Switched on Pop - Unlikely Mashups: Taylor + Cardi B | Clean Bandit + Berlioz

Episode Date: November 2, 2017

At the top of the pop charts, Taylor Swift and Cardi B, two artists with seemingly little in common, exploit the same compositional technique to hook listeners in. Meanwhile, across time and space, electro producers Clean Bandit ft. Julia Michaels, channel the thematic tricks of French Romantic composer Hector Berlioz in his 1830 Symphonie Fantastique. FeaturingTaylor Swift - Look What You Made Me Do Cardi B - Bodak YellowRight Said Fred - I'm Too SexyClean Bandit ft. Julia Michaels - I Miss YouBerlioz - Symphonie Fantastique performed by Berliner PhilharmonikerBerlioz - Symphonie Fantastique performed by DuPage Symphony Orchestra Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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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 list, Follow editors and book right in the app. Download the eater app at eaterapp.com. It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switched-on Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan.

Nate, today we've each chosen two songs that apparently have nothing in common with each other. Right. But underneath the surface, if you dig way too deep as we are want to do, they are surprisingly similar. So what two songs have you decided on? My two songs are currently vying near the top of the pop charts. They are Taylor Swift's Look What You Made Me Do. Look what you made me do. And Cardi B's Bodak Yellow. And I made a new dance now, I make money move.

Say, I don't got to dance. I make money move. If I see you know. And I made some very different choices with Clean Bandit and Julia Michaels have released a new track called I Miss You. And I was thinking about comparing it to a great romantic composer, Burlios. And his symphony fantastique, which is a completely absurd connection to make. But it's going to work, I promise you. Wow. Charlie, I mean, I love that Hector Bareli Oates is getting some play on our show.

It's about time. Been too long. Yeah. In our before show, Coin Toss, it was determined that you would go first. And that was luck, but perhaps Kismet, too, because I am so fired up to share this with you, Charlie. I'm so excited. What is it? You know, these songs on the face of it seem very different, right?

Bodak Yellow and Look What You Made Me Do. The thing they have in common is that they're both at the top of the pop, charts. But these two songs seem like polar opposites in so many ways. And when Bodak Yellow vaulted over Taylor Swift to become the number one song in the nation, I think a lot of people applauded that because they see Cardi B as being more authentic, sincere, and having a more compelling rags to riches story than Taylor Swift, who is more associated with certain artificiality and privilege. I thought she was gunning in the artistic realm of authenticity. Taylor Swift. That's what she's going for. Authenticity doesn't seem to apply to a music video that literally has all her

different manifestations of herself on parade as a sort of visual evidence of the multiplicity of identity or something. Fair enough. Anyway, table that, Charles, tag it. We'll come back to it. Sure. Put it in your rucksack. We might need it later. Not only are these two, artists sort of opposed, these two songs seem very opposed. Taylor Swift, we have this sort of ornate, baroque pop music modeled after like Michael Jackson's thriller or something. Yeah. Produced by a now pop titan, Jack Antonoff. Yeah. Cardi B. tapping into more of a rar, more stripped down, trap aesthetic. Yeah. These songs would seem to have very little in common. And yet when I was looking at them,

I've maybe found one bridge that can get us from one to the other and connect Taylor Swift to Cardi B. Okay, take me there. In order to do so, we have to go to the chorus of each of these songs. Okay. Let's travel to the chorus of Taylor Swift to begin. Oh, look what you made me do. Look what you just made me do.

Look what you just made me do. Look what you just made me do. Look what you made me do. Look what you just made me do. Look what you just made me. You mean right, said Fred. Yes, the song certainly has a debt to the makers of I'm Too Sexy for my shirt. Yeah, this is a very strange choice for a chorus,

and I think surprises many listeners. I had probably expected something very melodious and hooky, just given Taylor Swift's past of being pretty famous for writing great. choruses that you can't forget but there's no melody here no you're so right when I think of Taylor Swift I think of this brilliant melodist something we analyzed way back in episode two Charlie do you even remember that those so long ago we were so young then we were like speak now era Taylor you know we were so innocent and do I and we loved identifying certain melodic motives that appeared again and again

throughout Taylor's oeuvre we do not get that here no it is just in your face. There's no melody. It's just spoken. Yes. And I think this chorus has been very divisive. When I ask people about it, it's very much a love, hate thing, right? People have strong reactions to this chorus either way. Isn't that the intent? Look what you made me do. Yeah, absolutely. It is provocative. And honestly, I'm not sure how I feel about it. Some days I wake up and I love it. Other days, I wake up and I can't stand it. Either way, I feel like there's something undeniably catchy about it. And I wanted to try and figure out what that was. And the answer I've come up with is that it has to do with rhythmic displacement. Okay. I think the whole catchiness of this line lies in a kind of

inexact repetition. So let's break down this chorus. Okay. The first line of the chorus is, ooh, look what you made me do. It wasn't my fault. I didn't do it. The next line of the chorus repeats that phrase exactly. I'll do both of them in a sort of dramatic reading. Ooh, look what you made me do. Look what you made me do. So those are like exact copies of each other, right? Yes.

Same rhythm, same phrasing, same everything. Then on the next one, we get a variation. Instead of ooh, look what you made me do, we have, look what you just made me do. Oh, I just did it. Right, and you're right to highlight that word just because that wasn't there in the first two repetitions, right? We just added that just into the phrase. And that's kind of an innocuous word to throw into this chorus. but by adding this one additional word,

it creates then an additional rhythmic beat so that once we repeat this new phrase, look what you just made me do, look what you just made me do. Something happened there, something significant happened there when we repeated that line. Adding the just,

sends one of those words a little further than we originally heard it, so to speak. It kind of pushes everything out of alignment. You see what I mean? But couldn't this just be like a random vocal improv? Like, I've just changing it up a little bit.

It could be. Who am I to say what happened in the studio to arrive at this chorus? I'm only testifying to how it affects listeners. Oh. I'm not speculating about

the intentions behind its composition. I'm offering an interpretation of how we respond to it. But what you were saying is that no matter how it was thought up, it actually fundamentally changes the structure of this chorus? Yes, and here's the crux of it, Charles. In the first line, which is, again, ooh, look what you made me do. We have a really strong emphasis on that syllable, ooh.

First, as the word, ooh, and then as the word do. Ooh, do. Both of those give ooh a really strong prominence because ooh falls on the downbeat. Will you give me two bars of four beats, please, Charles? One, two, three, four. Ooh, look what you made me do. Look what you made me do. One, two, three, four.

Thank you very much. Well clapped and spoken. Thank you. And you notice that those ooze fall right on the one of each of those phrase. That is the downbeat. A beat that we feel very strongly. We're at home. Now, when we add the just, let's see what happens.

Charles, can you count me in, please? One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, what you just made me do. Look what you just made me do. Two, three, four. Your tempo was a little, fluctuated a little bit that time. We'll work on it. But nevertheless, I think what you see is that something happened when we added that just. The word that fell on the downbeat was no longer the ooh syllable, but the me syllable.

Okay. By adding that just, we've displaced the rhythm of the phrase so that no longer does that ooh syllable fall on the downbeat on the one, but instead that me syllable. Okay, but what is this accomplishing? Like, all right, we're moving something one beat over. What does it do for the listener? What it does for the listener is take a phrase that could become boring and dull if you just repeated it verbatim.

and by adding this word and creating this slight rhythmic displacement where you move the emphasized word over and then come back to it, you notice that when I repeated that phrase the second time we did come back to the word do on the downbeat, right? That creates this sort of little mental game that we get to play, whether we know it or not, every time we hear the chorus.

We hear the first phrase, we hear it repeated verbatim, we hear this repetition that has a slight, difference that kind of takes us off guard, puts us on our toes for a second, wait, what's going on? And then it comes back around again and lands back in the original position. So this whole chorus is a little musical game of Follow the Leader. All right, I'm hearing you. I made the argument that the song doesn't have a hook, but I guess this is kind of what

hooks you in. Maybe a good thing is to think of the alternative, which would have been a chorus like this. ooh look what you made me do look what you made me do look what you made me do look what you made me do look what you made me do I just turned the dial right somehow that exact repetition doesn't hook us in in the same way right so I sense some skepticism in your voice this is such a small thing is it really worth highlighting as a key musical effect in this chorus. I'm hearing it more. I mean, I think the first time I heard the song, the intentional affect of this, I'm not going to sing, I'm just going to sing, talk this rhythm. I was like, okay, whatever, I'm bored of it. But then, like, the more I heard this song, the more it did get lodged in my brain, I think this, like, this subtle variation forces me to listen even

subconsciously, whereas when you just sing it that way, I would just tune out. All of a sudden, though I'm skipping a beat and I'm kind of lost and then I'm brought back in because she does this rhythmic displacement. Yes. Okay. Well said. And she's not alone in exploiting this sort of mental game involved in repetition with slight variation that results in rhythmic displacement.

I wish I had an acronym that could like tighten up that definition a little bit. Because if we turn to Bodak yellow, we can see Cardi B using. using the same technique in her chorus. Oh, okay. I'm really interested in how you're going to show this because I have to admit, when I first heard this song, maybe I had a similar reaction that I had to the Taylor Swift song upon first listening. It's kind of stripped down, like, not a whole lot going on harmonically,

melodically in the track. Very simple tune. Yes, and like Swift, I think Cardi B creates interest from other musical elements besides melody and harmony. Right. Rhythm. I need to let go of that bias. Yeah, go into your rhythm place.

Yeah. Because when we look at the chorus of this track, Cardi B is doing something very similar. She says, I don't dance now. I make money moves. Yeah. Say, I don't gotta dance.

I make money move. I don't dance now. I make money move. Say, I don't got to dance. I make money move. And once again, we have a phrase that is repeated almost verbatim, right? The first part of that phrase, I don't dance now.

When it comes back around, it's just slightly altered so that once again we throw in another word, an extra word, that changes the phrase to say, I don't got to dance. So everything is the same except we just put one more word in, in this case, gotta. And in doing so, Cardi B has done the same thing as Taylor Swift. she's pushed where the word originally fell in the measure over. She's pushed it forward. She's displaced it forward. So in the first line of that couplet, she says, I don't dance now.

I don't dance now. Right? And the emphasis is on dance. That's the word we feel really strongly. Then when she slots in that word gotta, it pushes dance a little further back. So now the line becomes, say, I don't. gotta dance. Say, I don't gotta dance.

I make money move. And now the emphasis is on the word gotta. And dance has been displaced a little further back, a little further behind, temporarily. Oh my gosh, wait. There's so many things that are coming out for me. Okay, okay. Say one at a time. First connection. First

is that I'm hearing that she's asserting a form of agency because this song is really about her moving from being an exotic dancer to making money as she's expressing it in the way that she wants to through music. Yeah. And by making money move. And so at first it's I don't dance.

And dance is on the downbeat. It's emphasized. The second time around she says, I don't got to dance. And she's asserting the gotta, her choice on the downbeat. Whoa. Right? Yeah. That's so right.

There's meaning in that. Yeah, I see what you mean because it's like the first time she's like, I don't dance now. Yeah. And then the second time she's emphasizing, I want to make sure you understand why I don't dance because I don't have to anymore. Right. Because I have pulled myself up by my bootstraps and like reached a place of security. Right. So the second realization that I'm getting from this track is that there's, I guess it's almost like a form of text painting where the money has moved.

Right. So she says, I make money move. The first time she sings it, it lands on this section. And then the second time she's like, it's displaced and is moved. into another part of the rhythm so money has literally so i so want that to be true but unfortunately in this case i don't think the rhythmic location of money moves moves oh it stays the same yeah it's just the first part of that phrase that changes alas oh they had a great opportunity to really really get me excited about text painting i know i know nonetheless the part about agency is awesome you know maybe the remix will we'll take advantage of that.

You can send her a letter, a formal letter. Well, nonetheless, it feels like the money's moving. Just even the way that she says it, there's sort of a movement, like a flag waving. I'm really just trying to back my way into this. Well, what if we return to Taylor Swift for a second? Because based on what you're saying, now I'm thinking about, okay, like what word is now emphasized in the rhythmic displacement in that Taylor Swift chorus?

And the answer is the word me. Oh. Right? That's what she says. look what you made me do look what you made me do look what you just made me do look what you just made me do so me

gets the emphasis and so I don't know I mean this seems to be a song that's all about her it's a little narcissistic it's a little I'm on my own here everyone is out to get me but I'm gonna be okay even in those little choruses that seem so simple

maybe offensively simple to some the small musical touches are what keep us coming back and what send these songs to the top of the pop charts. I have so much work to do to let go of my preconditioned musical taste in which

first listen for both of these songs. Like nah, nah, it's not a hit. And they, of course, have stuck around on the charts, which says, well, first of all, I'm wrong. And second of all, the more that I hear them, the more like kind of like head bopping and listen into it and digging it.

And so these elements, which I'm might pay less attention to are actually doing something really effective in creating a if you will like air quote untraditional hook yeah and boy oh boy does it work well i'm really satisfied that i was able to persuade you and now i have to say i am just awaiting with bated breath the connection that you're going to draw between clean bandit and hector bareliote the great 19th century composer But I want to say that just as you entered my analysis with an open mind, so I will for yours. Wonderful. I'll catch you with that on the other side of this break.

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Sythian. 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. 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. 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. All right, Nate, I'm going to venture into some really dangerous domain.

Okay. I'm really about to get into your domain, into the more musicological world, and in particular looking at a great masterwork of music that I probably don't have the requisite skills or pedigree to do so. But you know what? this show is all about interpretation and what we hear, and I think I have found an absolutely ridiculous connection that I want to share with you. I can't wait. So I got this recommendation over email from a listener named Stewart, who requested that we cover the new song, I Miss You by Clean Bandit featuring Julia Michaels, and I really like this song. I'd been

listening to it over and over this weekend when I actually found my way to the symphony, and I made this totally absurd connection. So what I want to do is brave a comparison between I Miss You and Burlios' symphony fantastique. It might sound ridiculous. But let's just take a listen and see,

do you think there's anything immediately in common? Okay, yeah, let's do it. So let's drop the needle on I Miss You right on the chorus. That's fun. And for good measure, let's check out the Berliner Philharmoniker playing Berlioz's symphony

fantasy sequel. We'll jump into the first movement a little bit into the song where the main melody comes out. Funda Bar. Super similar, right? Yeah, obviously the first thing I thought of when I heard Clean Bandit and Julia Michaels was ah, this reminds me of a

1830 programmatic orchestral piece inspired by an opium trip. Well, by the end of this segment, I think that you'll see that they have a lot in common. So what I want to do is jump into this extended classical masters in which I will make absolutely absurd connections. And your job is to tell me if I've gone as mad as burlios. I love it. What a roll reversal. This is fun.

Right. So background material. Here's what we need to know. Our artists in the first camp, we have Clean Bandit, who are a British electronic music trio that have heavily incorporated symphonic sounds into their electronic hits. In fact, they have a hit called Symphony featuring Zara Larson. Do you know this one? No, I'm not familiar. Check out these strings. So these folks, they like the symphony too.

Okay, but you're going to have to do more than that. Absolutely, I will. They've teamed up with the great songwriter Julia Michaels. We, of course, know her as the rising pop songwriter who wrote Justin Bieber Sorry, amongst dozens of other mega hits. And we recently covered her. her song issues on the show just a few weeks ago.

Yeah, I mean, this podcast could just as well be called Switched on Julia Michaels. She is extraordinary. She really is one of the great writers right now. So that's our first camp. The second camp, we have Burlios, who is one of the great romantic composers. He wrote his Symphony Fantastique at the age of 26 about an overwhelming love that he can't get out of his head. And what both of these songs have in common is that they're both about a broken and unrequited

love. And before you say, all right, everybody writes love songs and heartbreak songs, what I want to do in making a connection is demonstrate that they build this idea of love by bearing it deep inside the musical content. And that music, specifically a melody, reveals the real meaning of this idea of love. Hmm, cool. Okay. I see where this is going. Okay. So they're going to use this same technique. Clean Bandit and Burlios are going to take a melodic idea, and they're going to transmute it over and over and over, and it's going to reveal what's really going on in the music. So to establish this idea of transmuting a melody over and over. Let's start with the Burlios. In his piece, he has five movements that are basically a journey from love into despair. And he describes the technique that he's using to demonstrate this movement in the program that accompanies the music. He actually handed out a program, as you pointed out earlier, they've actually called this program music,

where there's sort of a narrative thrust, even though there's no lyrical material. So let's go backwards into the program notes that he wrote in 1845. The author imagines that a young musician afflicted by the sickness of spirit, which have famous writer has called the vagueness of passions, sees for the first time a woman who unites all the charms of the ideal person his imagination was dreaming of. And by a strange anomaly, this beloved image never presents itself to the artist's mind without being associated with a musical idea. The melodic image and its model keep haunting him ceaselessly. It transitions from this state of dreamy melancholy, interrupted by occasional upsurges of aimless joy,

to delirious passion with its outbursts of fury and jealousy. Well read, Charles. Yeah. The name he would sometimes give that melody was the Ede Feeks, sort of the obsession. Right, right. This Ede Feeks presents a sort of reverse hero's journey. Right. And the first time we hear it, it's this passionate and lush melody that introduces the melody of his potential love.

Right. Right. Now, you teach the song in your course. What happens to the melody? Over the course of the next four movements, this melody appears again and again, but each time it is transformed. And as you said, this is sort of a reverse hero's journey, a descent, if you will. And as we hear the melody transform, it goes from this beautiful kind of noble, inspiring melody, to this dark, almost mocking, evil twin version of that original beautiful melody.

Right. So the first time we hear it, it's in the movement called Passion. And by the time we're even halfway through the symphony, which is almost an hour long, he's galloping in a field and the melody comes back to him, but already it's taken on a new sensibility. There's some discord in it. It's not going well. Right. He then goes through an whole opium dream and eventually encounters a bunch of witches, which basically curse him to hell. And in the final moments of the symphony, the melody is just like all falling apart, but it's still there, right? Like the sort of

the roots of that initial passion are in there, but are instead enveloped in darkness. Yeah, I mean, this is sometimes described as a sort of burlesque version of the original melody it's meant to be the end of the bad opium trip and sort of the nadir of our narrator's psychedelic visions man tough love well it's romantic with a capital r really okay so i could talk about the symphony forever because it's unbelievably beautiful and i just like goosebumps going up and down my spine when i saw it anytime you just want to do a whole podcast on barely oz's symphony fantastique say the word All right, all right. It's possible. Bonus episode. Let's get back to the heart of what our show's about. Pop music.

Oh, yeah. Right. Okay. So I think that Clean Bandit and Julia Michaels are doing basically this exact same thing, but I'm going to say that they're doing it in reverse. It's actually maybe a more proper hero's journey. They're going to build up fragments of a melody until we finally hear the full thing. Oh, cool. And what seems like maybe just a nice little hooky, eD, and. Emmy melody, I think actually has much deeper meaning than we would initially hear. Cool. So let's see how they do this by building up part by part of the song. We're going to jump right in and listen to the intro of I Miss You. What do you hear?

I hear this little hummed melody that kind of goes a little arc up and then a little arc down. Very catchy, very welcoming. Yeah. And underneath it, we have a rhythmically moving piano, soft, a little song, right? Yeah, yeah, of course, piano. I love that piano. Like so many intros these days, it seems like, oh, this is just like some introductory material, we're going to get to something else. What we're hearing here is so important.

Ooh, okay. They're hinting at the entire thing. So remember this moment. Keep moving. Go into the verse. Now you're on cable, hanging with your buffer. Listen that night was your bottle. So I could be close to your lips again.

I know you didn't call you. parents and tell him that we ended because you know that they'd be offended did you not want to tell or miss the end. All right. This song is establishing itself. It's saying, hey, we were in a relationship together. You're now off on a beach vacation with your brother and you ended this whole thing and a kind of embarrassing way and I'm reflecting on it and I miss you. That's kind of the gist of this song. Totally. This part of the song for me is Julian Michael's present internal. state. She's in a place of reflecting and saying, man, I kind of bummed that our relationship is over. And she, at this moment, is building up a proto melody. There's really not a whole lot going on here.

It's just a really very simple. Totally. Almost one note. Right. Right. The song continues. We're going to move into the pre-course and we're going to see that this proto melody kind of like Burlios is in reverse is going to construct itself Burlios deconstructs the melody Here we're going to construct a melody which is going to tell you the nature of her lost love Right on

So we're not supposed to talk But I'm getting ahead of myself I get scared when we're not Because I'm scared you with somebody else I guess that it's gone And I just keep trying to myself So we've moved from this internal, I'm bummed, you're gone to sort of this more reflective state of her relationship.

And two really important things happen here. Actually, a handful. So the first thing that happens is we get some new harmonic material. The chords are changing, creating some momentum. And underneath it, these lush strings, some of that symphony, that for me is sort of just emphasizing this reflective state where she's talking about, I know we're not supposed to talk and I'm getting ahead of myself. I guess that it's gone and I can't believe it. She's kind of, yeah, in this is a reflective spot. Most importantly, her melody starts to open up and outline the direction that we're going.

Oh, okay. So moving from a... That's sort of the first melody we heard. Right, that was the verse melody, yeah. Now we've got... She's gone from a range of two. Huh. And she makes these big leaps in her voice, right?

I at first didn't take this to be much. But as we move towards the chorus and into the pre-chorus slash pop drop, if you will, we're going to see that this melody, these notes that she's starting to use become very important. And if you're thinking, all right, where the hell is Charlie going with this? Are these melodies really connected?

Listen for a second to what happens right at the beginning of the pre-chorus. Cool. You hear that thing? Oh, that little... Arabesque and a high synthesizer. Yes. Everything is building up and building up, creating this intensity leading us into this melody.

So we actually heard pieces of it and the intro. And then in this transitional moment from the verse into the pre-chorus, we hear this little funky melody. And so we think maybe that's where we're going. Well, she's going to build the tension even further by giving us a little bit of a false chorus. Hmm, a false chorus, okay. I miss you, you're miss you.

I miss you, yeah, I miss you, I miss you. Oh, I do. I miss you. This thing is so strange. This is what you're describing as a false chorus. I think this is a little bit of a false chorus. Well, we're in this, like, new non-traditional EDM structure, which has become so part of pop music. But the beginning of this chorus is a little bit of an energetic drop, right?

before it builds back up. Totally, totally. What is she doing? What's happening in this moment? She's singing, I miss you. We've gone from a lyric about what's happened, the relationship has ended, to a more reflective and sort of nostalgic place.

And she's saying, I miss you. And for a moment, she goes back, actually, to that earliest material. We had that very first melody. Right. And the I miss you melody is actually pretty similar. Sort of going back into that material that we heard in the verse. And so is she moving backwards?

Is she assure in this I miss you-you-ness? I actually think no. I think that she is totally lost. And we can hear this that the I-Miss-you section is rhythmically kind of all over the place. It's very sparse. There's snares building underneath. And all the sudden, in the middle of the middle of the... this chorus.

We get this major four to the floor, downbeat kick drum, and this synth-base rhythm that we heard at the very beginning of the song. We heard the synth-based rhythm at the beginning of the song? Ah, you didn't know that you did because that same rhythm is the same rhythm that you heard in the piano. Oh, oh, I see. Duh, right? Oh, okay, okay, okay.

So the piano part from the song's intro has now been transmogrified in the chorus into like a synth-based, super powerful and percussive kind of rhythm. Okay, interesting. That's right. So where I'm going with all of this is that she's building up to the moment

immediately after the chorus, the sort of drop moment. And right before she lands in it, She says, I'm trying not to remember right now. Yeah, I love that line. Trying not to. Ah, not succeeding. Not succeeding.

Because what happens in this post-chorus drop moment? She starts to hum that melody that she sings at the very, very beginning. Oh, cool. I think this is the melody of their love. This is the equivalent of the E. Day feces. And we have built all the material up to this moment because some of that material we heard in the pre-chorus is the sort of Proto outline of this material, we now get her humming melody, which is has the exact same notes as the material that she was building up in the pre-chorus. So I think that as she moves from this mental state of

being bummed about the relationship being over to kind of reflecting back on the relationship and trying not to be missing this person, she's actually invoking the romantic love that she had experienced in their connection. She's humming it. Yeah. It's like she's remembering. Yeah. And when we heard it in the introduction, it sounds somber. And now when we're in the chorus, it's kind of upbeat.

And I guess for me, I was trying to figure like, okay, why is this an upbeat song? It's kind of a strange choice, right? If it's a breakup song. Right, right. So I think that this might actually be her broken up partner's point of view, who is out in Cabo dancing on the beach. And the partner actually gets to have their voice in the song through. a distant and manipulated synthesizer. Right, right.

So she's singing the melody of our partner and as they're kind of like singing off in the distance, dancing on the beach in Cabo. And if you're still thinking like, wait a minute, are these melodies really connected? I have one more piece of evidence for you. I want to take you to the bridge. Take it to the bridge.

So I saved all the text, all of the best over the years. Just to remind myself of how good it is. Are you talking about that last line just to remind myself of how good it is or was sort of pointing to the uncertainty of this relationship? Which then we'll take you right back into the chorus, her humming. Every time she invokes trying to not remember how much she misses this person, the person's melody just keeps coming back. But in the bridge, she's actually, again, alluding to the hook. She's singing, I saved all the text.

I saved all the text, right? Right. So it's a derivation of the main melody. She says, I saved all the text. Which is very, very similar to the melody she's singing when she's humming. Yeah. So do you hear how in this moment where she's saying, I saved all the text? And she's sort of building up, building up, and she's playing this melodic line,

which is in a different rhythm. Those moments when she's singing about the sort of nostalgia of the relationship, she gets closer and closer to that main melody. I'm here, baby. You rounded the corner. I see Berlioz's Idae Fix is being kind of used in the same way. Like it represents this phantom other

who's not there, but whose DNA is all through this song. So I think Julia's done this thing in reverse, right? She's built up this melody from very scratch material, almost a nothing melody at the beginning. And then as she adds more material, it transmutes and forms itself

into the main hook. And that main hook is the hook of her love. lover and I see a really wonderful connection, even how they write about their past love. And I miss you, Julia Michael sings, and I know we're not supposed to talk, but I'm getting ahead of myself. I get scared when you're not because I'm scared when you're with somebody else. I guess that it's gone and I just keep lying to myself. I can't believe it. Burlios says something similar in a letter. Can you tell me what it is, this capacity for emotion, this force of suffering that is wearing me out. Today, it is a year.

since I saw her for the last time. Unhappy woman, how I loved you. I shudder as I write it. How I love you. He writes later, I have found only one way of completely satisfying this immense appetite for emotion

and this is music. So you're saying that in sort of both these situations, music is the way you exercise these romantic, overwhelming feelings. Yeah, specifically feelings of loss over a love that's just not going to happen. What do you think?

I'm persuaded. I mean, I see what you mean. It's a different approach because the melody isn't transformed from place to place depending on the context as it is in Barliotes. But certainly the way

that the melody comes back again and again in these different guises, actually, okay, okay, even as I'm saying it out loud, I do see, I think it's a strong argument. Yeah, okay. I'm sold. I love it. I think the key is mapping every single time her mental state moves closer to a nostalgia for the relationship. There are more shared melodic notes between that and the romantic melody, which is the hook. The Edai Feex. Yes, the Edifix. Please. I don't think that that's going to pick up in pop music. Perhaps not. I see this mapping of mental state to this transmuting of melody. And again, I think it's happening in the reverse. It's a happy nostalgia. Whereas for earlyos, it goes not so well. Right. So that's what I've got. I love it. Two pairs of songs that seemingly

might have a little in common. The deeper you look, the more connections we find. I love it. That was fun, Charles. I did reach out to some folks on Twitter to see if they had any interesting ideas for completely ridiculously dissimilar, but surprisingly similar songs. And one listener put out the idea of Mr. Brightside and Beethoven's a ninth. Whoa, okay. That, we got to hit the books for that one. I'm very intrigued. And so I have no idea the connection, but supposedly there's something there, and I want to continue this conversation about songs that are seemingly totally different and have some awesome connections that unite them. Definitely if you have other fun ideas. I'm 100% on board. Yeah, share them with us online. That's what we got today. Roll credits.

Switch on Pop was produced by me, Charlie Harding, and... Nate Sloan. That dude. Our editor and mixer is Bill Lance. Our intern is Olivia Wood, design by Luke Harris. You can find more episodes of Switched on Pop anywhere you get your podcast. You can talk to us at Contact at Switchdownpop.com if you have ideas, also on Twitter and Facebook at switch.com. We'll be back again in two weeks with another episode.

And until then, thanks for listening. Thanks for listening.