want to dance, is also really disorienting. It's out of sync with the drums in the song. Yeah, it's super syncopated and restless. Yeah, and you ask me, do I feel it come down after listening to this song? And I did listen on repeat, maybe,

seven times in my car the other day and I wasn't feeling great afterwards. I think there's also a moment in the song where that happens, the bridge. Ah. The song doesn't have a bridge. Does it not?

No. I think it does. Where? I think it's a bridge. This section. Isn't that it's just another pre-chorus? I think it's acting as a bridge. I accept. I accept. Okay, so after the second chorus, just like after the first chorus, there's this dropout. And we move into this new sonic

territory, which is basically acting as this bridge back into our chorus later on. And what I'm hearing are all these low, muted, filtered synthesizers, which feel like a come down. It's like there's been this big moment of joy and everything sonically drops down into this really low, buzzy texture. I kind of feel like everything has just gone numb at that section. Yeah, you know, I can take this extended musical metaphor of dropping down one step further

I mean this chorus, it's really weird the chorus is actually the lowest range of the song. Oh. Huh. Like the verse goes up to a G and then the pre-chorus goes a little

higher up to that B-flat and then you would expect the chorus probably. probably to get even, you know, the chorus is sort of the apotheosis, so that you would expect it to go even higher. But instead it drops down below both of those, the pre-chorus and verse, down to this E-flat area. Oh, so the highest moment is also the lowest. Yeah, which is very counterintuitive for a pop song. Right. Oh.

There's some other weird stuff happening in this song that you only start to notice when you see it through this cocaine lens. Such as the lyrics frequently get cut off. Like, at the end of every pre-chorus, he starts to say, alone. Yeah. You know, but I'll never be alone. But he never actually finishes that word. Oh. He just goes, low, oh, oh, that he just screams.

It's a little disconcerting. Yeah, I'm realizing now, even the way they he's singing, there's these sort of really fast lyrics and then slow down, confused, loss, and cut off lyrics. Right. Like at the very end where we expect him to say, can't feel my face, he just goes, can't feel my fit. The rest of that word just gets cut off. Oh.

Yeah, totally. It's like when you're on drugs and you're so hyped up that you can't even finish a thought before moving on to the next thing. Oh, wow. This guy is really disoriented. Yeah, exactly. So the album is called The Beauty Behind the Madness, but man, it really for me is starting to feel like the madness behind the beauty. Whoa. Chuck, you just blew my mind.

So in honor of the weekend's dangerously clever love drug song, we are working on a playlist of other great love songs that turn out to be drug song. songs or perhaps vice versa. And if you have any suggestions for those, tweet us at Switched On Pop. We'll put the link to that Spotify playlist on our website. And of course, you can find more episodes at switchedonpop.com or on iTunes where we'd really appreciate it. If you'd leave us a review, it really helps. In two weeks, we'll be back with the Beaver.

Yeah, if you liked our episode on Carly Ray Jepson, this is the episode for you. We're going to be exploring Beaver's recent existential suite. Where are you now and what do you mean? Our show is written, produce, edited, mix by us. Charlie Harding. And me, Nate Sloan. And our beautiful design is done by Luke Harris. You can see more of his work at lukeheris.com.

And thanks to the Pitch Podcast for featuring our episode on Carly Ray Jepson. You can find more great episodes of Pitch at pitchpodcast.org. Thanks for listening.