Popular song and narratology:
Exploring the relationship between narrative theory and song lyrics through creative
practice.
Andrew Ward
Master of Fine Arts
Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Creative Industries Faculty
Queensland University of Technology
2019
This page has been left blank for formatting purposes.
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Contents
Contents ...... 3
Figures...... 6
Statement of Originality ...... 8
Acknowledgements ...... 9
Abstract ...... 10
Key Terms ...... 11
Links to Music Developed as Research ...... 12
Album One: An Exploration of Popular Song Structures ...... 12
Album Two: An Exploration of Narrative in Popular Song ...... 12
Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 13
Chapter 2: Contextual Review ...... 25
From Sonata to Sinatra...... 26
From Adolf to Adele ...... 33
Radio: Time and Instructions ...... 37
The Problem With Instructions ...... 39
But It’s Only Pop Music ...... 47
Choosing 300 Songs ...... 49
Applying Murphy’s Typology ...... 52
Chapter 3: Literature Review ...... 57
Understanding Narrative Discourse ...... 58
Narrative Research and Popular Song ...... 63
Genette’s Model and the Instructional Literature ...... 68
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Narrative Theory-Leading Vocabulary ...... 74
Narrative Progression and Musical Form ...... 75
Genette and Todorov as an Analytical Model ...... 78
Narrative Analysis of 14 Songs ...... 80
Understanding the 300 Songs Data ...... 80
A Closer/Content Analysis Using Genette ...... 82
Observations on Narrative Discourse Progressions in a Set of 14 Songs ...... 86
Applying a Narrative Progression Typology ...... 91
Comparisons and Finding Patterns Using Todorov ...... 92
Chapter 4: Methodology and Methods ...... 98
Practice as Research ...... 100
300 Songs: A Contextual Review ...... 101
A Summary of Methods ...... 106
Chapter 5: Practice One—An Examination of Pop Song Structures ...... 108
An Outline of Album One...... 109
Album One: An Exploration of Structure ...... 110
Musical Form and the Creative Work ...... 113
Locating Tacit Knowledge of Narrative in Practice ...... 118
Chapter 6: Practice Two—An Examination of Narrative in Pop Song Lyrics ...... 120
An Outline of Album Two ...... 121
Album Two: An Exploration of Narrative ...... 121
Effects of Practice One ...... 125
Narrative Operation in the Creative Work ...... 128
Visualising Narrative Progression ...... 132
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Chapter 7: Discussion and Conclusion ...... 137
A Narrative Analysis of Album One ...... 137
Album One and Narrative Equilibrium...... 140
A New Theorisation of Narrative in Popular Song Lyrics ...... 142
Temporal Considerations and Musical Form ...... 142
Positioning of the Narrator...... 143
Narrative Equilibrium in Sectional Function ...... 144
Sectional Narrative Functions in Pop Song Lyrics ...... 145
Scope for Future Research ...... 148
References ...... 151
Appendix A ...... 166
Appendix B ...... 167
Appendix C ...... 168
Appendix D ...... 169
Appendix E ...... 170
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Figures
Figure 1. An example of pop song data collection...... 53
Figure 2. Average percentage use of Murphy’s six forms...... 54
Figure 3. Average number of sections per song by territory...... 55
Figure 4. An example of analysis data collection using Murphy’s typology of form. 55
Figure 5. Biaxial grid of Randle and Evans’s (2013) categories...... 66
Figure 6. Percentage of number one songs shared across territories...... 82
Figure 7. An example of the data collection using Genette’s model for narrative
analysis...... 86
Figure 8. Total number of section types in the contextual review of 14 songs...... 90
Figure 9. An example of the data collation examining the progression of narrative
equilibrium using Todorov’s model...... 92
Figure 10. A visual representation of the progression of narrative equilibrium
according to the outline analytical model...... 93
Figure 11. Number of sections using the four possible functions of narrative
equilibrium in the 14 songs analysed in the contextual review...... 94
Figure 12. Number of each Murphian section used in the 10 songs created for Album
One...... 116
Figure 13. Number of each Murphian section used in the 10 songs created for Album
Two...... 126
Figure 14. Number of sections using the four possible functions of narrative
equilibrium in Album Two...... 134
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Figure 15. Number of sections using the four possible functions of narrative
equilibrium in Album One...... 141
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Statement of Original Authorship
This work has not been previously submitted to meet for an award at this or any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the document contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made.
Signed: QUT Verified Signature
Name: Mr Andrew Benjamin Ward
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Acknowledgements
I would like to express my deepest and most profound thanks to both principal supervisors involved in this project throughout my PhD candidature: Professor Dr
Phillip Graham, for his inspirational scholarly knowledge and influential foundation work and Dr Gavin Carfoot, for his ongoing support and profound insight.
For the passionate and driving support of Associate Supervisor Dr Lee
McGowan, without whose guidance this project would have never been possible; I offer my humble thanks.
I extend my ongoing gratitude to Dr Kiley Gaffney for her ear and wisdom as support in times of academic need.
I would like to thank the technical services office in the music discipline, and specifically Mr James See, at the Queensland University of Technology for their exemplary advice and assistance at all times.
This research would not have been possible without the support of the
Australian Postgraduate Award Stipend Scholarship that was so generously provided to me.
Finally, and most importantly, I would like to thank my brilliant and loving wife, Tulsi, for her everlasting and unwavering support over the three-and-a-half years this project has taken out of our lives together.
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Abstract
This project uses participatory action research methods to examine how narrative affects, influences and informs the lyrics written for contemporary popular songs. I argue for a new narrative-informed analytical typology in songwriting using elements of Todorov (1969) and Genette’s (1981) typologies. This new typology acts as a lens for the examination of song lyrics as a unique and distinct literary form. In the review process I begin with an analysis of musical structures used to codify musical form across a 300-song body of contemporary work. From this analysis, the review selects
14 works as case studies and performs a broad narrative reading using Genette’s
(1981) typology of narrative voice. The resulting data are used to construct a new analytical typology informed by Todorov’s (1969) concept of narrative equilibrium.
Following this review process, a creative practice is employed to explore and interrogate the findings of the review. My creative practice manifests in two distinct artefacts. The first is an album of original music that is created prior to and during the structural analysis. This is offered as a foundation work that explores and interrogates the nature of musical form in popular songs. Using practice as research (Doğantan-
Dack, 2016), the findings from the first practical stage of research are used to inform the theorisation for a second body of work. The resulting second album is presented as a representation of the theory and findings in practice. The outcome of this process is threefold: a creative body of work that represents a practical experimentation of form and narrative in popular song, an exegesis providing a new theory of lyric writing and a model that practitioners and researchers can use to guide the development of narrative in their work.
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Key Terms
Existent: any character involved in a narrative (Pier, 2010)
Extradiegetic: a homodiegetic positioning of the narrator as not directly involved in the story being told (Genette, 1981)
Extradiegetic level: information contained in narrative pertaining to the narrative discourse as defined in narrative theory (Edgar-Hunt, Marland & Rawle, 2015)
Focalisation: a concept used to explore the level of knowledge relationships between a story’s narrator and non-narrational existents (Genette, 1981)
Form: the established structures contained in a musical work (Jones, 2017)
Heterodiegetic: a story in which there is a third-person narrator (Genette, 1981)
Homodiegetic: a story in which there is a first-person narrator (Genette, 1981)
Intradiegetic: a homodiegetic positioning of the narrator as involved in the story being told (Genette, 1981)
Intradiegetic level: the information contained in a narrative pertaining to the story- based elements as defined in narrative theory (Edgar-Hunt et al., 2015)
Lyric: words contained in pop songs and no other form or use of the word (Pattison,
2009)
Pop song: a shortening of the term ‘popular song’, referring to a particular field of musical practice (i.e., pop music) (Murphy, 2011).
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Links to Music Developed as Research
Album One: An Exploration of Popular Song Structures https://www.dropbox.com/home/Andrew%20Ward%20PhD%20Recorded%2 0Material/Album%201%20-%20An%20Exploration%20of%20Structure
Album Two: An Exploration of Narrative in Popular Song https://www.dropbox.com/home/Andrew%20Ward%20PhD%20Recorded%2 0Material/Album%202%20-%20An%20Exploration%20of%20Narrative
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Chapter 1: Introduction
The contemporary popular song is everywhere (Murphy, 2011), permeating modern Western culture with stories that engage and entertain on a mass scale.
Despite this ubiquity, the narrative located in song lyrics is an area of research still to be explored in detail in academic research. My participatory action research (Kemmis
& McTaggart, 1988) project is concerned with the nature of storytelling located in the lyrics of popular songs. More specifically, it examines the function of narrative in relation to the established musical structures located in contemporary popular songs
(Murphy, 2011). Within these established musical structures, lyrics play a key role in establishing the narrative voice (Fludernik, 2009). Consequently, lyrics are instrumental in the development and delivery of story within popular songs. Davis
(1989) states ‘No one can legislate creativity, or would want to’ and it with this sentiment in mind that this research approaches the study of lyrical narrative in popular song, not with the intention of finding a maxim to standardise creativity, but instead a new lens through which songwriting can be viewed.
This project consists of two clearly defined parts: Part A is an investigation of musical form and narrative behaviours therein and Part B is a collection of creative works that responds to and tests the findings of Part A. My exegesis begins with an introduction to the research problem (see Chapter 1) and then discusses the context in which this research problem exists (see Chapter 2). Following this is a review of academic work that addresses narrative and songwriting; this helps outline how the research problem might be addressed (see Chapter 3). A methodological model of approach for the research (see Chapter 4) follows before the creative works developed as the main site of research are outlined (see Chapters 5 and 6). Finally, this manuscript ends with a discussion of the findings and proposes possible future
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research (see Chapter 7). Importantly, the music created as part of my project is core to the understanding of the research; therefore, links that provide context are included at the beginning of this manuscript so that the reader might listen to the creative work prior to and during reading.
The existing popular instructional literature on songwriting provides insight into how a practitioner might develop this narrative (Pattison, 2009); however, there is limited advice on how narrative is executed within the established musical structures (Randle & Evans, 2013). Bennett (2011) notes that ‘the relationship between songwriting practice and song product is an under-explored one in popular musicology’. In academic research, considerable work theorises the nature of narrative within popular songs (Negus, 2012; Nicholls, 2007); however, this thesis argues that the existing research regarding the relationships between musical forms commonly found in pop songs and the ways in which narrative is developed therein is an area that remains under-researched (Randle & Evans, 2013). My research bridges the gap between the instructional literature (Blume, 2011; Murphy, 2011; Davis,
1992) and the investigative and theoretical work of narrative theorists regarding popular music (Negus, 2012a; Nicholls, 2007; Randle & Evans, 2013; Long &
Barber, 2014).
My practice as a commercial songwriter presents an opportunity to examine the theoretical and practical considerations of developing narrative in popular song lyrics. Both my songwriting practice located in industry, and the songs that make up this research are developed with a broad appeal in mind. My professional remit as a songwriter is established by my record label whom instruct me to write a hit song, or songs that can be played on high rotation on commercial radio. Therefore, this research project identifies the relationship between the established musical forms
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located in high charting commercial popular song and narrative theory to investigate how narrative can affect, influence and inform the lyrics of popular songs with specific intention of writing songs that fit a commercial aesthetic and production approach.
This project responds to the question through a practice-as-research
(Doğantan-Dack, 2016) approach that is informed by narrative theory and musical structure analysis, resulting in a new theorisation of narrative in popular song lyrics.
The project draws on action research (Kemmis & McTaggart, 1988) as an overarching framework that exploits the practice of songwriting itself as the fundamental inquiry lens. The result of this approach contributes creative work that presents a significant part of the project and serves to contribute to and further inform the research. For the purpose of investigation, this creative output comprises two albums of original music: the first is a foundational work that informs the analytical process and the second is an audio illustration of the effects of the analysis. Therefore, the creative works serve as both the research site and research outcome. Album One is offered as an experiment in the implementation of musical structures, as outlined by a contextual review.
Album Two serves as an interrogation and exploration of the findings that result from a narrative analysis led by the literature review. These components are brought together in an exegesis (30,000 words) that, for examination, is weighted 30%; the creative work comprises the remaining 70%.
While this research project represents the development of a scholarly understanding of song lyrics, the journey of the research starts much earlier when, as a two-year-old child, I was taken by my parents to see the film Amadeus, which is a semi-fictitious biography of Wolfgang Mozart (Forman, 1984). After leaving the session I am told I said, ‘I want to be like him, I want to play music!’ The next week,
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I was attending violin lessons and my career focus has never shifted from the musical realm. Therefore, one could say that it was the combination of written narrative in the form of a movie script and Mozart’s music that started me down my current path.
Piano training followed violin lessons and opera; singing and theory studies came some years later. This formal music study introduced to me the most ubiquitous of the common practice period (Bazemore, 2006) or classical music structures: the sonata.
This musical structure or form enjoyed an era (Rosen, 1988) as a key compositional device of musical work of the time (Bazemore, 2006). From classical string quartets to romantic piano concerti to the modernist neoclassical symphonic works of
Stravinsky, the three-part convention of the sonata form influenced the structures of musical composition (Irving, 2017). During this research, the similarity that this musical form shares with the Aristotelian or romantic concepts of narrative
(Fludernik, 2009) implied a key underlying idea: that they share a fundamental three- part structure that loosely follows the same dramatic principles of a beginning, middle and end. While the lexicon changes between music and narrative, the fundamental tenets remain consistent (McClatchie, 1997).
The invention and subsequent proliferation of recorded music in the early twentieth century allowed for new structural influences to shape popular music
(Meadows, 2010). The resulting stylistic progression from rhythm and blues (R & B) through vaudeville, jazz and rock-and-roll helped to popularise a new short form of music that was accompanied by lyrics. This was the birth of the modern pop song and, in the ensuing decades, its delivery format helped shape its structure in the conventions that are the subject of this research (Cook & Krupar, 2010). Like many of my musical peers, in my late teens, I lost interest in classical music and a career as a concert violinist, instead choosing to focus my attention on popular music. My
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experience led me to singing in and writing songs for various local bands and it was through this that I became entangled with songwriting and the problem that this research explores.
While the interpretive paradigm of this research takes its understanding of
Western art music from a formal learning and music conservatoire education tradition, my personal practice of narrative design and storytelling in songwriting was informal and somewhat haphazard. This resulted in a personal lyric writing practice that demonstrated limited knowledge of how stories were implemented in the pop song form. After a contextual review of some instructional literature on the subject, I came to the understanding that my interpretive paradigm was predicated on three major tensions: 1) pop songs did not adhere to the simple three-part musical structure of sonata form to which my classical ear was accustomed, 2) the construction of pop song lyrics is often led by the musical structures, not narrative structures, and 3) from these factors, the narratives contained in pop songs do not follow linear three-act conventions. This set of issues was further compounded by the assertion regarding narrative structure that was made by many authors of instructional literature: namely, some authors ascribe that ‘a good song must have a beginning, middle and end’
(Blume, 2011, p. 89), while others take a less rigid and lyric based approach to songwriting structure (Davis, 1992). Given this is the case, how does one present a structured narrative in a musical form that does not consist three obvious and distinct formal sections? At this juncture, it is important I acknowledge that when I use the term ‘pop song’ I am referring to songs that charted on ‘pop’ charts from three major
English-speaking territories. Later in this thesis I will further explore the reasoning for this terminology and the data set itself.
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A paradox begins to emerge in the following lines of thought. Some instructional literature on songwriting (Blume, 2011; Murphy, 2011; Pattison, 2009) prescribes the three-part narrative as a foundation element to narrative developing in lyric writing; however, the same literature offers typologies of form that are not constructed in three parts with Murphy’s (2011) typology being particularly disconnected narrative understanding. The instructional author solution to this contradiction is to engage in practice to explore the relationship between form and storytelling. This practice-informed process is mirrored in academic research on the subject of narrative and popular songs. Negus and Astor (2015) argue that the practice of songwriting is essential to the study of narrative in popular song. Similar to the popular literature, existing academic work argues for examination of narrative through practice, but it does not bridge the gap between narrative theory and the song forms commonly found in popular song.
Nicholls’s (2007) work approaches questions regarding the nature of narrative in pop songs from a musicologist and narrative theorist’s perspective. His assertions largely rely on the prosody between lyrics and melody as being central to popular song examination. While this may be the case through a musicologist’s lens, it does not answer the issues that a practitioner familiar with the musical conventions of the pop song might experience when developing narrative within this form. Similarly, explorations of song lyrics in a general or ethnographic sense (DeWall et al, 2011;
Tagg, 1982) offer little to no insight into the nature of narrative within these confines.
While this research does not seek to diminish the importance of prosody of lyrics and music in popular songwriting, or in musicological research, it is an investigation into lyrical text and the narrative discourse therein. Therefore, I acknowledge the importance of prosody in text and music and argue that the nature of prosody in
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popular song does not yet allow for narratological discourse analysis in the model of
Genette (1981).
This research aligns itself with Randle and Evans’s (2013) understanding that narrative in popular song lyrics is underrepresented in research and that significant room exists for further examination. Their synthesis of semiotics (Barthes, 1974) and narrative theory (Bal, 2009) proposes a codification of four types of song that are outlined later in this research. While this analytical model offers further insight into the relationships between musical forms and narrative, it remains a precursory inquiry that provides no practice-based examination of the theory. Rather, it offers a rudimentary framework from which this practice-as-research (Doğantan-Dack, 2016) project can draw.
This research argues that both the instructional literature and academic research are limited and that this limitation can be addressed by a more nuanced reading that considers creative practice the site of meaning and knowledge creation
(Smith & Dean, 2009). Specifically, existing research efforts to examine narrative in popular song lyrics argue for, but do not emphasise, an approach that uses creative practice to interrogate each posited theory. Randle and Evans (2013) argue songwriting is a creative practice, this research aligns itself with the position on
Negus and Astor (2011) that songwriting practice must be undertaken to properly examine narrative within popular songs.
The uncertainty regarding the relationship between narrative and popular song structure can be divided into two equally important sub-questions based on the initial assertions outlined in this research. First, does popular songs really adhere to a linear beginning/middle/end and if so does this indicate that there is a dissonance between narrative and musical structures? Second, if there is a dissonance, how can a narrative
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operate within the most common pop song structures? In framing these questions it is important to note that all songs, and indeed linear progression as a whole, can be viewed as having a beginning, middle and end, however, for the purposes of this research, ‘beginning/middle/end’ specifically refers to the ways in which the lyrical narrative operates.
To help ascertain the nature of the relationship between narrative and pop song structures, this research examines the common musical structures of the contemporary pop song through a contextual review of popular song forms. The review examines the structural music composition of 300 number one songs from the most relevant English-speaking markets (ARIA, 2016). This analysis contributes new data regarding contemporary musical forms and is used to guide the practice-based components of this project. I argue that tension in knowledge is created by the assertion that lyrics are led by musical structure (Randle & Evans, 2013) and the assertion that song lyrics do not follow a linear three-part narrative convention
(Murphy, 2011). Initially this research seeks to clarify if songs located in recent ‘pop’ charts are led by musical form by undertaking a baseline analysis of 300 popular song forms from that group. In seeking to further explore the tension posited above, this research asks the question: how can narrative operate within the convention of pop song structures? The research explores this question by using elements of Genette’s
(1981) narrative theory to examine narrative patterns that are contained in the identified musical structures within the lyrics of 14 songs selected from the contextual review. To further triangulate this data, the project argues for a new typology of analysis that borrows from both Todorov’s (1971) work on narrative equilibrium and his formulaic distillation of Genette’s focalisation (Pier, 2010).
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Two collections of creative work are presented as an illustration of how these findings might be implemented and how they affect the creative practice of songwriting. These collections are presented as two 10-track albums. The first collection acts as an interrogation of structure, while the second explores narrative operation based on new theorisation that was informed by the review process. Each of these sound recordings has been developed to a point in which they are acceptable as demonstration recordings (demos) for major record label artists and repertoire (A&R) departmental reviews. The songs have then been submitted to the A&R department of an industry partner (Sony Music Entertainment Australia) and were subjected to an interrogation of their perceived commercial value. While the resulting feedback represents a possible parameter for the efficacy of the practice-as-research (Doğantan-
Dack, 2016) outcome of this project, it is not used as a metric in this research. Instead, industry feedback is included anecdotally in Chapters Five and Six in which a reflective process is used to further outline the research findings.
These experimentations are not designed to deliver a definitive answer to the research question, but to offer a point of theoretical and practical engagement with the research problem (Randle & Evans, 2013). This engagement acts as a medium to encourage future discourse on the subject and motivate further research in the field.
The proposed research methodology offers a model for broader examination through practical research that can be used to produce creative artefacts for testing in both the academic and commercial arenas. Consequently, this project helps address the issue identified in both the instructional and academic literature by using the argument that the nature of narrative in the lyrics of popular songs cannot truly be examined without engaging in the practice of songwriting itself (Negus & Astor, 2015).
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This exegesis begins with a discussion of musical form in the historical context. This brief review serves to highlight the development of popular musical forms and how we have arrived at today’s pop song conventions. Following this review, a discussion of musical form investigates the typologies that will be used for the analysis of musical structures and will begin the exploration of the associated lexicon. It serves to establish musical forms that are cemented in the development of the contemporary pop song. Additionally, the review also highlights that while narrative and song are intimately linked, significant instructional literature on songwriting does not describe how its prescribed musical structures relate to narrative development, while others (Davis, 1992) prescribe detail worthy of practice-as- research testing. The research does this by borrowing lines of arguments from academic studies on narrative and popular music and contextualising them within this research project.
Chapter 2 frames a review of the instructional literature in songwriting that establishes storytelling and narrative as being central to the form and lyrics of a popular song. Using this frame, this chapter contextually reviews a collection of popular song creative works that are curated to represent the charting number one singles from three major territories. A collection of 300 songs from Australian, United
Kingdom (UK) and United States (US) markets is subject to a structural analysis informed by the typologies located in the instructional literature. This review of the surrounding creative work serves a dual purpose: 1) to identify the most common musical forms located in pop songs and 2) to establish a structural framework that allows for the application of a narratological lens. The contextual review also serves to frame an analysis of the literature that informs the research methodology.
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Chapter 3 examines the broader field of narrative theory, beginning with a brief discussion on narratological thought. The literature review then refines a discussion regarding elements of Genette’s (1981) and Todorov’s (Genette, 1981) typologies to establish a potential analytic for popular song. This research then takes elements from Genette’s (1981) work and develops a functional analytic for the examination of narrative in popular song lyrics, as well as proposes a further method of investigation by introducing a typology based on Todorov’s (1971) understanding of narrative equilibrium. Additionally, this review explores existing work that involves popular music and narrative theory, as well as further discusses the gap in knowledge between the existing research and instructional literature. After establishing this gap, the methodological thinking that forms the foundation for this research is outlined.
In Chapter 4, an initial examination of the methodology outlines Kemmis and
McTaggart’s (1988) participatory action research spiral as an appropriate methodological framework. Using this framework as a guide, this chapter debates the implications of certain research methodology involving practice (Candy & Edmonds,
2018; Smith & Dean, 2009) and outlines a hybrid comprising of various approaches.
Following this discussion, I deconstruct the research design’s constituent parts and describe how both the analytical process and resulting data act as informers to a creative practice site of interrogation. This combination of narratological and musical approaches draws on our understanding of common musical conventions of form and provides insight into how narrative can operate in common popular song structures.
After the approach is outlined, Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 document the development of this research’s creative components. These chapters discuss the creative process and provide insight into the outcomes resulting from this practice.
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While the first set of creative works explores the findings about musical form, the second explores narrative operation and development in musical structure. Using the established vocabulary on narrative and songwriting theory, the research observes the similarities and differences between the initial baseline collection of songs and the creative works of this research that were informed by the narrative review process.
This chapter then examines the creative works through the same analytical method that was used in the contextual and narrative research, discussing how these results may be valuable to future creative processes.
Chapter 7 contains a summary of works, including a completion of analytical work in which the artefacts resulting from the creative practice are subjected to the typologies outlined in the review process. This chapter discusses the key findings and research design as well as leads to a conversation on how this research could be furthered in the future. The two albums exist both as an exemplar of the research in practice and as the subject of its focus. These research outcomes provide a deeper understanding of narrative in songwriting and offer an analytical framework for its future exploration.
In summary, this chapter has outlined the interpretive paradigm and how the research question has developed as part of a creative practice in songwriting. Further, this chapter has guided the reader through the manuscript’s components and has provided a precursory indication of the key theoretical discourse that guides the project. In Chapter 2, the contextual review develops the context regarding the research’s significance and how the practice of songwriting is situated in modern popular song.
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Chapter 2: Contextual Review
To answer the question of how can/does narrative operate in the lyrics of popular songs, I commence by examining the nature of different musical forms and how they have developed throughout the history of Western music. Specifically, the
Western common-practice period tradition is first examined, tracing a path from the development of written music to the sonata form through to the contemporary popular songs of today. This examination establishes the significance of musical form in popular song and identifies the historical influences that have contributed to these traditions of form. It is important to note that this thesis does not follow conventions of academic structures in that a contextual review is performed and accompanied by a study of 300 songs and an accompanying creative work examining the resulting findings. Following this chapter another review of academic literature is performed with another analysis of a smaller 14-song data set followed by another set of creative works testing the resulting findings. Outlining this approach at the beginning of the contextual review provides some context for the research methodology that is explored in greater detail in Chapter 4 of this thesis.
I begin by examining the development of the sonata form and identifying its key similarities to three-act narrative structures (Reid, 2014). While Sonata form has little to do historically with the development of the contemporary popular song, I use this musical form as a discussion point to demonstrate historical musical forms that use a three-part structure. Then, I examine how the emergence of American musical traditions, European folks songs, and recorded music influenced musical form and contributed to the contemporary popular song. Further discussions provide context for how changes in technology and the delivery mediums of music in the twentieth century continued to influence the development of strongly defined sections and
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structures in musical form. The definitions and terminology of these aspects, as they are defined in the instructional literature on songwriting and in related academic research, are then reviewed.
After examining the importance of musical structures in the Western popular song tradition, a detailed review of surrounding creative works is performed. This review examines the nature of musical form in 300 popular songs from three major
English-speaking commercial markets. This review uses popular instructional literature on songwriting to inform the terminology and typology that is used in this analysis. Therefore, the contextual review provides data on popular song structure that subsequently informs the creative practice presented later in the document. Both the review of the instructional literature and the analysis of 300 popular songs provide a detailed context for this research and suggest a methodological path for the continued examination of narrative theory and popular song lyrics.
From Sonata to Sinatra
This section is a historical account and critical reading of key social and cultural factors that influenced the development of the contemporary popular song, beginning with an examination of the written musical form’s development in Western art music. It was in the religious temples of the Eastern Roman Empire during the ninth century AD that the first modern musical notation emerged (Loris, 2012). While some accounts of Western music history have positioned the development of musical notation in the Gregorian monastic traditions of northern Italy during the eleventh century (Loris, 2012), the Byzantine Empire was the true origin of modern musical notation and form (Loris, 2012). During this time, a rudimentary notation system known as neumes was used to transcribe the melodies of religious texts (Helsen,
2015). Here, the structures of the written religious texts governed the musical
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structures of these works. Even at this early point in Western music history, we see a symbiosis between story and musical structure; these structures were the basis of written musical form for another six centuries, until the beginning of the Western
European renaissance (Neume, 2002). This historical point is when this research’s examination of the relationship between storytelling and modern song structures commences.
During the rise of feudalism in Europe (Blum, 2017), the growth of court or chamber music as a key source of entertainment for the aristocracy developed in parallel (Baron, 2010). As empires expanded and exotic cultures came in and out of fashion musical practices proliferated through travel, from wandering minstrel traditions of central Europe, to various folk song traditions formed around oral modes of communication (Loris, 2012). In the early Renaissance European courts a collection of diverse musical forms known as the Suite (Loesch, 2004) grew in popularity. The Suite’s main function was as a form of dance music that was not based on lyrical inspiration, but rather on rhythmic devices (Kerman, 2005). The different nation states and empires of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries developed distinct dance rhythms and, due to the diplomatic relationships between these states, these rhythms permeated the courts of Western Europe. By the baroque period (1600–
1750) and J. S. Bach’s experimentations in temperament, these influences had established several commonly accepted musical structures that were based on rhythmic devices (Baron, 2010). The two most common overarching forms were binary (A/B) and ternary (A/B/A) (Adrian, 1990); the sonata form began to emerge from the latter. It is important to note that the Suite operated as court music for the elite members of a class based European society, and are not the focus of this
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discussion due to their cultural representation but rather the readily available documentation resulting from their associated status.
Although the sonata (A/B/A) was a common framework for compositions in the baroque era, these works were written mostly for solo instruments. J. S. Bach was a significant contributor to the form in this era, with his exploration of keys that were most famously developed for the violin, cello and clavier (Leichtentritt, 1951).
Furthering the development of the form, the leaders of the Western classical period in music truly forged a path for the sonata. Clamenti and Mozart used the popular form to develop entire symphonic works, but it was Haydn who became known as the father of the symphony and string quartet, which were the two mediums that cemented sonata as the leading musical form (Jones, 2017). This form was adopted by early romantic-era composers (e.g., Beethoven), who used it as the basic framework for almost all first movements of symphonies, until the last great romantics of the early twentieth century (Samson, 1991).
Within the confines of its basic three-part structure, the sonata form provided the basis on which modernist works were built, such as the hour-long tenth symphony of Shostakovich (Volkov, 2004). Given its longevity as the most common of Western instrumental music structures (1700–1910), one could argue that the sonata framework had a fundamental and structural function when it came to presenting musical ideas to an audience (Schmidt-Beste, 2011). This fundamental function is governed by the form itself and is broken into three main elements by most common- practice period musicologists (Hill, 1987): the exposition, which is the initial delivery of the primary themes and motives; the development, which involves the transforming of the primary themes and motive to another musical perspective; and the recapitulation, which is the delivery of the initial themes and motives that have been
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influenced by the development section (Schmidt-Beste, 2011). This is where the research draws its first significant comparisons between music and narrative. A clear similarity exists between the sonata form and the three-act structure that is discussed in narrative and screenwriting theory (Adams et al., 2005). This three-act structure breaks storytelling into three similar sections that are outlined by Troitter (1998) as follows: the first act is mainly used for exposition and establishes the main characters, themes and the equilibrium of the story; the second act serves to introduce confrontation or some kind of thematic disturbance to the equilibrium established in the first act; and the third-act creates a climax and resolution to this disturbance, establishing a new equilibrium that contains information acquired by the second act.
This elaboration of each act’s function within the three-act structure of narrative mirrors that of the sonata form in music and indicates possible links between how audiences of the time consumed both music and story. Similarly, narrative theory has developed alongside twentieth century technology and screenwriting, while popular music has equally been affected by the evolution of electronics and recording technology. To reflect this evolution, many modern screenwriting theorists argue for a more in-depth structural model (Campbell, 1988; Heyes, 2007) of narrative development within cinema. While this research argues for Sonata as a demonstration of the link between three-part narrative and musical forms, it does not assert that the
Sonata played a significant role in the development of contemporary popular song.
This research project argues for a new model of the theorisation of pop song lyrics.
The research first examines how popular musical forms turned away from the
Western classical music tradition to develop into today’s contemporary pop song; this is to gain contextual insight into the similarities between narrative theory and musical
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form. This chapter, therefore, further highlights the links between musical structure and narrative function.
A key site of development in modern musical form originates in the Atlantic
Slave Trade that proliferated between the sixteenth and nineteenth Century (Thornton,
1998). With the over 12 million people stolen from the western coastal nations of
Africa, came a diverse set of languages, religious, and cultural practices including a plethora of musical practice and tradition (Christopher, 2006). During this period of
American history significant effort on the part of slavers was placed on breaking down these traditions in an attempt to control the slave population (Thornton, 1998), however, while many elements of cultural identity were successfully destroyed the commonality of musical practice allowed for the survival of functional music by way of work and spiritual music (Hobson, 2013). The musicality of the West-African ear and tuning system survived through this functional music and developed into a diverse set of musical forms including field holler, honky tonk, and early blues
Hobson, 2013). Most notable of these forms was the call a response nature of field holler, where the workers in the field would toil to the call of another slave often given the elevated title of ‘caller’ (Anderson, 2008). This musical practice is arguably the birthplace of the first truly American musical form, the 12-bar blues that uses an
AAB structure built on a set of harmonic practices (Bransford, 2004). While sharing some similarities to the AABA form of some European folk song structures, the 12- bar blues is built on a foundation of West African harmonic practice and the context and function of its original use (Clarke, 1995).
In the late nineteenth Century the American Civil War arguably furthered the emancipation of the West African slave labour force in the US, and brought with it vast swathes of military equipment including military music instruments that would
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build the foundation of early New Orleans Jazz (Anderson, 2008). The West African harmonic and structural systems developed over centuries of slavery were overlaid on
European instruments that operated in a Classical European tuning system. This established a key influential musical development of the twentieth century where a whole new musical language was being developed and popularised (Hobson, 2013).
Many of the early iterations of this music used the popular 12-bar structure, but as the influence of New Orleans’ diverse trade port culture influenced the music being made in the city, folk song conventions of AABA began to emerge as a common structure
(Hobson, 203). This AABA structure became elongated where each section would make up 8-bars, 32 bars in total, and eventually would become the standard song form in American popular music for much of the first half of the Twentieth Century
(Appen, 2015).
In the early twentieth century, several technological developments altered how music was communicated. The emergence of the phonograph boosted the existing commercial music publishing marketplace and generated the lyric-centric songwriting traditions of Tin Pan Alley (Shepherd, 2016). In the small rooms of West 28th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in Manhattan, New York, popular African-
American music traditions were translated from a ‘blacks only’ exotic form to a more sanitised ‘commercially’ appropriate aesthetic (Charlton, 2011). Simultaneously, vaudeville introduced this aesthetic to the wider white-American public, often in a heavily satirised form akin to the blackfaced mistrals of the Al Jolson era (Musser,
2011). As such, the Tin Pan Alley and vaudeville traditions were responsible for the spread of the form common to that of 12-bar blues and the AABA form. Appen &
Frei-Hauenschild (2015) views the influence of Tin Pan Alley as follows:
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In the 1890’s, the typical verse/chorus form of the early Tin Pan Alley era
emerged as these formal components were expanded and subjected to musical
and lyrical variation. In this new form, a chorus consisted of a 16- or 32-
measure cycle based on an ABAC structure. Following World War I, the 32-
measure AABA form, in which the A-section now began or ended with a
refrain, prevailed as the standard. Employing various styles of harmonization
from the Tin Pan Alley bag of tricks for the A-sections became an important
method of differentiating these sections from one another. (Appen, p.7, 2015)
Appen’s (2015) work unpacks the nuanced step-by-step development of this
32-bar form and how it progresses into various forms that can be located in numerous popular song forms today. Furthering the commercialisation of this Tin Pan Alley influenced song structure, vaudeville stars like Fred Astaire and Al Jolson crossed over from touring acts to the big screen and paved the way for the singing movie stars of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, such as Crosby and Sinatra. While white songwriters and personalities were behind the spread of the popular 32-bar informed AABA form, this structural device had also proliferated in traditional jazz arrangements. Common in traditional jazz, this 32-bar structure was repeated and used as a harmonic-based structural framework that instrumentalists could improvise over. This form was further developed in the modern jazz era as part of a countercultural offering from the
African-American community of New York (Jackson, 2001). However, while this form was popular in many forms of music in the mid-twentieth century, another form was developing in parallel.
The birth of rock-and-roll is often cited (e.g., Pegg, 2002) as being Chuck
Berry’s Maybellene (Berry, Fratto & Freed, 1955). This was America in the 1950s,
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which had a growing youth culture that was energised by the employment opportunities provided to them by a booming post-war economy; this became the new market for commercial exploitation (Acknowledgement, 1983). Rock-and-Roll became the soundtrack of this movement and established itself as the symbol for a new rebellious generation (Friedlander, 1996). This is the site where modern music traditions began to formalise their structural language beyond the simple terms used in Tin Pan Alley and pushed towards the structures we recognise today (Appen, p.28,
2015). It is important to note that this summary of forms and structures is not intended to represent a comprehensive history of Twentieth Century American music but instead acts as a discussion of some key points of context that might help build understanding for the research to come. To further the understanding of how modern pop music structures came into existence, this research next examines the effect that a collection of delivery mediums had on songwriting.
From Adolf to Adele
Although this section is focused on twentieth century developments in music, it is not intended to be a complete account of music history. Instead, this section will highlight some key social and cultural developments that influenced the emergence of contemporary pop song forms (Murphy, 2011). In Europe in the 1930s, the political uncertainty left by the First World War led to the rise of the Fascists and resulted in the Nazi occupation of France (Sailsbury, 2015). Hitler had implemented a widespread ban on cultural content from ‘exotic’ sources, including those of the forces that were allied against him (Zalampas, 1990). During the early twentieth century, Paris’s progressive and accepting society welcomed many African-American citizens migrating there (Chamberlain, 2003). This led Paris to develop a jazz culture similar to that of the great American centres and a particular love of the musical style
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(Asukile, 2010). Since the occupying forces had placed a ban on jazz and most other forms of popular live music, small groups of young French citizens gathered under the cover of darkness in former music halls to listen to the latest recordings of their favourite artists that had been smuggled into the country (Brewster & Broughton,
2006). These gatherings saw the birth of the disc jockey (DJ) and the term discotheque, which means library of records (Hutton, 2007). This alternative way in which groups of people consumed music spread to the US through the underground dance halls of the working class and the progressive Manhattan house parties that were the mainstay of New York’s artistic elite (Brewster & Broughton, 2006). In these cultural spaces, the DJ would undertake a significant contributing role to the development of contemporary pop song forms.
While the 32-bar AABA form exerted a significant influence on popular music until the 1960s (Adelt, 2010), other musical forms were developing in the US’s
Midwestern states (Flory, 2013). During the first decade of the twentieth century, industrialisation and a burgeoning manufacturing industry influenced the development of some twentieth century musical traditions. The Ford Motor Company based its manufacturing plant in Detroit, Michigan, and General Motors was soon to follow. In the 1930s, Detroit was the fourth most populous city in the US, due to the population boom that was prompted by the motor industry (Motown, 2013). During this time, a large proportion of the African-American labour force from the south in
Mississippi traded their rural work for factory labour and migrated north to work
(Chamberlain, 2003). In addition to this internal migration, Latin-American immigrants moved north to Detroit, creating a diverse cultural environment that was ready to assert its own musical influence (Motown, 2013). This cultural environment
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existed prior to the popularisation of the DJ, but the two cultural practices were soon to meet and be instrumental in the development of disco music.
Detroit became synonymous with the motor industry and the city earned the colloquial name ‘Motor Town’ (Flory, 2017). Using the shortened version Berry
Gordy founded Motown, a local record label embraced the music resulting from the multicultural environment that was created by the new manufacturing sector
(Fitzgerald, 1995). While rock-and-roll had become the mainstay of middle-class white-American youth, the Latin and African-American labour force of Detroit came together to create new genres of music. R&B and soul music formed around the combination of incredible vocal talent and a new style of songwriting (McCarthy,
2013). This style, while still informed by 32-bar AABA and ABAC (Appen, 2015), had moved away towards a more A/B binary form similar to that of rock-and-roll and drew inspiration from the harmonic traditions of traditional jazz and rhythmic nuances of Latin-American-influenced percussion to develop a new creative practice
(Fitzgerald, 1995).
As Motown grew in popularity, another musical style was emerging in the recordings of James Brown. Often referred to as the godfather of soul, Brown was the leading progenitor of soul and funk music, which was a style that functioned predominantly as a dance music form. Consequently, funk is typified by a danceable tempo centred on short, repeated musical or lyrical phrases that are often only one bar in length (Thompson, 2001). While still using the A/B and AABA structures of other popular song genres, Funk’s shortened basic musical phrase iterations of horn stabs and loopable drum beats contributed, in part, to the repetition that is popular in today’s musical forms, in which loops and repeated rhythms are used as a compositional device.
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As the popularity of soul and funk swelled, disco dancehall culture became a prominent feature of the American musical landscape. Disco clubs were designed around the playing of records to mostly black and Latin-American audiences for which a single DJ could play music all night with varied styles and instrumentation in any discotheque (Brabazon, p. 116, 2012). At this time, several recording and recorded technologies became more readily available to America’s burgeoning middle class (Brabazon, 2012). The financial pressure placed on disco proprietors insisted that the DJ play continuously, for fear of having patrons leave the dance floor and their establishment. Therefore, DJs of the 1970s used magnetic tape machines to create extended mixes of popular songs, often using tape loops to transition between works (Brewster & Broughton, 2006). Sections known as breakbeats were taken from recordings in which only drums were featured (Ewoodzie Jr., 2017). This looping of beats and musical sections further contributed to the repetition found in contemporary pop song forms. It must be noted that this research does not claim that repetition in popular song is solely derived from these musical styles, but instead asserts that turntablism and disco laid the foundation for Hip-Hop culture which goes on to be a significant influence in Twenty-first Century popular song.
Facilitated by the short musical repetition provided in funk music, DJs used multiple turntables to facilitate the continuous playing of music. This dual turntable system provided the platform for beat mixing, which is a technique that involved matching the tempo of two different recordings to play one song continuously into another. Beat mixing was combined with the scratching technique of Jamaican dub music to create the foundation for Hip-Hop to emerge as a genre out of New York in the late 1970s (Brabazon, 2012).
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In the 1980s the emergence of several technologies may have influenced the way in which songs were written. Protocols like the popular Music Instrument Digital
Interface (MIDI), the broader commercial development of the drum machine, and the emergence of the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) expanded the possibilities of how songs could be written and produced (Peres, et al. p.41, 2016). The ability to achieve quicker compositional outcomes in a digital workflows using loops
(Anderton, p.50, 2011), and the influence of distribution mediums setting commercial boundaries on popular song forms throughout the Twentieth Century (Murphy, 2011), may have been contributing factors in a popular song structure that more lead by musical considerations than lyrical and narrative influences.
This research posits that these commercial, technological, cultural and social contexts played a significant role in the development of the structures of popular song forms today and, unlike the sacred music discussed in the previous section, these popular song forms emerged with lyrics that often could be more informed by structure, rather than the inverse. With this in mind, my research analyses popular song form to better understand and examine these musical structures and the relationship between them and lyric writing. To achieve this, further discussion on the influence of distribution mediums is needed to illustrate how modern pop song structures came to be, with radio emerging as one of the defining influences of these forms and the primary medium through which music was disseminated to audiences in the twentieth and early twenty-first Century.
Radio: Time and Instructions
In his book Murphy’s Laws of songwriting, Murphy (2011) discusses how the taste of the contemporary pop music audience was shaped through the broadcast medium of radio. In particular, he emphasises that the musical structures of popular
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song have been informed by the needs of commercial broadcast radio in the latter half of the twentieth century (Murphy, 2011). Murphy’s work, like much of the instructional literature, relies on an established vocabulary to discuss musical structures. This vocabulary is informed by the sources discussed earlier in this review and focuses on sectional definitions or titles (chorus/verse) and how they operate within a structure as a whole. This sectional vocabulary is used to discuss how a song’s structural design was led by an audience’s perceived needs, which are related to the parameters set by commercial radio in the US (Murphy, 2011).
Murphy (2011) starts by arguing that a ‘hit’ song must arrive at ‘the chorus’ by the one-minute mark, as it is at this point that the listener will lose interest in the song; therefore, ‘getting to the point’ (Murphy, 2011, pp. 84) within this temporal limitation is crucial. Murphy further discusses his concept of the ‘two-minute wall’, which is the point at which, if no new musical information is delivered, the listener will stop engaging. He noted that commercial radio is about keeping listeners from changing stations; therefore, radio stations play music that best keeps listeners engaged. The most obvious evidence of this commercial influence on songwriting is observed in the overall average length of a pop song. The length of a song was originally dictated by the medium of its release, particularly in the days of phonographs and vinyl records (Schmidt Horning, 2011); however, radio influenced the contemporary length of songs by insisting that songs fit between predetermined advertising slots (Wired, 2014).
Both Blume (2011) and Leiken (2008) agree with Murphy’s comments regarding radio and time constraints. Blume (2011) noted that ‘you only have three to three-and-a-half minutes and probably between twenty-four and thirty-six different lines in which to tell your story’ (p. 42), while Leiken (2008) stated that popular songs
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are time restricted, as they are ‘usually three to three and a half minutes long’ (p. 1).
Leiken (2008) also addresses how temporal limitations have affected the structural frameworks of pop songs: ‘Contemporary hit songs have two distinct lyrical and musical sections that are repeated at least once. They are the verse, called section A, and the chorus, called section B’ (p. 3). This reflects Davis’ (1989) assertion that the
A/B or ‘verse/chorus’ is ‘the most popular song form since the sixties’ (p. 31). In a further review of the instructional literature, many titles discuss the influence that radio had on the development of contemporary songs’ temporal parameters. In How to be a hit songwriter: Polish and marketing your lyric and music (Leiken, 2003), it is noted that the key source of publicity and revenue as a songwriter comes from radio play. This argument places radio at the heart of the commercial success of the songwriter and emphasises the need to adhere to radio’s strict time parameters. Paul
Zollos’s (2003) Songwriters on songwriting proposes that perhaps these time limitations lead to the changing form of the popular song. In both cases, the authors indicate that music’s particular broadcast medium was a major contributing factor in the development of the modern pop song.
The Problem With Instructions
The canon of instructional literature emphasises the idea that a song and storytelling are intimately linked. While authors like Sheila Davis (1989, 1988) stand out as taking considerable effort in describing the nature of story telling in popular song form, most authors of instructional songwriting texts (Murphy, Blume, Leiken,
Webb) do not provide extended discussion regarding how songs structure affects the telling of stories. In part two of her instructional work The Craft of Lyric Writing
Davis (1989) outlines her understanding of mastering of song forms. She discusses concepts of narrative time (p. 111-117) in detail prescribing that “Drama is for now,
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narrative is for then” (p. 111). Davis also discusses nature of storytelling in song sections by stating that the verse “should not bore us” (p. 53) and that the verse exists to develop tension to that we resolve in the chorus (p.53). While this is a valuable insight into practices of lyric writing, Davis writes in later chapters how this can be achieved through literary devices, Davis’ work predates the proliferation of newer song forms like that outlined by of Murphy. Although is it possible to extract enough storytelling direction from Davis’ work to produce a lyrical narrative, there are holes in her instruction created by new song forms like that of the pre-chorus role in story function.
While the lack of instruction regarding narrative–song relationship in other prominent instructional texts (Murphy, 2011. Leiken, 2008. Blume, 2011) has informed the current study’s context, for the purpose of this contextual review, the key terminological cues are taken from the instructional literature when examining overall musical structures and their individual components, such as verses and choruses.
The term chorus dates back to ancient Greek theatre (Collins & O’Brien,
2011), but its use in the contemporary song world is significantly more modern.
Meanwhile, the Tin Pan Alley concepts of verse and refrain and 32-bar AABA structures might have served well in the 1920s (Murphy, 2011); however, today’s pop songs require a more in-depth lexicon to describe form as evidenced in Davis’ (1989) work. Murphy (2011) proposes that popular songs mostly adhere to one of six basic structures, which he calls his ‘six forms’ (p. 54). He outlines the first form as the most prevalent in 1930s–1950s music and comprising what was referred to as a verse and a chorus/refrain. The verse, unlike modern verses, was at a different tempo to the rest of the song. This form was commonly used in early twentieth century popular music, but
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it later became less popular, as it often did not adhere to the time constraints of radio
(Murphy, 2011). Consequently, the chorus and refrain section became more popular.
As Murphy (2011) recounts:
Back then the publisher was like a benevolent dictator, and writers would have
to keep office hours. They would sit in airless rooms with pianos, until they
came up with an outline for a song. This outline would generally be the chorus
or refrain part we know today. They would rush out of their cubicles and play
the chorus/refrain for their publisher. If the publisher thought it was a ‘good
idea’, the writer would be told to ‘finish it.’ ‘Finish it’ basically meant write
the verse. The verse would set up the song. (Chapter 13, Section 6)
The key features of this form are a single long verse used to setup a chorus/refrain that is repeated, often with different lyrics. Murphy (2011) uses both
Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer (Marks, 1949) and I left my heart in San Francisco
(Cory & Cross, 1962) as examples of this form.
Murphy’s (2011) second form is common in rock-and-roll; he defines it as
‘basically verse, chorus, verse, chorus, instrumental, chorus, chorus out’ (p. 54). This is the first time he discusses a repetitious structure, using (I can’t get no) Satisfaction by the Rolling Stones (Jagger & Richards, 1965) and Maybellene by Chuck Berry et al. (1955) as examples. This form mirrors Davis’ (1989) concepts of the A/B or
Verse/Chorus Model she describes as the backbone of popular songwriting in the
1980s. While Murphy (2011) refers to this form as an older style, it is the foundation of his following two forms.
The third form is defined as ‘a more complicated second form’ comprising a
‘middle eight’ or ‘bridge’(Murphy, 2011, p. 54); he further noted that this new section
‘invites the listener to look a little harder at the story’ (p. 54). The entire form is listed
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as verse, chorus, verse, chorus, middle 8, chorus. The only significant difference in this form being the introduction of the middle 8 which replaces a non-lyrical instrumental sections with that of a sung lyrical section and therefore introduces more lyrical text. This is the first time he mentions the correlation between song structure and narrative development: ‘when you approach writing the middle eight or bridge, think “but, what if?” ’(Murphy, 2011, p. 59). This is in keeping with what Davis
(1989) describes as a ‘bridge’ (p. 32).
In his fourth form Murphy adds yet another section, comprising of the ‘lift, climb, pre-chorus or channel’, which is placed between the verse and chorus; the purpose of this is to ‘create tension, resolve it’ and to ‘lift the listener into the chorus’
(Murphy, 2011, p. 63). Davis’ (1988, 1989) does not address this section yet Murphy
(2011) asserts this is the most common form in popular song according to his 2011 based anecdotal perspective.
Murphy (2011) describes his fifth form as the AABA discussed much earlier by Davis (1989) as: ‘in traditional AABA, the A parts are verses and the B section is the bridge. There is no sing along chorus’ (p. 64). This assertion is not in line with the evidence of the 32-bar form discussed by Davis (1988, 1989) as she infers that the title of songs in this form are part of a sing along chorus concept (1989, p. 32). In this form, characterised by an increasing degree of narrative direction, Murphy (2011) describes the first of the A sections is the ‘once upon a time’ verse, the second A section is the ‘here and now’ verse and the final A section is the ‘when I’m old and grey’ verse (Murphy, 2011, p. 68). This is not necessarily the case in the writings of
Davis as she describes this form as being melody led (p. 31). In this discussion,
Murphy provides further evidence that these musical structures may have individual
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narrative development purposes, implying that the middle eight is an opportunity for more storytelling.
The sixth form holds some similarity to rondo forms of the European common practice period, while holding no direct causational link. In the Western art music tradition, the rondo form contains a theme and variation in which the theme is played, followed by a variation followed by a theme. This pattern is repeated until the end of the work. Sixth form is similar to this, as it comprises ‘chorus, verse, chorus, musical turnaround/instrumental, bridge/middle eight, chorus’ and ‘moves the listener into the meat of the song very quickly’ (Murphy, 2011, p. 70). This form is commonly used in hip-hop from the 2000s, such as in Eminem’s The monster (Mathers et al., 2011).
While Murphy (2011) is the author who most concisely describes a typology of form, his assertions are often in conflict with other authors like Davis (1989). For this reason my research tests Murphy’s (2011) typology of form as a method of leading a structural analysis of narrative and popular song. Given the already conflicted nature of Murphy’s (2011) typology it is important to identify the musical and lyrical parameters that a more broad authorship define as descriptors for the different song sections. In a review of many instructional works (Davis, 1988, 1989.
Leiken, 2003, 2007. Blume, 2011. Pattison, 2009. Webb, 1998), the description of the sections Murphy (2011) identifies within his six form model, are commonly refered to as being comprised of the following:
1. the verse, which is usually defined by conversational lyrics with little to no
repetition
2. the chorus, which is the ‘nut’ of the song that often relies on repetition
3. the pre-chorus, which is a section designed to musically lift the listener into
the chorus
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4. the middle eight, which is a lyrical section occurring before the last hearing of
the final section with new musical elements introduced
5. The instrumental, which is a non-lyrical section petitioned in a similar
chronology to the middle eight.
These five sections provide a guideline for analysing lyrical structure and a model for analysis of the musical and narrative functions of song sections. What it lacks is specific content regarding the design of narratives within these forms and sections, despite having established that there is an intrinsic link between popular song forms and story:
The verse is generally where you set up the premise of the song. It can be four,
six, eight lines or more. The lift or climb or channel or pre-chorus or any one
of a dozen names this particular section has (e.g., in Europe it is referred to as
a bridge) is two, four, six lines that precede the title or chorus of the song.
Generally, it changes rhyme scheme from the verse and creates tension by
implying or actually using the words ‘but,’ ‘maybe,’ ‘when,’ ‘because,’ etc.,
and then in most cases it lifts the listener melodically to the chorus or title.
The chorus which, incidentally, comes from the Greek ‘khoros’ which means
a group of singers, is essentially the destination to which you have been
leading the listener. (Murphy, 2011, Chapter 13, Section 2)
Blume (2011) takes a focused approach to outlining the narrative goals of each of these different sections, explaining that ‘the primary function of the verse is to provide the exposition—the information that will lead to the hook or title’ (p. 29). He states that ‘it tells the story and sets the emotional tone. The verse lyric—its words— contain the plot, the detail and the action’ (Blume, 2011, p. 4). While this appears to be a clear direction, this small comment constitutes the entirety of Blume’s instruction
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about the role of narrative in a verse section. Further, there is no specific discussion regarding the three-part narrative concepts of exposition that do not adhere to
Murphy’s structural constraints for the popular song. In Blume’s discussion of the pre-chorus, he offers nothing on its narrative relevance or purpose. While Murphy
(2011) briefly explains that the purpose of the pre-chorus is to ‘lift the listener melodically to the chorus’ (p. 45), this again does not clearly state any specific narrative function for the section. Blume (2011) essentially expands on Murphy’s concept when he writes about the function of the chorus: ‘Lyrically, the chorus’ job is to summarise the idea and emotion of the song in a general way and hammer home its title’ (p. 6). For Blume, the description of each section relative to narrative function is limited to basic frameworks for the development of a story and there is no significant detail on how a narrative is typically developed, constructed or communicated in a popular song.
Jimmy Webb’s (1998) instructional work Tunesmith skips the relationship of structural frameworks and narrative completely. Instead, ‘for the sake of argument’,
Webb (1998) creates categories that he believes apply to all popular song lyrics:
1. people, places or events in our memory that render us happy, sad or angry
(e.g., Last night when we were young by Harold Arlen & E. Y. Harburg)
2. people, places or events affecting us at the present time that render us
happy, sad or angry (e.g., You’ve lost that lovin’ feelin’ by Spector, Weil
& Mann)
3. people, places or events likely to affect us in the future that render us
happy, sad or angry (e.g., Any day now by Burt Bacharach & Bob
Hilliard)
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4. satire, or sarcasm and humour of a personal or political nature that is
usually exercised at the expense of others, but sometimes aimed at
ourselves (e.g., A simple desultory philippic by Paul Simon)
5. songs emanating from fictional characters (untrustworthy narrators)
whose identities we assume to communicate, whether in a serious or
humorous way (e.g., Rednecks by Randy Newman)
6. recounting of events in story form, such as the true ballad (e.g., El paso by
Marty Robbins)
7. silly music, such as comedic or novelty numbers that teach dances (e.g.,
Ahab the Arab by Ray Stevens)
8. abstract surrealism (e.g., Strawberry fields by Lennon & McCartney)
9. allegorical tales (e.g., The day the music died by Don McLean) (p. 34).
While Webb’s (1998) model might borrow some inspiration for the imagining of narrative content, it provides little insight into how narrative can operate within the confines of the established musical structures of pop songs. This may be partly due to a common discourse contained throughout the body of instructional literature that is contained in this contextual review—in particular, that many authors provide rules of the ‘craft’ (Blume, 2011; Murphy, 2011; Pattison, 2009), yet also indicate that the creation of music in a formulaic manner is undesirable (Lieken, 2014; Murphy, 2011;
Webb, 1998). This results in Murphy’s, Blume’s and Webb’s work providing obfuscating advice on how best to approach storytelling in a pop song structure. Davis
(1989) discusses the story telling nature of songs by providing evidence of operation in existing popular songs and is more in-depth in her assertions regarding the ways in which structure designs narrative in lyrics, however, her work does not include descriptions of more modern song forms and as such is lacking in detail for a twenty-
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first century songwriting paradigm. To address the tensions created by the conflicting instructional literature, my research takes an investigative approach based on practice to develop an alternative set of guidelines on pop songwriting. In refining this approach, the research asks the question: how can narrative operate within the accepted models of form in popular songs?
But It’s Only Pop Music
In this section I argue further for framing Pop Songs as a distinct literary form separate to that of prose or poetry. In support of this assertion Davis (1989) writes:
During the sixties we heard a lot about the “poetry” of rock. Writers like Joni
Mitchell, Peter Townshend, and especially Bob Dylan were dubbed as poets.
Critics delights in analysing the multilayered symbolism, the imagery, the
oblique metaphors prevalent in the lyrics of the post Tim Pan Alley school.
(Davis, 1989, p. 10)
While much detail has been directed at the meaning and discourse of the stories located in pop songs (Griffiths, 2003. Machin, 2010. Turner, 2011) in the same way as the works of Colleridge or Poe (Cowitt, 2016), little research has been done on the function of more contemporary and twenty-first Century (Davis, 1992) model song structures and the possibility of narrative functions on a section-by-section basis.
As Negus (2012a) noted, perhaps the academic world of narrative theory does not see an inherent value in the lyrics of pop songs as a standalone site for narrative examination. As the recorded music industry relied on ‘songs that try to tell a story’
(Fenster, 1999, cited in Blume, 2011, p. 50), it seemed more difficult than expected to find definitive information, both popular and academic, on narrative and the pop song.
To explore the kinds of typologies, forms and sections identified in the instructional literature and their relationship with narrative, my research posits that
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pop song lyrics are a standalone literary form. While instructors and songwriters may describe the function of the lyric as the communication of a ‘linear lyrical conversation between two people’ (Murphy, 2011, p. 22), a temptation exists to examine songs in terms of lyrical poetry. While elements of pop songs adhere to the post-romantic concepts of lyrical poetry (Brewster, 2009) and Socratic principles of
‘music of the lyre’ (Aristotle, 1996, p. 3), the contemporary popular song does not completely fit within these paradigms. Murphy (2011) states that ‘poetry and lyrics are almost always mutually exclusive’ and that lyrics ‘use the devices of poetry
(alliteration, metaphor, etc.) in a linear lyrical conversation’ (p. 23). Blume (2011) simply stated that ‘a lyric is not a poem’ and provided several parameters that define a lyric:
Well written lyrics (as opposed to poems): conform to structure; are concise to
accommodate a song length of 3–4 minutes; have sections or specific lines
that are crafted to be repeated; are intended to be sung, not read silently or
aloud; use rhymes that sound natural (poetry may or may not use rhymes);
take into account the actual sound of the words, not just their meaning; [and]
are crafted to lend themselves to strong melodies (p. 52).
Therefore, the lyric form of popular song is so separate and ‘micro’ in nature that, within the commercial songwriting community, authors of the instructional works describe themselves in metaphorical terms as ‘the Swiss watchmakers of music and literature’ (Webb, 1998, p.19). All of this indicates that the lyrics of popular songs are a distinct literary form of their own and should thus be studied not in relation to other forms of literature, but as their own category with their own parameters (Nicolls, 2007).
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Thus far, the research has explored how musical structure and story are linked, as evidenced by the similarities between sonata and the three-act narrative form.
Additionally, the research has identified how the instructional literature on songwriting outlines a pre-defined set of musical structures that are associated with the popular song. Taking this into consideration and to ensure academic rigour, a structural analysis of 300 songs will be performed.
Choosing 300 Songs
This analysis examines 300 popular songs from three major English-speaking music markets around the world: Australia, the UK and the US. The primary selection criterion is that the song must have charted at number one in one of those territories.
Musical charts consider the volume of sales, broadcast and streaming of a song over a fixed period; in most cases, this period is one week. Most charts have a primary or
‘popular’ dataset with several subdivisions into genre or category; the dataset for this research was chosen from these broad, higher-level categories. The charts used for this analysis are the Billboard Hot 100 Chart (US), Official UK Singles Charts (UK) and ARIA Charts (Australia). This dataset comprises the most recent 100 number one songs from each chart, starting from December 2015.
Considerable thought was undertaken in selecting the number one pop charting songs included in this data set. While a catalogue of songs could be taken from any segment of the popular song canon, it was difficult at first to determine where these songs should be sourced from and by what metric were they valued as useful to this research. As mentioned previously, my research paradigm is partially framed by the lens of a commercial songwriter working with a major international record label by way of Sony Entertainment Australasia. Although my own valuation of popular song does not necessarily align with that of exclusively number one
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charting songs, there is significant emphasis placed on charting music in the commercial understandings of my work. Both the merit of writing a popular song that charts, and the ability to consistently deliver such works is of great importance in my role within the music industry as a whole. Dues to these commercial emphasises I decided to the most commercially viable music available would be of value in this research for two key reasons. The first being that the creative artefacts developed as research within this project would be taken to market by way of a major record label partner, and secondly the ultimate goal of the record label partner was to have a song chart as number one in the three relevant English-speaking territories described above. This resulted in the creative works that were developed in this research being stylistically cohesive as each work was created to be released by only one commercial entity for a single market prospect by way of the only brand associated with my music industry persona. This was done to leverage the commercial partnership with the intention of increasing market exposer and thus increase market testing. This research argues that this particular study is most relevant to number one songs and acknowledges that broader stylistic approached to the creative artefacts, and a more diverse non-commercially led data set may draw different findings. With this in mind it is important to discuss how each chart used to identify the songs in the data set operates in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the commercial parameters that informed the practice.
The Billboard Hot 100 Chart was established in August 1958 and operates its model on weekly (Monday to Sunday) statistics taken from the industry; these are currently based on radio play, online streaming and physical and digital sales
(Billboard, 2015). This chart is the only one in the data set to take radio play into consideration. The UK Singles Chart was initially listed in the NME (New Music
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Empress) by journalist Percy Dickens in 1952. Dickens originally generated this chart by contacting approximately 20 record stores across England and requesting a list of their top 10 selling singles. This list was then compiled into a top 12 chart and published in the magazine. Today, the chart is operated by the Official Chart
Company (OCC) and lists top-ranked singles on a weekly basis, drawing on digital and physical sales and streaming figures. Over its lifetime, the chart has listed 1308 number one singles. The 100 song data set took three years and three months to turn over, with an average of 32 number one singles listed every year since 2010 (UK
Single, 2015).
Singles charts in the Australian music market are not as well documented historically compared to the US and UK charts. In 1966, the Go set charts were established and represented the first national music chart in Australia. They continued until May 1974, when compiler David Kent began publishing the Kent music report
(Lowe, 2008). Kent also published a retrospective Australia Music Chart that attempted to accurately list all number one selling singles from 1940. Kent’s chart remained as an industry leader and, in 1983, the Australian Recording Industry
Association (ARIA) began licensing the chart for publication. In 1988, the ARIA began operating an in-house charting system that eventually replaced the Kent music report in July 1989. The ARIA Singles Charts are based on both digital and physical sales figures; however, as of December 2015, they did not account for streaming content (ARIA, 2015). The timescale of turnaround for the 100 number one titles required by this research is five years and three months from December 2015, with an average of 16 number one titles per year since 2010. The results derived from this research can only be considered representative of each chart and not the music market as a whole in each territory.
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Applying Murphy’s Typology
After a cross reference of the instructional literature for terminological security, this project applied Murphy’s typology of six forms to the song selection by performing both a reading of written lyrics and a musicological analysis of form to ensure that the research identified the musical structures and their constituent parts as accurately as possible. A spreadsheet of data was developed to present and visualise the data resulting from this analysis (see Appendix A), with the following data organised into columns:
1. song title
2. artist
3. composer/writer/producer
4. date of release
5. release/publishing information
6. chart dates
7. chart type
8. weeks at number one
9. Murphy’s form type
10. breakdown of structure.
Figure 1 outlines an example of the data collected; full details can be found in
Appendix A.
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Figure 1. An example of pop song data collection.
Each of the 300 songs were analysed and catalogued according to Murphy’s typology. This process provided several valuable insights into sectional data for popular songs. Specifically, Murphy’s fourth form was by far the most prevalent form across all popular music markets. This data speak to Murphy’s assertion that the fourth form is the ‘most common in pop-music’ (Murphy, 2011). In addition to examples that confirm the assertions about form made by Murphy in the instructional literature, several findings noted inaccuracies in the other aspects of his model. Many of the 300 songs did not fit neatly into Murphy’s typology, having either an anomalous structural design, or sections that did not reflect the terminology on which his typology is based. In the table of findings for this analysis (see Appendix A), these works were placed in an anomalous (A) category. While the use of Murphy’s fourth form across the three markets averaged 28% of the 300 songs in the sample set, the second highest usage was in the Anomalous category; here, it averaged 19% of the sample set (see Figure 2). This indicates that Murphy’s typology may require significant refinement or that it does not account for contemporary song structure models in a flexible manner, however, the use of the structural terminology extracted from the broader reading of the instructional literature was valuable in identifying both musical sections of songs, and prescribing them a name like verse or chorus. In addition, the prevalence of the 4th form, or what can be considered songs with pre- chorus sections points to the need for a narrative model beyond Davis’ (1992) discussions that lack detail in the function of this particular section.
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Figure 2. Average percentage use of Murphy’s six forms.
Additional insight was provided by analysing the number of individual song sections. While the highest number of sections used in any one song was 17 (Let’s get ready to Rumble, UK) and the lowest amount was one (Animals, UK), the average number of sections across the dataset was nine (see Figure 3). This is in line with
Murphy’s (2011) assertion that the average song contains eight or nine sections, not including introductions.
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Figure 3. Average number of sections per song by territory.
These observations from the structural analysis of 300 number one songs provided the inspiration that informed the development of the first album of 10 songs that was created during this research. As detailed in Chapters 5 and 6 through observations and discussions, this creative practice acts to report, critique and interrogate these aforementioned findings. As outlined in Chapter 1, these creative works have assisted in informing the development of a second album of creative works (see Chapter 6).
Figure 4. An example of analysis data collection using Murphy’s typology of form.
In addition to the type of data collected in Figure 4, a full report on the song analysis is included in Appendix A. Some of this additional information was used to
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collate a smaller set of songs for further analysis. This further analysis is used to support the discussion within in the literature review (see Chapter 3).
The primary purpose of Chapter 2 (Contextual Review) was to provide a historical and social context with a review of contemporary song forms and how they developed throughout the twentieth century. Following this initial discussion, an understanding of a body of instructional literature on the subject of songwriting was developed. The key assertions regarding song form made by these instructional works were tested using a dataset of 300 number one songs. The results of this analytical work demonstrated that Murphy’s (2011) typology of pop song forms is questionable a as model for structural analysis of song structure as a whole, yet the terminology of songwriting shared across the cannon of instructional work is a valuable analytical tool. Therefore, for the purposes of this research, this terminology, and to a lesser extent this typology, is valuable in identifying the individual sections of a song; however, it is not a comprehensive model that encompasses all pop songs.
Additionally, this chapter has highlighted several popular song forms and has delivered statistics on their use throughout the dataset to establish commonalities of form in pop songs. In Chapter Three (Literature Review), these commonalities are examined using a narrative analysis informed by a review of academic work in narrative theory and popular music.
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Chapter 3: Literature Review
I have defined popular song lyrics as a distinct literary form by outlining its unique attributes in comparison to other forms of literature. Using the instructional literature as a guide, the contextual review presented data on common song forms and the nature of the inherent structures found within popular songs. Therefore, this research takes a significant step towards establishing a need for narrative analysis in the lyrics of popular song. At this point, it is again important to note that this chapter contains a review of academic literature surrounding this research and contains analytical work and an associated creative artefact. This set of methods is designed to test various assertions and findings resulting from the analytical work located in
Chapters 2 and 3. Highlighting this approach seeks to provide context to the literature review and outline that a further exploration of the framing methodology of this research is located in Chapter 4 of this thesis.
This chapter argues that a narratological lens is ideal for the examination of popular song lyrics resulting in the findings from the contextual review of 300 songs are used and a narratological analytical typology was applied to them. My review outlines how narrative theory is used as a line of inquiry for interrogating narrative’s capacity to influence, affect and inform the lyrics of popular music.
Although narrative theory is discussed, this is not an examination of narratological discourse. Instead, I perform a reading of relevant narrative theory and identify elements of Genette’s (1981) and Todorov’s (Genette, 1980) theorisations that are pertinent to this research. Therefore, my review begins with a discussion linking narratological discourse to the popular instructional literature on songwriting that was featured in Chapter 2. This current chapter then reviews a selection of foundation principles in narratological discourse that is relevant to the research.
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I examine narrative theory in general, as well as Genette’s (1981) typology of narrative voice and Todorov’s (1969) narrative equilibrium, then I discuss how
Todorov and Genette may be combined to create a narrative analytic for identifying patterns in narrative within popular song forms. This literature review will establish that song and story are intrinsically linked and will highlight the relevance of this research project overall, as well as in its action research approach (Kemmis &
McTaggart, 1988).
Understanding Narrative Discourse
One principle is shared among multiple authors of instructional literature on the subject of songwriting: that a song must be conversational in its storytelling
(Blume, 2011; Leiken, 2008 Murphy, 2011; Webb, 1998). This concept of conversational telling, or what Fludernik (2009) describes as ‘natural narrative’, provides some insight into, while also confounding, the uncertainty of narrative development in popular song. While it implies that the narrator is an existent
(Hamburger, 2011) in the story and that a song must be an exchange between two parties (Blume, 2011), it does not address the issues of developing narrative in the prescribed musical structures of pop songs as outlined by the instructional literature.
On pop song lyrics Antoine Hennion (1983) writes:
The pop song tells a story and comments on it in order to provoke in listeners
the feelings appropriate to that song. At first glance, one can see that it is a
genre which borrows from a wide variety of other genres; from poetry it
borrows the importance and autonomy of certain key words, as well as the use
of metre, verse and repetitiont; from the lyric theatre it borrows the singer's
direct appeal to his audience to share feelings expressed in the first person; but
perhaps it owes most to the novelette in the way that it almost invariably tells
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a story, set out in a few words, concerning the relationship between two or
three individuals. As one producer put it concisely, the pop song is 'a little
three-minute novel', in which daydream and reality merge in a sort of fairy-
tale of love or of anonymous ambitions. (Hennion, 1983, p. 163)
Hennion’s (1983) thoughts align with, and are further explored by various assertions made by the instructional authors, most particularly the understandings argued for by Davis (1989):
… in “Richard Corey” we learn that the singer works for the singee; the song
illustrates a universal truth: that money can’t buy happiness. When you link the
singer with the singee, you connect the listener to the song. (Davis, 1989, p.
101)
As a practitioner, I had my own assumptions about the relationship between song and story, without seeking a detailed understanding from music theory, scholarly knowledge or my own critical analysis and personal experience. Reflecting on the concept of pop song lyrics defined as their own literary form, narrative theory began to surface as a possible explorative lens for this research. Fludernik (2009) argues that narrative is a part of everyday life and that outside the formally accepted narrative texts, ‘we are all narrators in our daily lives’ (p. 2). Further, she stated, ‘[n]arrative is everywhere’ and ‘is therefore a widespread and often unconscious spoken language activity which can be seen to include a number of different text types, in addition to what we see as prototypical kinds of narrative’ (Fludernik, 2009, p. 4). This statement outlines the understanding that informed the interpretive paradigm of this research: that personal practice is a form of narrative creation in an ‘unconscious spoken
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language’, without considering it as a ‘prototypical narrative’ (Fludernik, 2009, p. 4).
Fludernik’s outline is the initial intersection of narrative theory and songwriting on which the research bases further investigation into songwriting practice. Polkinghorne
(2007, p. 14) links these two disciplines by arguing that narrative is so significant to humanity that the human brain is formatted to absorb complex relationships and events through narrative structures. Therefore, if people are wired to absorb information through a narrative lens, then pop song lyrics reflect this relationship.
When considering the narrative theorist approach, it becomes important that I position this research in the larger discourse concerning structuralism and post- structuralism. Much of the review stage of this research positions itself as taking a structuralist approach in accordance with Saussure (2011) or Levi-Strauss (Dosse,
1997). This is because I examine the phenomena of songwriting in context with its interrelations with history and market to find inherent and perhaps universal structures located therein (Blackburn, 2008). While this is a structuralist concept, the significance of the practitioner’s role in this research project cannot be underplayed. I review several creative works to locate commonalities of structure and narrative; however, this reading is partly framed through the lens of my interpretive paradigm.
Derrida asserts that, for a structuralist approach to work, universal meaning must be used as an orienting point of criticism (Attridge, Bennington & Young, 1987).
Therefore, this research cannot locate universal structures in songwriting because the main mechanism for inquiry is my own personal creative practice. According to
Derrida, this musical creative practice could be considered play (Norris, 1997); thus, this research generates a polysemic artefact that represents inquiry in line with
Derrida and Barthes (Huppatz, 2015). Rather than attempting to align this research with either structuralist or post-structuralist positions, I argue that this research
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borrows from both schools of thought. I position this research as a combined practice- based research inquiry specific to the discipline of popular song lyric writing.
Through this, I apply both structuralist and post-structuralist approaches to inform the practice in differing ways. This is further outlined in Chapter 4 (Methodology and
Methods).
Randle and Evans (2013) state that the ‘modern idea of using narrative to analyse discourse in general and text in particular has been manifested across the last century in many forms’ (p. 130). While this research uses elements of narrative theory, it is not a significant investigation into the history or contents of narratology in its entirety. Instead, it is a precise review of the relevant concept, terminology and tools narrative theory provides for the furthering of my own understanding of pop song lyric writing.
Narrative form by Suzanne Keen (2003) sees Rabinowitz, Pratt, Warhol and
Bal as key contributors to narrative theory. Central to these works and to this current research is the theory that the elements of the story and the manner in which they are presented can be examined in distinct separation. According to Shklovsky and
Tomashevsky (Tihanov, 2012), the elements of a story are distinct from the order and manner in which they are delivered. This separation influenced twentieth century literary and narrative theory in articulating ‘a number of more precise tools for identifying and clarifying components that constitute narrative’ (Randle & Evans,
2013, p. 131).
A more simplified model for narrative analysis is required that matches the simplicity of pop song lyrics (Blume, 2011). In Narratology: Introduction to the theory of narrative, Mieke Bal (2009) argues for a more refined outline of the elements of fabula, noting four key components: event, actor, time and setting. Given
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this research’s interpretive paradigm as well as the advice of producer Randy
Jackson—‘an artist tells their own stories’ (Pensado’s Place, 2015)—we require a model of analysing the ‘how’ a story is told (sujet), rather than ‘what’ is being told
(fabula). While Bal’s work offers precise language for the analysis of fabula, this research project required a model more focused on sujet. Bal’s work relates an existing narratological vocabulary that is informed by Genette’s (1981) Narrative discourse in which Shklovsky and Tomashevsky’s (1990) fabula and sujet are reframed as story and narrative discourse, respectively. Guillemette and Levesque
(2016) argue that:
As a typology of narrative, Gérard Genette's theory of narratology is regarded
by many specialists in the field as a reading method that marks an important
milestone in the development of literary theory and discourse analysis. By
using narrative voice as a concept through which all the other categories are
articulated, Genette engages the context of production as a fundamental
element. (p. 2)
Discussing his poetics of narrative discourse, Genette (1981) posits a typology for narrative analysis, arguing for an emphasis on the narrative voice of a text. This emphasis on narration, as opposed to story, allows for an examination of the functions of narrative without holding fabula to account.
This research project responds to the question: how can narrative inform, influence and affect the lyrics of pop songs? Therefore, an approach that emphasises and examines narrative voice is beneficial and Genette’s (1981) typology is valuable to this research. Narrative theory helps respond to the research problem and it becomes necessary to frame the research question in a more narratological lens. As this research examines the narrative discourse contained in the lyrics of pop songs,
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this approach then informs the building of a better narrative strategy (Bal, 2009) to inform the practical element of this research.
Narrative Research and Popular Song
Negus (2012a) noted a significant lack of research on narrative in popular song:
The importance of narrative is apparent in varieties of every-day storytelling
as well is in written fiction, drama, spectacle and ritual, visual art and film,
architecture, legal proceedings, scientific reports, and political theory, to
provide only a partial list indicative of the range. Yet the popular song—one
of the most pervasive narrative forms that people encounter in their daily
lives—has been almost entirely ignored in the vast literature on narrative. (p.
368).
While various narratological methods have been applied to the research of music from the Western common practice period (1600–1910), ‘theories of narrative have rarely been foregrounded in the study of popular songs’ (Negus, 2012, p. 368).
This research argues that this neglected aspect of research has contributed to a limited understanding of narrative structures in popular song.
Nicolls (2007) argued that ‘narrative is not only present in popular music, but is also in some cases a vital element in its interpretation’ (p. 301). He outlines five basic levels at which narrativity can operate:
1. There is the ‘control’ level, at which there is no story per se in the lyrics
and, as a consequence, there is no element of narrative discourse in the
musical setting.
2. The lyrics contain elements of narrative discourse, but they are not
reflected or supported in the (neutral) musical setting.
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3. The lyrics contain elements of narrative discourse and these are supported
by the music setting.
4. Both lyrics and music contain elements of narrative discourse, which to
some degree operate independently of each other, though always in
relation to an overlying story.
5. A complex narrative discourse is rendered through multiple media,
including lyrics, music, prose and artwork (Nicolls, 2007, p. 301).
In applying these criteria for narrative in popular song, Nicolls downplays the importance of lyrical narrative by emphasising in-depth musicological analysis in his work. In some cases, lyrics can be devoid of narrative content, creating a need for analysis of music structures. This research argues that songs in which this is the case are works of music, not songs as interpreted by the instructional literature. Nicolls’ work has great scope, but relies on examination of content not relevant to this research. He argued that ‘songs do not convey narrative meanings as texts alone or in relation to the supporting conceptual package. Songs exist in relation to other songs’
(Negus, 2012, p. 367). Further, ‘the narrative is not just conveyed through the words.
The lyrics of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” are heard through the “drama” of the music’ (Negus, 2012). The ‘drama’ Nicholls refers to here is further explained:
Evaluating the application of narrative theory to instrumental art music, Maus
suggests that ‘music may often be closer to drama than to prose narrative,
offering enactments of stories rather than storytelling in the most literal sense.’
The drama of the music certainly contributes to the enactment of the scene in
‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’—providing an instrumental and rhythmic
dynamic that may be heard as ‘a drama of interacting agents.’ (Negus, 2012, p.
368)
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As this research project is more focused on the narrative design of the lyrics themselves, Nicolls and Negus’s typology is not applicable to the study of lyrics alone. Instead, emphasis is placed on the prosody of music and lyrics; thus, when examining lyrics as a separate text from the music, this model becomes problematic.
However, Nicolls and Negus prove that narrative analysis is a valuable tool for understanding the relationship between story and song.
Randle and Evans’s (2013) examination of pop songs is lyric-centric and argues for a typology that maps all pop songs onto a biaxial grid of four broad categories (see Figure 5). They stated that:
While there have been many analyses of song lyrics in a general or cultural
sense (Tagg, 1982, DeWall et al, 2011) as well as studies of the effect of song
lyrics on adolescents (American Academy of Paediatrics, Council of
Communications and Media, 2009, Peterson, Safer, and Jobes, 2008,
Greenfield, 1987), little has been written on the construction of narrative or
the structure of narrative in Pop-Music (Neal, 2007, Nicolls, 2007) (Randle &
Evans, 2013, p. 126).
Other narrative investigations of lyrics (Dukes et al., 2003; Gold et al., 2008) are similarly content based and designed to extrapolate cultural meaning. Randle and
Evans (2013) approach their analysis with a synthesis of semiotics (Barthes, 1974) and Bal’s narrative theory (2009) to codify the lyrics of pop songs into four major categories that view each song as a whole:
1. closed reading/undefined narrative
2. open reading/undefined narrative
3. open reading/defined narrative
4. closed reading/defined narrative
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Figure 5. Biaxial grid of Randle and Evans’s (2013) categories.
Randle and Evans (2013) use the x axis of their grid to attribute the narrativity of a song’s lyrics:
The x-axis of our typology concerns the narrativity of the song, indicating an
increasingly concrete narrative from left to right. By ‘defined narrative,’ we
mean a song with a sequence of interrelated events (actual or implied), with
specific characters who experience these events (and whose circumstances or
character is altered thereby), and with a specific time and setting (goes beyond
merely describing a static environment, such as a day at the beach wherein
nothing but ‘beach’ activity happens). Conversely, we use ‘undefined-
narrative’ to describe a song wherein there is not a distinguishable series of
interrelated events, wherein the actors in the song do not undertake actions
that cause a change or transformation in either the circumstances or the
characters, and where a specific setting or time is not indicated. (p. 134)
On the y axis of their gird, Randle and Evans (2013) describe the ‘openness’ of the narrative of a song’s lyrics; this relies on the extent of the literal reading of the lyrics. In a closed reading, the lyrics are entirely literal and have limited possibility
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for multiple meanings. Randle and Evans (2013) execute an astute analytic informed by four of Barthes’s (1974) five codes of meaning. Their examination of questions posed to the listener, in either hermeneutic specifics or implied in the tension-building actions of proairectic codes, are classified as ranging from resolved to unanswered.
This analytical typology is valuable when examining the overall narrativity of a song’s lyrics and assists in identifying how the narrative operates regarding Barthes’s
(1974) model. Therefore, Randle and Evans (2013) are predominantly concerned with the story contained within the lyrical texts, rather than how the narrative discourse operates from section to section within an overall structure. Subsequently, this research is similar to the instructional literature and contains similar issues. While it is useful to know the overall narrativity of a song’s lyrics and how this narrativity is executed according to Barthes (1974), the question regarding how these narratives are constructed within the prescribed musical forms remains under defined.
In summary, the academic and instructional literature asserts a broad and often conflicting set of parameters that inform, or contribute to pop songs and the associated principles of songwriting. While this can be established in both instructional and academic writing, the relationship between song structures and their narrative function remains largely unexamined (Nicholls, 2007). If Evans and
Randle’s (2013) assertion that ‘despite advances in technology and digital music tools, storytelling is at the core of many of our culture’s mass-mediated musical expressions’, then a need appears to exist to further investigate these relationships.
The work of Genette (1981) is, therefore, important when digging deeper into the narratives of song lyrics.
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Genette’s Model and the Instructional Literature
Within the instructional literature on songwriting, several authors position differing storytelling devices and techniques as of primary importance. Pattison
(2009), Davis (1989) and Leiken (2007) argue for narrative perspective as vital to lyrics writing, Blume (2011), Davis (1988) and Webb (1998) discuss time and place while Murphy (2011) and Davis (1989) place emphasis on form and structure. This research takes a starting point for building an analytic from the cues provided in the reviews instructional literature. As discussed, the diversity of the instructional assertions is problematic to building a valuable analytical model. However, amongst this literature is a valuable set of vocabulary that does supply a useful nomenclature regarding the classification of popular music forms in terms of individual section of an overall meta-structure. This nomenclature is reflected in several terminologies that are cemented into academic language by Shuker (2002), Rojek (2011), Appen & Frei-
Hauenschild (2015), Griffiths (2003) Machin (2010) and Zbikowski (2004) to name only a small collection of authors. Using this terminology of sections as an analytical tool, combined with Murphy’s (2011) previously critiqued ‘six-forms’ typology, this research can account for the musical structures of a broad range of popular songs. For the purposes of this research, this analytical model does not address a secondary and more pertinent question: once a pop song’s structure is identified, how does the research generate observations about the narrative elements discussed by the instructional and academic authors.
Given the tension created between differing instructional authors an alternative approach to sourcing a more comprehensive analytical typology requires this research to look outside the instructional texts. In searching for a more comprehensive model, or at least a nomenclature, Susan Keen’s (2003) work
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Narrative Form discusses prominent narratological models citing Gerard Genette as one of the key proponents in modern narratological thought (Keen, 2003, p. 47).
In his work on narrative discourse analysis Gerard Genette (1981) takes a modern structuralist approach to the analysis of narrative, arguing for a fixed typology of narrative discourse analysis that is informed in a broad context by the semiotics of
Saussure (Guillemette & Lévesque, 2016). Genette posits five key concepts through which narrative discourse and story can be examined: order, frequency (singular, iterative, repetitive and multiple), duration (discourse/narrative time), voice
(intra/extradiegetic and hetero/homodiegetic) and mode (focalisation) (Fludernik,
2009). In this typology, Genette provides a flexible, yet precise and detailed, model for narrative analysis that is informed by the assumption that ‘all narrative is necessarily diegesis (telling), in that it can attain no more than an illusion of mimesis
(showing) by making the story real and alive’ (Guillemette & Lévesque, 2016, p. 3).
Genette’s voice (1981) examines the relationship between the narrator and their surrounding world, beginning with a reframing of narrative perspective. In this model Genette allows for the narrator to be an existent in the story or be absent from the happenings while still being located in the act of the story telling itself. In voice,
Genette reframes first-person narrative as intradiegetic voice, and third person is termed extradiegetic voice. From an intradiegetic narrative perspective, there are two ways in which the narrator can function (Pier, 2010). Homodiegetic voice places the narrator within the world of the story and heterodiegetic voice positions the narrator as external to the story events and happenings. This terminology helps clarify and build a more broad understanding than conventional vocabulary by removing confusion surrounding the use of pronouns to assess the narrative perspective of any lyric.
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Genette (1981) also discusses voice in terms of narrative levels, examining the implicit or explicit narrator/narratee relationships (Fludernik, 2009, p. 23). In popular music, this narrative level can be convoluted or obscured (Pattison, 2009). For example, the narrator can be talking directly to a reader (listener) as an extratextual participant, or can be engaged in conversation with an intratextual character or existent within the narrative world. In popular song, the implied ‘reader’, or listener, is most commonly being directly addressed by the narrator (Davis, 1989. Pattison,
2009) and an examination of both intradiegetic and extradiegetic levels may thus be valuable when tracking the discursive development of narrative in terms of song structure.
Genette (1981) accounts for this flexibility in narrative level by arguing that the intradiegetic narrative level relates to the story itself and what is directly relayed by the narrator; conversely, the extradiegetic relates to the story of the narrator or ‘the story within the story’ (Fludernik, 2009, p. 100). When implementing this concept of narrative voice levels, this research project examines both intradiegetic and extradiegetic levels, rendering them separate mechanisms for inquiry. In doing so, we can analyse both the relationship that the narrator has with the implied listener and the relationship that the narrator holds with the existents in the story.
In Genette’s (1981) typology of narrative discourse analysis, time allows for an examination of the relationship between narrator and their surrounding temporal framing and provides further insight into how the narrative act operates in relation to
Blume’s (2011) time and place. Following Genette’s narrative of time, tense refers to elements of narrative structures and how they function in the delivery of the narration.
Similar to voice, tense is separated into several concepts of analysis. Order
(anachrony/achrony) examines the narrative information being narrated in relation to
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the overall timescale of the narrative. An ‘anachrony’ is a flashback (analepsis) or flashforward (prolepsis) that does not run in the chronological order of event within a story (Pier, 2010). While this temporal examination of narrative information may be valuable when examining macro narrative structure, it is much more difficult to apply in relation to the micro narrative structures of songs. Therefore, this method accounts for this temporal ‘order’ by examining the relationship between the narrative act and the information being delivered using Genette’s narrative voice/time typology. This is in keeping with the assertions on narrative tense given by Davis (1989) that: ‘drama is always now. Narrative is always then’ (p. 111). Using linguistic understandings of tense it is possible to locate the events and happenings located in a lyrical text in relation to the act of narration itself. In this way Genette’s (1981) nomenclature of narrative time can be used to locate the singer/narrator with the existents and happenings of the lyrical text with a clear and concise terminology.
Continuing with his third concept of narrative analysis, Genette (1981) discusses duration, in which he examines how individual narrative elements relate to each other in terms of timescales (Fludernik, 2009). Where there is an ellipsis in duration, the narrator might skip over a significant allotment of time that lacks narrative relevance; where there is a scene, the narrator describes the events in real time as they unfold (Genette, 1983). This concept is valuable as a secondary level of classification when attempting to measure the changes of narrative information within the structure of any song. While it is not as easily described as narrative voice and its associated categories, it does provide a metric that can be used as a variable.
Genette then addresses frequency, referring to the narrative information in terms of its repetition, singulative or iterative nature (Genette & Morgan, 1994).
While frequency as a concept of analysis is applicable to the modern song lyric,
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Genette is not discussing repetition in the same way as Murphy (2011) or Davis
(1989). Murphy (2011) states repetition is key to a song in ‘Driving the message home’ (p. 53) and as such using a narratological model for measuring repetition in this way may not help us to address the research problem. As discussed earlier, one of the key elements of pop song lyrics as a literary form is its temporal limitations.
These limitations require the narrator to engage in significant ellipsis in duration, repetition in frequency and disruptions in temporal order. This research agues that it is this frequent temporal disruption that contributes to the proposed uncertainty of narrative function in the structure of pop songs. These temporal limitations result in the lack of a narrative time centre located in the text and perhaps locates the temporal centre as the act of narration itself. This is in keeping with the instructional assertions on the singer/singee relationship discussed earlier. Consequently, Genette’s prescribed model of narrative time may not be as valuable as an analytic model in the same way that his concept of narrative voice and mode is in this research.
Mode is Genette’s (1981) third and most relevant concept for this research study. In narrative mode, Genette introduces the concept of focalisation (Edgar-Hunt et al., 2015). This term addresses the relationship between the narrator and other parties involved in the story or the existents in terms of the knowledge held by all parties. With this concept, Genette analyses and identifies the positioning of the narrator (Fludernik, 2009, p. 98) and provides a concise analytic vocabulary that relates to Pattison’s (2009) all-important narrative perspective. Genette posits three levels of focalisation:
1. Where the narrator holds more knowledge of the events in the story than
the characters within, the focalisation is that of zero.
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2. If the narrator has equal knowledge to that of the characters in the story,
this is called internal focalisation.
3. If the narrator has less knowledge than the characters of the story, this is
termed external focalisation.
For example, if the narrator views the world of the story through an omniscient lens, then this would be a zero level of focalisation. If the narrator also functions as a character in the story and holds no prior knowledge of events as they happen, then this would be internal focalisation. It is important to note that this research is seeking a typology of analysis with specific reference to the 300 song data and is not concerned with building an all encompassing and comprehensive analytical model for popular song as a whole at this point.
Some narrative theorists (Bal, 2009) consider a separation between two kinds of authors of narrative discourse: the actual and the implied. In this theory (Booth,
1983), the implied author is not a character in the story; rather, they are a construct of the reader who is trying to locate narrative meaning within a text. Given the assertions made in the instructional literature on songwriting (Davis, 1989; Leiken, 2008; Webb,
1998; Blume, 2011; Murphy, 2011) and Genette’s (1981) typology of narrative level, this research adopts the singer/singee (Davis, 1989, p. 111) assumption that the performer is always positioned as the author of the text and sees songs as ‘digested’ through a listener/performer relationship. This argument addresses the problems of
Murphy (2011) and Davis’ (1898) advice on the positioning of the narrator: that the
‘singer’ is always placed in the story. Therefore, the research interrogates the relationship between the implied listener and narrator with an understanding that the text is inherently located in the act or singing and narration.
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In popular song, the narrator is most commonly situated in the first-person perspective (Davis, 1989; Pattison, 2009; Leiken, 2008; Webb, 1998; Blume, 2011;
Murphy, 2011) and engaged in a conversation with an implied third party or listener.
In narrative theory, this could be reframed as an heterodiegetic narrator who is engaged in a intradiegetic conversation with an implied existent. What is not outlined in the instructional literature is the level of knowledge held by the narrator and the implied existent. Genette’s (1981) focalisation addresses the knowledge relationship between narrator and existents and thus provides a new avenue of inquiry relating to narrative discourse in popular song. If the instructional literature provides no advice on the knowledge positioning of the narrator compared to the implied existent, then performing an analysis of focalisation in pop song lyrics may provide new insight into how narrational knowledge operates in these works.
Narrative Theory-Leading Vocabulary
This research uses elements of Genette’s (1981) typology of narrative voice to inform its understanding of narrative construction as a whole; however, this approach does not consider every aspect of this analytical framework when examining popular song lyrics. Instead, Genette’s work operates as a terminological signpost for the observations made during the review process, which inform the practice-based research. In addition to the concepts that are managed in this typology, there are other elements of narratological vocabulary that facilitate more precise reporting and discussion. In narrative theory, the term existent (Pier, 2010) is used to describe what is traditionally referred to as characters, both narrating and non-narrating. The concept of the existent is of particular value, as it provides a broader catchall term that allows for more fluid and detailed reporting and analysis.
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Genette (1981, p. 36) also discusses the function of a narrator and their relationships with the reader when he outlines several qualities that comprise a narrator: the narrator presents the fictional world, but does not have to be a part of that world; the narrator also functions as a commentator by describing events and political circumstances and how they relate to factors such as character motivation; and the narrator must also function as a philosopher who ‘articulates universally valid propositions’ (Fludernik, 2009, p. 106). This position directly relates to the advice of the instructional literature regarding universality of subject material for lyrics (Davis,
1989; Leiken, 2008; Webb, 1998; Blume, 2011; Murphy, 2011). Therefore, the term proposition is used extensively throughout the analytical component of this current research. The term is not used in line with Aristotle (1996) or Russell (2009); instead, it is used to describe the major narrative signpost or overarching concept that is contained in any lyric (Pattison, 2009; Davis, 1989).
Narrative Progression and Musical Form
While Genette (1981) offers a framework that might evaluate the elements of any narrative, as with Randle and Evans’s (2013) selective approach to Barthes, my research borrows elements of Genette’s model, yet does not use his typology in full.
The instructional literature argues that songwriting is reliant on several preconceived narrative notions. Regarding narrative voice, numerous instructional authors (Pattison,
2009; Davis, 1989; Leiken, 2008; Webb, 1998; Blume, 2011; Murphy, 2011) comment that the narrator is most commonly involved in a conversational narrative.
For the purposes of clearly translating this concept into a narrative theorists nomenclature, it could be said that in song lyrics the narrator is most commonly speaking in a homodiegetic voice. Additionally, Genette’s focalisation model
(Fludernik, 2009) becomes impractical as the conversational nature of the narrative
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generally places the narrator as the source of narrational knowledge. Genette’s theorisations do not provide an analytical model designed for a refined examination of structure. Subsequently, this research uses his typology as a precursory broad stroke in the analysis of narrative in popular song lyrics. This broad reading facilitates the observations of the narrative function of the lyrics of a musical section, allowing me to examine how the lyrics contribute to narrative progression. It is important to note that some musicological understandings of narrative argue that some songs are not narratives or do not contain narrative (Nicholls, 2007; Negus & Astor, 2015; Appen &
Frei-Hauenschild, 2015). Instead this research borrows from the assertions of many narrative theorists (Fludernik, 2009; Polkinghorne, 2007; Genette, 1981) that all written and other texts are by definition acts of narration. Therefore, this research takes the approach that some songs that might not be considered by musicological understandings to contain narrative are, by narratological understandings, acts of narrative.
This research project interrogates how narrative can inform, affect and influence the lyrics of pop songs by examining the changes in Genette’s (1981) typology in relation to pop song structures. Therefore, examining narrative theory’s understanding of narrative structure is important to locate existing thoughts on the correlations between structure and narrative. One of the key tensions outlined in the context review of this research discussed the assertions that songs must tell a story and that story should have with a beginning, middle and end (Davis, 1989; Murphy;
2011; Leiken, 2008) yet they also discuss at length many musical forms that don’t adhere to a linear three-act narrative structure.
In structuralist narrative theory, Tzvetan Todorov discusses the relationship between the three-act structure and the development of narrative in terms of narrative
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progression (Todorov, 1969). He posits that the three-stage narrative structure revolves around a narrative equilibrium (Todorov, 1969, pp. 70–76). In his model, he argues that these three acts are: 1) an initial establishing of equilibrium, 2) a destabilisation and 3) a new equilibrium that incorporates narrative information derived from the destabilisation (Hühn, 2013). The argument is that if these three narrative stages relating to the three-act narrative so closely mirror the musical purpose of the sonata form’s three parts, then perhaps equilibrium will be a valuable lens to categorise the narrative purpose of any musical section. In the section outlining the development of the narrative analysis, this research submits a new typology of narrative progression in popular music for testing.
In addition to his thinking on narrative equilibrium, Todorov (1969) distilled a formulaic representation of Genette’s (1980, pp. 188–199) focalisation concepts; in this formula, Todorov expresses Genette’s typology in the following way:
1. internal focalisation: narrator = existents
2. external focalisation: narrator < existents
3. zero focalisation: narrator > existents.
In creating a formulaic representation of Genette’s (1981) model, Todorov contributes two key concepts: 1) the specific distillation of Genette’s focalisation and
2) the use of linguistic formulaic (Bross, 1968) representation in narrative theory to contribute to understanding. This research devises a formulaic representation of
Todorov’s (1969, pp. 70–76) narrative equilibrium model informed by Genette’s
(1981) typology of narrative analysis. This representation is used to trace the path of narrative equilibrium across the Murphian (2011) model of popular song forms.
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Genette and Todorov as an Analytical Model
While this research exploits elements of narrative theory, it does not position itself as a formal narratological study. Instead, narrative theory elements are used to lead the action research inquiry that informs the practice of songwriting itself. This process does not compact popular music into a narratological framework; rather, it fits narrative theory into the understanding of popular music that is informed by the interpretive paradigm. The research uses the following logic: if popular song narratives can be varied in subject matter (Kropf, 2012) and the songwriting practitioner can be concerned about delivering personal narratives, then the key to understanding how each narrative element relates to a musical section should be viewed by how the story is told and not by the contents of the story itself. In Genette
(1981) this is described as: the story; the existents, happenings, situations; and the narrative discourse; the structures and manner in which the story is told. Using this principle, the research creates a typology based on Todorov’s (1969) concept of narrative equilibrium.
From the perspective of a lyricist, this logic appears to contradict the advice of
Blume (2011) and Leiken (2007); however, on closer reading of Genette (1981), some elements of his typology can be used to analyse song lyrics. His concept of narrative voice concurs with Pattison’s (2009) narrative perspective and his understanding of
Tense provides insight that aligns with Blume’s (2011) emphasis on time and place.
While this provides some analytical insight into the narrative landscape of popular songs, it does not provide a complete typology for the specific literary form that is popular song. In response, the current research places a narratological lens (Edgar-
Hunt et al., 2015) over Murphy’s (2011) typology of pop song forms to investigate the broad nature of narrative in popular music. This approach allows for a deeper
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understanding of the narrative purpose of a musical section; however, it does not provide a typology of how sections relate to the overall form. Therefore, it is argued that all narrative can be examined using Todorov’s (1969) narrative equilibrium theory. To implement this approach, it is proposed that once Murphy’s (2011) forms have been examined using Genette’s narratological lens, Todorov’s (1969, pp. 70–76) ideas of narrative equilibrium can be used to observe and analyse the function of each musical section in relation to the overall musical form or meta-structure.
Using the nomenclature of song structure and individual sections established in the review of instructional texts, this research argues that there may be a link between each of these lyrical sections and their potential agency in the song’s narrative equilibrium. Genette’s (1981) model of focalisation provides a conceptual framework that informs the design of a similar typology by using the three-act narrative and Todorov’s (1969) understanding of narrative formulae. Using Todorov’s three states of narrative equilibrium, the research posits that each musical section can have one of three effects on story development:
1. song section contributes to equilibrium
2. song section destabilises equilibrium
3. song section has no effect on equilibrium.
Using this typology, the research is able to categorise each musical section into a specific Todorov state and assess its individual contribution to the narrative progression of a song. This research does not take the position that this model provides a holistic solution to the research problem; as mentioned earlier, it only provides a new model that acts as stimulus for further discourse in the field.
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Narrative Analysis of 14 Songs
Using the data gained from the structural analysis of 300 songs, my research breaks each work into its constituent sections, as prescribed by Murphy. I then take a selection of these works (14 songs) and apply elements of Genette’s (1981) typology to examine how the narrative operates on a section-by-section basis. The resulting data on sectional narrative development derived from this process informs an assessment using Todorov’s (1971) model. My approach allocates each section a value based on its narrative progression function (Genette, 1981; Todorov, 1971). I use Todorov’s focalisation equation to inform the creation of a new analytic typology and Genette’s model to argue that the lyrics of a musical section can have one of three effects on narrative: 1) a contribution to narrative equilibrium, 2) a destabilisation of equilibrium, or 3) no effect on equilibrium. My approach applies this model to examine how the individual sections of the pop song form can influence the progression of narrative. Where uncertainty exists, Genette is used to help frame any anomalies.
Understanding the 300 Songs Data
Using the data generated by the analysis of 300 songs structures, I have identified a smaller dataset of creative works for further examination. This smaller dataset was defined according to the market demographic information as outlined below. The UK and US markets shared 14 per cent of number ones across the time period (2005–2015), the US and Australian markets shared 39 per cent and the UK and Australian markets shared 18 per cent (see Figure 6 and Appendix A). While this indicates a strong connection between the US and Australian markets, only 5 per cent of the total catalogue of songs was common across all three markets. This 5 per cent
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constitutes 14 songs that have been selected as the subject of the next stage of research. The songs are:
Hello (Adkins & Kurstin, 2015), recorded by Adele
What do you mean? (Bieber, Boyd & Levy, 2015), recorded by Justin
Bieber
Cheerleader (Pasley, Dillon, Bradford, Dillion & Dunbar, 2015), recorded
by OMI
Uptown funk (Bhasker et al., 2014), recorded by Mark Ronson featuring
Bruno Mars
All about that bass (Trainor & Kadish, 2014), recorded by Meghan
Trainor
Rude (Atweh, Messinger, Pellizzer, Spivak & Tanas, 2013), recorded by
Magic!
Fancy (Kelly et al., 2014), recorded by Iggy Azalea featuring Charli XCX
Happy (Williams, 2013), recorded by Pharrell Williams
Royals (Lorde & Little, 2013), recorded by Lorde
Diamonds (Furler, Levin, Eriksen & Hermansen, 2012), recorded by
Rihanna
Thrift shop (Haggerty, 2012), recorded by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis
featuring Wanz
Roar (Perry, Gottwald, Martin, McKee & Walter, 2013), recorded by
Katy Perry
Blurred lines (Thicke, Williams, Harris Jr & Gaye, 2013), recorded by
Robin Thicke featuring. T. I. and Pharrell Williams
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The monster (Mathers et al., 2013), recorded by Eminem featuring
Rihanna
This list of 14 songs is the subject of the narrative analysis outlined in the following section.
Figure 6. Percentage of number one songs shared across territories.
A Closer/Content Analysis Using Genette
A lyric sheet for each of these 14 songs is included in Appendix B. When performing a broad reading of these lyrics using Genette’s (1981) typology of narrative theory, the research does not undertake in-depth analysis of the story as outlined by Genette (1981) and Fludernik (2009). Instead, Genette is used to frame an understanding of the narrative discourse and signposting of each section of a song according to the instructional nomenclature. Therefore, this research identifies and tracks the changes in discursive elements of the narrative between the previously analysed sections of pop songs. As mentioned earlier, some of the aspects of
Genette’s typology do not play a significant role in this examination. For instance, in
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the readings of the dataset of lyrics, almost all the works assume the position of an intradiegetic voice with an internal focalisation. While this is a commonality amongst this particular pop chart driven data set, an internal focalisation may be considerably less likely in popular song forms outside of those that have a number 1 pop chart status. This is very much in keeping with the instructional literatures advice on designing lyrics as conversational direct address storytelling (Pattison, 2009; Davis,
1989; Murphy, 2011). Therefore, the narrative analysis performed as part of this research contains a specific set of terminology as outlined below.
Previously, I discussed the conflicting logic of the instructional authors, specifically that a song must be a linear telling of a story; however, the sectional nature of popular musical forms does not facilitate a linear narrative (Blume, 2011;
Davis, 1989; Murphy, 2011; Pattison, 2009). In developing this analytic through a narrative theory lens, three main areas of examination became evident. Using
Genette’s (1981) vocabulary of narrative voice as a starting point, the analysis tracks the key elements of how the narrator is positioned. The research then examines and categorises the function of the narrative information on both an extradiegetic and intradiegetic level (Pier, 2010). Tracing the progression of changes in these elements from section to section allows for observations on how the lyrics of an individual musical section relate to one another in terms of narrative discourse.
In a pilot test of this analytical reading approach, I selected a song outside the prescribed set of creative works for analysis. In selecting a song outside the key dataset, the research can test the reading approach free of possible bias resulting from the established intimate knowledge of the dataset. Someone like you, performed by
Adele (Adkins & Wilson, 2011), shares similarities to the proposed set of creative works. The song charted at number one in all three territories (2011), is written in the
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most prevalent popular song form and is particularly interesting, as it is one of only three songs to chart at this position in the US in the last decade that is based on piano and vocals only. Another work featuring Adele is included in the dataset of 14 songs; this song is an ideal opportunity for testing the analytical reading approach.
The following is a demonstration of the pilot study that used elements of
Genette’s (1981) narrative discourse analysis to examine the narrative discourse located in the lyrical text. This study is designed to provide context to the analysis that is performed as part of this research project. Using Adele’s Someone like you
(Adkins & Wilson, 2011) as an example of this broad reading, in her opening gambit
‘I heard that you settled down, that you found a girl, and you’re married now’, the narrator frames prior historic information in an anachronistic conversation with an implied existent. This statement is in a homodiegetic, simultaneous intratextual voice.
She continues with the lines ‘I heard that your dreams came true, guess she gave you things I didn’t give to you’ (Adkins & Wilson, 2011). This next line provides new information regarding the relationship between the narrator and the existent, pertinent to the historical context of her initial statement. While this new information provides new narrative insight, it continues to deliver this content as relevant to the original lines, without adding any deliberate narrative disruption to the story. This information is further outlined in the lines that follow: ‘Old friend, why are you so shy, it ain’t like you to hold back and hide from the light’ (Adkins & Wilson, 2011). While this line offers a narrative comment on the immediacy of their conversation, it serves the purpose of delivering information that simply expands on the initial information provided in the first line and contributes to the establishment of an initial equilibrium
(Todorov, 1971). These lines are all contained within the first musical section (verse
1) and it is clear from this broad reading how the narrator is positioned in context to
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both the story and the existents in a conversation that is reflecting on historic information.
In the next section of Adele’s Someone like you (Adkins & Wilson, 2011), the narrator changes tense and begins to deliver narrative information simultaneously to the act of narration when she states that ‘I hate to come out of the blue uninvited but I couldn’t stay away I couldn’t hide it’ and ‘I hoped you’d see my face and that you’d be reminded that to me it isn’t over’. This additional line indicates for the first time the singers’ intent within the story and cements their intradiegetic narrative voice.
These two lines are part of a new musical section (pre-chorus 1) and disrupt the initial equilibrium that was established in verse 1 by providing narrative discourse that changes tense and function. Directly following pre-chorus 1 is the chorus, which outlines: ‘Never mind I’ll find someone like you, I wish nothing but the best for you two’ (Adkins & Wilson, 2011). These words operate in the same conversational narrative position as the pre-chorus, but do not deliver any more situational information; rather, they serve a declarative iteration that justifies the recounting of the initial historic events and the outlining of the actions described in pre-chorus 1
(see Figure 7). In this way we can see Davis’ (1989) assertion in action, specifically:
‘Drama is always now. Narrative is always then.’ (p. 111)
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Figure 7. An example of the data collection using Genette’s model for narrative analysis.
From this brief and broad reading, it becomes apparent that Genette’s (1981) framework is considerably valuable when describing and labelling the narrative discursive elements of a song. When performing the analysis of the selected dataset, this broad reading is presented as a table of findings (see Appendix C) that examine narrative voice and extradiegetic and intradiegetic information in three clear categories.
Observations on Narrative Discourse Progressions in a Set of 14 Songs
The following section reflects on the results from the analytical approach outlined in the previous section. When examining the 14 songs that reached number one status in the UK, Australia and the US, a number of interesting details and patterns began to emerge. Most significantly, an observable change occurred in
Genette’s (1981) discursive elements between every major musical section of every song in the dataset. I argue that in this dataset the evidence supports the idea that each section of a song has an intrinsic yet different narrative purpose or value. This is supported by many instructional and academic authors advice on the possible story telling roles of sections (Davis, 1989; Appen & Frei-Hauenschild, 2015). There were clear and identifiable similarities between both similar sections within a song and similar sections across the collection of works.
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From a broad examination, every song was narrated in a homodiegetic voice, this peaks to some of the instructional literature’s claim that popular songs are about stories that relate to the singers’ own experience. This does not mean that all songs are autobiographical, but certainly the stories located in the songs of the data set are perceived as personal experiences of the singer/narrator. In short, the narrator was involved in the world of the story as an existent in every case in the data set. Again, this does not mean that this is the case for all songs, just those located in the data set.
In further broad observations of the song set, the focalisation of the narrative mode was internal in all but one case. Regarding Justin Bieber’s What do you mean?
(Bieber et al., 2015), the intradiegetic detail focused on an inquiry into the behaviour of the primary non-narrational existent. Therefore, the narrator was deemed to have less knowledge than the other characters in the story, resulting in an external focalisation. This supports assertions by Davis (1989) regarding first person positioning, and that of Hennion (1983) discussed earlier in this research. Importantly, this positioning did not persist throughout the song, but was only employed during the chorus. This change of focalisation between sections implies a more valuable observation regarding the nature of the chorus itself, which is addressed later in this chapter.
The other significant broad observations of narrative voice were that time and implied reader–narrator relationships were more variable in their execution. The temporal relationship between the narrative voice and the events described could vary. While some details were narrated in a simultaneous manner, others were interpolated. In many cases, the temporal relationship was unclear, given the confines of the musical section. Regarding Happy by Pharrell Williams (2013), the lack of temporal description signified that it was difficult to assess how time related to the
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narrative voice. In other cases, such as Katy Perry et al.’s (2014) Roar, the time shifted from the first and second lines of the first verse. Therefore, a specific temporal narrative relationship could not be designated without further detailing this in the analysis. When examining the broad nature of the implied reader–narrator relationship, similar observations were made to those previously regarding Genette’s
(1981) time. In some cases, like Adele’s Hello (Adkins & Kurstin, 2015), the narrator is clearly engaged in an intratextual conversation, signifying that the implied reader is an existent in the narrative. In Cheerleader (Pasley et al., 2015) by OMI, the narrator is describing the characteristics of a third party in a self-referential extratextual voice.
While this broad examination provided more holistic information on narrative, the primary purpose of the analysis was to track the changes between the musical sections that the individual songs contained in the dataset. In each case, there were observable changes in voice and diegetic information. When a new musical section occurred, an observable change ensued in either voice—intradiegetic information, or extradiegetic information. Regarding Adele’s Hello (Adkins & Kurstin, 2015), the narrative voice consistently remained simultaneous and homodiegetic while the extradiegetic positioning was in direct address conversation. The changes to narrative in this example occurred at an intradiegetic level. While each verse was relating prior information, the pre-choruses introduced an interpolated context that then served to justify the simultaneous declarative statement located in the chorus. Similarly, Rude
(Atweh et al., 2013) by Magic! was consistent positioned in simultaneous homodiegetic direct address conversation while the on an intradiegetic level, narrative elements changed between sections. In this case, like Adele’s Hello (Adkins &
Kurstin, 2015), the verse described prior events and then interpolated contextual information to justify the declarative statement that was voiced in a simultaneous
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manner. This again supports Davis’ (1989) claim regarding the temporal nature of drama and narrative within a lyrical text (p. 111).
Other works in the dataset maintained narrative voice and an intradiegetic level while each section altered in its extradiegetic framing. In Mark Ronson’s
Uptown funk (Bhasker et al., 2014), the verses are delivered in first person, with no real elements of conversation present in the text and, in the verse, the narrative perspective was directly addressing an implied reader with directives. In an extreme case, Diamonds (Furler et al., 2012) by Rihanna uses some sections with first-person plural pronouns in a conversational manner, while other sections had zero pronoun usage with zero focalisation. Similarly, some works in the dataset changed their narrative voice to achieve discursive alterations between sections. In both Eminem’s
The monster (Mathers et al., 2013) and Macklemore’s Thrift shop (Haggerty, 2012), a significant shift in narrative voice occurred between the verses and choruses. While the narrator in the verses was talking to implied intratextual existents, the narrative voice in the verses was engaged in a direct conversation with the extratextually implied reader. This signifies a shift in the conversational positioning of the singer and pushes the focalisation towards an implied awareness of the narrative act and the audience. It is worth noting that this was not the only similarity between these works: both songs are self-described as hip-hop and follow the same sixth form of Murphy
(2011).
Even though in many cases the changes that occurred in the discourse between musical sections only occurred in a specific function, there were examples in which the changes occurred between a variety of the functions. Regarding Iggy Azalea’s
Fancy (Kelly et al., 2014), the verse and chorus change information on both the intradiegetic and extradiegetic levels. These same observations were made regarding
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OMI’s Cheerleader (Pasley et al., 2015). In many cases where a middle eight was used, there was limited ability to access any of the voice and narrative level functions, as there was simply no additional text. Regarding Katy Perry et al.’s (2014) Roar, the repetition of the word ‘roar’ was all that the lyrics contained for that section.
Figure 8. Total number of section types in the contextual review of 14 songs.
While the analysis above provides a some detail in the examination of the narrative operation in song lyrics, a further refining of the narrative function is required to properly evaluate the discourse development within a pop song. To achieve this refinement, the following section of my thesis draws on Todorov’s
(1969) understanding of narrative progression and proposes the development of a new analytic tool.
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Applying a Narrative Progression Typology
In developing a typology of narrative progression, the research argues that
Genette’s (1981) three-part model of focalisation establishes a framework on which to build other analytical tools. As outlined in the methodology chapter of my thesis, the research argues for a three-stage typology based on Todorov’s conceptualisation of narrative progression. Using Genette’s model, it is possible to trace any changes in narrative voice and mode and further the understanding of how a narrative discourse progresses through the musical section changes of a pop song. The results of this analysis are presented in a table tracking the changes in narrative discourse between the differing sections of the selected dataset (see Figure 9). In implementing this model, an intrinsic discursive value exists in the lyrics of each musical section. By examining these discursive values in the context of the selected 14 pop songs, patterns in narrative implementation are established. For this to work, each section must somehow relate to Todorov’s equilibrium model in which the lyrics of a musical section can fit one of the following discursive functions. As discussed earlier in this research, I argue for these including:
1. A contribution to the narrative equilibrium
2. A disrupting of the narrative equilibrium
3. Or having zero effect.
Using this information, we can identify patterns in how narrative equilibrium is established and disrupted within the structural framework of the popular song.
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Figure 9. An example of the data collation examining the progression of narrative equilibrium using Todorov’s model.
A table of results is included in Appendix C and the summary of findings is provided in the next section.
Comparisons and Finding Patterns Using Todorov
To further triangulate the findings from the narrative analysis, I developed a typology of narrative equilibrium for popular songs, largely based on Todorov’s work. The musical sections of each song in the dataset were examined in relation to
Todorov’s model and its function therein. The data gained from the narrative analysis were used to evaluate the song and the findings were laid out in a table (see Figure 10 and Appendix C). The table demonstrates a value of: ‘+’ contributing to; ‘–‘ disrupting; or ‘0’ – having no effect on narrative equilibrium. In order for a section to be given a ‘0’ effect on narrative equilibrium the story located in the text needed a temporal pause, or an anachronistic reiteration of already known narrative detail separate to the discourse itself. In some cases, sections of the song contained both contributions and destabilising elements to the narrative and they were provided a value of ‘+/-’. To better visualise this data, each value was attributed a colour: ‘+’
(green), ‘-’ (red), ‘0’ (yellow), and ‘+/-’ (grey). The visual cue assisted in understanding the data on a macro scale, both in the individual narrative progressions of a song and in observations of the set as a whole.
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Figure 10. A visual representation of the progression of narrative equilibrium according to the outline analytical model.
Several patterns and observations were established through this process. Of the 137 sections that were examined, half (67) were choruses while the other half comprised 30 verses, 21 pre-choruses, 10 middle eights and 6 in the category of
‘other’. Regarding narrative progression, 47 sections contributed to equilibrium, 21 disrupted equilibrium, 59 had a neutral effect and 7 were anomalous (see Figure 11).
Almost all first sections, either verse or chorus, had a positive contribution to establishing narrative equilibrium, while 17 of the 21 pre-choruses had a destabilising function. 52 choruses out of a total 67 had a neutral effect on narrative progression, while four had a negative contribution and the remaining 11 had no measureable effect. These macro-level observations underline the concepts discussed in the instructional literature and help to clarify the innate narrative function of each of the musical sections within a form. However, as with narrative analysis, deeper probing of this data on equilibrium is essential to furthering understanding.
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Figure 11. Number of sections using the four possible functions of narrative equilibrium in the 14 songs analysed in the contextual review.
The above figures indicate a consistency of narrative function among musical sections. In most cases, there was consistency of narrative function per section; however, there were some anomalies. While all other choruses in the dataset either contributed to or had a neutral effect on narrative equilibrium, in Justin Bieber’s What do you mean? (Bieber et al., 2015), the chorus had an opposite, destabilising effect.
The lyrics position the narrator as less informed than the existents. Interestingly, question located in the title and chorus representing the main proposition of the song resulted in the narrative not resolving into a state of equilibrium according to the parameters set out above. This does not mean songs containing questions as their key proposition are less likely to return to a narrative equilibrium, but in the case of this particular work this was the result. While most songs in the set had sections that performed this function, in both Rihanna’s Diamonds (Furler et al., 2012) and Pharrell
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William’s (2013) Happy, there were no destabilising sections in the narrative progression. This may support the key propositions of these songs located in the title and chorus. In each of these cases, the musical structures of the pop songs were not in line with Murphy’s (2011) typology of form. This indicates that there may be a correlation between atypical structures and atypical narrative progressions.
When drawing observations based on form, two significant patterns emerged.
First, in all four of the works using Murphy’s (2011) fourth form of verse, pre-chorus, chorus, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, middle eight, chorus, the function of each section was identical. Given that this is the most popular form in the 300 songs that were analysed earlier in the research, this may indicate the idea that each musical section, at least in fourth form, might have a specific and innate narrative function. The second album of creative work seeks to explore this through practice-as-research
(Doğantan-Dack , 2016). The second significant observation regarding form also related to genre. Of the 14 songs in the smaller dataset, three were hip-hop songs that included extended rap-based verses. In all three cases, the verses had a value of ‘+/-’ and contained both contributing and destabilising functions in the narrative progression.
This new analytical model resulted in evidence that support many of the claims in the instructional literature, while also addressing some of the tensions surrounding three-part narrative and popular song forms. In turn, this knowledge has assisted and informed my professional practice as a creative practitioner. The fundamental elements that inform this practice are the new understandings of both the verse and chorus’s narrative functions. To summarise, the following observations were made within the context of the song selection specifically located in the dataset set out in this research:
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1. Direct address and first-person positioning of the narrator is present in all
works.
2. A song most often start with a verse, but it can start with a chorus.
3. A song most often start with an establishment of equilibrium.
4. At an intradiegetic level, the story is most commonly self-referential.
5. The narrative voice is most commonly homodiegetic with an internal
focalisation.
6. The chorus most often act as the key propositional statement.
7. The chorus can also function to either stabilise, or have a neutral
contribution to the narrative equilibrium.
8. The verse most often serves to establish equilibrium which may act to
propel the story of the narrative towards a propositional statement.
9. The pre-chorus serves to destabilise the equilibrium established in the
verse.
10. In forms that use verse, pre-chorus, chorus, verse, pre-chorus, chorus,
middle eight, chorus, the chorus should serve as a declarative statement
that justifies the equilibrium that is established in the verse and disrupted
in the pre-chorus.
Combined with the findings from Practice One, these findings inform the theorisation that is tested in the creative works contained in Album Two. This album explores and interrogates how narrative can function in the lyrics of popular songs by applying knowledge from the literature review, contextual reviews and Album One to the practice of songwriting as a research method.
This chapter has taken the data on structural models from Chapter 2 and has developed an analytical model informed by Genette’s (1981) and Todorov’s (Genette,
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1980, pp. 188–199) works. This analytical model was tested on a collection of pop songs and the results inform the creative research output via the creation of two music albums. Chapter 4 discusses the methodology that underpins this research and provides a clear outline of how the research method is developed to address the problems outlined in these review chapters.
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Chapter 4: Methodology and Methods
This chapter identifies and highlights the thought process and approaches best suited to address the question: how can narrative affect, inform and influence the lyrics of popular song? In doing so, this chapter discusses the relevant existing philosophy on the relationship between practice and research, as well as highlights the key influencing contributors to my chosen methods. This discussion highlights that while this project often takes a practice-based approach (Candy & Edmonds, 2011,
2018), this term does not completely describe this project’s research approach. Candy and Edmonds (2018) argue that research and practice are separate entities in a practice-based paradigm. In this research project, it is difficult to implement their methodology without major dissonance. Specifically, while my research comprises a review process that considers both practical context and literature, the practice component of this research acts as the site of interrogation, which renders it a type of research as well. In this chapter, I argue that because the creative artefacts developed in this research are a key site of investigation, parts of this project align with
Doğantan-Dack’s (2016) understanding of practice as research. This is not to discount
Candy and Edmonds’s (2018) proposition, as part of this research requires a separation of practice and research in some analytical processes. Therefore, I argue for a paradigm in which creative practice is the key research method, while the resulting artefacts are subject to an analytical practice-based approach. Here, I use
Doğantan-Dack’s (2016) practice-as-research concept and Candy and Edmonds’s
(2011) practice-based methods as part of an overarching action research methodology
(Kemmis & McTaggart, 1988).
At the core of the project is the creative work that exists as an artefact of the research. This artefact is informed by the 300 song structural analysis and the smaller
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narrative examination that was performed in the review chapters. In that way, the analytical work that comprises part of the contextual and literature reviews is a research method used to qualify and inform the practice. This chapter further explores the method that was executed in the review chapters. In adopting an appropriate approach, the research overlays an action research framework (Kemmis &
McTaggart, 1988) to formalise how the practical and analytical facets of this research inform and result from each other. Candy and Edmonds’s (2018) interpretation of the interrelated nature of the action research spiral best describes the nature of this research project’s approach when applying analytical typologies. This chapter unpacks how using Candy and Edmonds’s (2011) practice-based approach can guide and inform a specific practice-as-research (Doğantan-Dack, 2016) project in the examination of narrative in the lyrics of pop songs.
Negus and Astor write (2015) ‘that songwriting practice should be more central to the study of popular music and that understandings of songs are far more determined by the processes of songwriting than is allowed for by musicological and sociological approaches to reception’ (p. 228). Nicholls (2007) claims songwriting as a methodology is underrepresented in academic research (p. 298), Randle and Evans argue that songwriting should be central to the songwriting research process (2013, p.
127). For the purposes of this research the process of songwriting is informed by reading and analysing lyrics from surrounding creative works (Genette, 1981; Levi-
Strauss & Eribon, 1991). It is contextualised by a review of both instructional literature on the subject of lyric writing (Pattison, 2009; Davis, 1989; Leiken, 2008;
Webb, 1998; Blume, 2011; Murphy, 2011) and academic works on narrative theory and popular songwriting (Nicholls, 2007; Negus, 2012a; Randle & Evans, 2013;
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Appen & Frei-Hauenschild, 2015). Using this reasoning, this chapter begins with an examination of practice as a research paradigm.
Practice as Research
In the opening assertion of Candy and Edmonds’s (2011) paper on practice- based research, they identifies two main types of practice-related research:
1. If a creative artefact is the basis of the contribution to knowledge, the
research is practice-based.
2. If the research leads primarily to new understandings about practice, it is
practice-led.
However, this binary oppositional understanding does not seem to appropriately encompass the nature of engaging in practice as part of research in all its possibilities. In Candy and Edmonds’s (2018) paper, they highlight that ‘The use of the term practice-based research has become widespread in creative arts research but has yet to be characterized in a way that is agreed upon across the variety of disciplines where it is in use’ (p. 63). This inevitably leads to questions regarding the nature of appropriate macro-level methodological thinking when it comes to practice.
The under-defined relationship between research and practice can position the researcher between two choices when it comes to research design. The first is to follow the well-trodden path of other research projects that have been accepted in academic thinking and the second is to undertake practice without a clearly defined methodological starting point. To better position myself as practitioner and researcher between these two choices, I posited the question: how does research affect the outcome of practice?
Scrivener (2000) argues that imposing a problem-solving and solution-based approach risks damaging the artist’s practice and the culture in which their work
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resides. Further outlining the potential risk to the creative output of research is Smith and Dean’s (2009) argument that ‘Art practice that depends upon research for its innovative outcomes is in itself changed by that research’ (p. 12). If this is the case, then perhaps non-traditional academic binaries may not be the most accommodating genesis point for developing a method or approach. In addressing this issue,
Doğantan-Dack (2016) argued that, within musical research, it is the process of practice itself and the resulting creative output that acts as the research approach. In his work Artistic practice as research in music, he curates a collection of papers highlighting the importance of this approach due to its unobtrusive effect on the research outcome of musical practice (Doğantan-Dack, 2016). It is his emphasis on unobtrusiveness that placed Doğantan-Dack’s (2016) assertions alongside those of
Candy and Edmonds (2018) and Smith and Dean (2009). Doğantan-Dack’s (2016) informs the reader that, in many ways, this practice-as-research paradigm assumes the shape of an action research spiral (Kemmis & McTaggart, 1988); the research thus uses the fluid action of iterative practice as a research framework. This is similar to what Candy and Edmonds (2018) propose, but it removes the oppositional binary of practice-based versus practice-led research. I, therefore, take a model that positions participatory action research (Kemmis & McTaggart, 1988) as the framework for multiple iterations of both practice-based and practice-as-research methods that inform and affect each other.
300 Songs: A Contextual Review
Due to the multiple iterations possible in a participatory action research paradigm (Kemmis & McTaggart, 1988), a secondary non-practical investigative tool was developed and deployed in the review of the literature and contextual creative work. An analytical examination of 300 songs was performed to inform and locate the
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practice used in this research. In this analysis, two distinct stages of examination occurred: 1) a review of popular song structures and 2) a review of storytelling within popular song structures using a narrative theory lens. It is important that the research reiterates how these analyses informed the research outcomes. Using the instructional literature as a foundation, the question was asked, how does musical structure operate in popular songs? To understand how these musical structures affected the telling of stories, 300 songs were subjected to a musical structure analysis that established the most common popular song forms. These findings were used to inform the development of 10 musical works that form the first practical component of this research. Practice One exists as an examination and interrogation of the common structures found in popular songs.
In the contextual review located in this research the question of how musical structures operate in popular songs was examined using a data set of Number 1 songs, the resulting structural data informed a second analytical process. This data does not purport to be a comprehensive of all forms of popular music, but instead an overview of a small collection of commercially charting works. This process provided some insight into the key research question: how can narrative affect, influence and inform the lyrics of popular songs? A smaller collection of 14 creative works was analysed, section by section, using a narratological lens informed by Genette’s (1981) typology of narrative voice. These data were then subjected to a typology design based on the similarities between historical musical forms and common narrative structures. Using
Todorov’s (1971) assertions regarding narrative equilibrium, I developed several data visualisations demonstrating how narrative operated in the structures of the selected popular song lyrics. The results of this analysis, combined with those from the examination of musical structures, informed the development of a second collection
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of 10 creative works (Practice Two). This second collection exists as a practice-as- research (Doğantan-Dack, 2016) artefact that provides an opportunity for interrogation of the findings as well as experimentation using data.
In this research method, a clear process of planning, practice and reflection emerged. This process mirrors the understanding of action research as outlined by
Kemmis and McTaggart (1988). In the cases in which outcomes of this process seem in conflict with Doğantan-Dack’s (2016) assertions regarding the unobtrusive nature of practice as research, a practice-based (Smith & Dean, 2009) approach is used as an example. When the question arises—how can the creative works herein be unobstructed by research if they are informed by a significant analytical process?—I argue that these artefacts have two outcomes: 1) theorisation resulting from the practice (i.e., practice-based) and 2) the creative work itself, which exists separate to the theorisation and is a valuable contribution to knowledge in a standalone context
(Doğantan-Dack, 2016). In the following section, I clarify this issue by discussing how the analytical methods of research are used as guides for practice and not direct instructions of practice.
Candy and Edmonds (2011) stated that ‘Practitioner research in the creative arts is still emerging as a discipline and hence, the question of which methodology to adopt can be an issue’ (p. 7). Meanwhile, Smith and Dean (2009) posit that ‘creative practice is one of the most exciting and revolutionary developments to occur in the university within the last two decades’ (p. 2). They argue for a bi-directional relationship between research and practice, highlighting the idea that, in most cases, not only does research inform practice, but practice equally contributes to research as both an expression and informer (Smith & Dean, 2009). This is not necessarily reflective of commercial songwriting practices based on this researchers industry
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practice, however, this research was undertaken, in part, to improve my own songwriting practice within an commercial songwriting industry facing paradigm.
While Dewey (1934) first discussed the idea of ‘experiential reflection and thinking’ (p. 23), Schön (1991) popularised discussions regarding the relationship between ‘reflection in action’ and the furthering of the knowledge base of the practitioner (p. 12). Much earlier, this relationship appears in Lewin (1946) when he outlines his concept of field theory. What he terms ‘action research’ is described as a
‘spiral of steps’, each of which contains a process of plans, actions and findings
(Lewin, 1946, p. 38). Meanwhile, Candy and Edmonds (2011) describes it as follows:
Action research has been successfully used to underpin a stream of research
dedicated to improving practice (Elliot, 1991) and has, in combination with
Schön’s concept of reflective practice (Schön, 1983), become an invaluable
feature of practitioner research (p. 9).
Kemmis and McTaggart (1988) suggest this approach in Participatory action research, in which they formally outline ‘the action research spiral’ (p. 4). While referring to Lewin’s (1946) spiral concept, Kemmis and McTaggart (1988) outline three basic processes as representative of the research cycle of this methodology: plan, act and observe, and reflect. While Kemmis and McTaggart (1988) offer a well- structured process in this model, Candy and Edmonds (2011) argue that the nature of this cycle is fluid and multidirectional, similar to Schön’s (1983) work. In a strict
Kemmis and McTaggart model, the spiral of research continues when the evaluations of each stage informs the theory of the following process. In Candy and Edmonds’s observations (2011), the theory, practice and evaluation process is ongoing and interchanging. Barrett and Bolt (2014) posit that this inter-directional relationship between the stages of action research is an ideal methodology for the unpacking of
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creative work as research. This reasoning is consistent with Doğantan-Dack’s (2016) thoughts on practice as research in the field of music. Therefore, it appears difficult to align this research with any one school of thought on the interplay between practice and research. I argue that the solution cannot assume any binary opposition in research paradigms and I acknowledge Smith and Dean’s (2009) assertion that any practice undertaken as research cannot remain unaltered by the theory that it interrogates. Therefore, this research uses both practice-based and practice-as- research approaches in separate iterations of an action research spiral.
The following chapters unpack the process and development of the creative works submitted as research artefacts. Chapters 5 and 6 detail each creative work and discuss how they relate to each other and the works outlined in Chapter 2. Chapters 5 and 6 are informed by the instructional literature and the literature review in the field of narrative theory. This discussion is brought together in Chapter 7, which subjects the creative output of the research to the same analysis as was performed in Chapters
2 and 3.
When approaching this research, the ability to fluidly manoeuvre between theorisation, practice and reflection is significantly important. To summarise, the research posits that narrative in popular music is under-researched (Nicholls, 2007) and practice should be more central to the study of popular music (Randle & Evans,
2015; Doğantan-Dack, 2016), then the action research spiral (Kemmis & McTaggart,
1988) implemented in a fluid manner (Candy & Edmonds, 2011) is an ideal practice- as-research method (Doğantan-Dack, 2016) from which to examine how narrative operates in pop song lyrics.
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A Summary of Methods
My interpretive paradigm is that of a practitioner of popular songs and that practice is an understanding of how lyric writing is unpacked in this research. To properly examine the problems of uncertainty surrounding narrative construction in popular music structures, this section must clearly define how action research operates in the research design. Action research (Kemmis & McTaggart, 1988) is a guiding macro-level research framework methodology resulting in a research design, with three clear methods. This approach begins with a contextual review of surrounding creative works, as informed by the instructional literature addressing the question: how does musical structure operate in popular songs? Using narrative theory as outlined in Chapter 3, the data from the analysis of musical structures are developed into an analytic led by the key research question: how can narrative affect, influence and inform the lyrics of pop songs?
This process represents ongoing research into the nature of musical structures and narrative execution over this project’s duration. The research develops two sets of creative works that explore and interrogate the findings from the analytical processes.
These two elements represent a part of the process of theorisation, practice and evaluation as outlined by Kemmis and McTaggart (1988). The chronology of this action research spiral is best visualised as follows:
1. a contextual review of 300 songs that examines musical structures
(theorisation)
2. an album of 10 original works designed as an exploration and
interrogation of popular song forms (practice and evaluation)
3. an analysis of narrative operation in 14 works selected from the contextual
review (theorisation)
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4. an album of 10 creative works as an exploration and interrogation of the
narrative operation in popular song lyrics and structures (practice and
evaluation)
5. a findings and discussions chapter that summarises the research
(theorisation).
Therefore, Practice One explored how form operates in popular songs. This is the basis for new theorisation on musical structure that leads Practice Two as an exploration and interrogation of how narrative operates in popular song lyrics. It is worth noting that Genette (1981) and Todorov (Genette, 1980, pp. 188–199) have yet to be used together for the analysis of popular music in a clearly defined typology.
This research argues that Genette’s (1981) narrative analysis typology, combined with
Todorov’s theory of narrative equilibrium (Genette, 1980), creates a powerful analytic for examining the relationship between pop song structures and pop song lyrics
To summarise, this project takes an action research methodology (Kemmis &
McTaggart, 1988) that uses both a fluid action research approach (Candy & Edmonds,
2018) and practice as a valuable, but not exclusive, site of research (Doğantan-Dack,
2016). This approach contains elements of analytical work (Genette, 1983; Murphy,
2012; Todorov, 1971) and songwriting practices (Negus & Astor, 2015) in two separate artefacts and uses them to interrogate popular song structures in terms of how narrative can inform, affect and influence pop song lyrics. In Chapters 5 and 6, the creative artefacts resulting from this approach are outlined and subjected to the same analytical processes listed above. While this current chapter has highlighted the reasoning that informs the research and creative process, Chapters 5 and 6 will develop a clearly defined creative output that is central to this research project.
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Chapter 5: Practice One—An Examination of Pop Song Structures
The following chapter reports and evaluates the first set of creative works produced as part of this research. This set of creative works serves as an investigation and experimentation of musical structures that are specific to the field of popular songs. These songs are informed by the instructional literature and creative works that comprise the contextual review of this thesis. The works herein are not informed by the literature on narrative theory; they exist as an expression of the researcher’s tacit knowledge of narrative in pop song lyrics. Therefore, discussions regarding narrative are viewed through a narratological lens with appropriately informed terminology.
With Kemmis and McTaggart’s (1988) action research spiral in mind, the following collection of creative works serves as a practical implementation of theorisation that is developed from the contextual review prior to the observations made using narrative theory.
This chapter provides detailed information regarding the 10 creative works that were developed in the first stage of research. After this, I discuss how musical form operates in each work, and generate observations and correlations between these creative works and the songs that comprise the analysis performed in Chapter 2.
These observations and evaluations form the site of new theorisation that will inform
Practice Two. In addition to the discussion on structure, this provides insight into the tacit knowledge located in the interpretive paradigm that relates to narrative and song structure. Chronologically, the creation of this practical artefact exists after the contextual review, but prior to the literature review process. Therefore, the reporting is structured to focus primarily on musical structures, with minimal observations made about narrative operation. To account for this, in Chapter 7, the research
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exposes all creative works involved to the same narrative analysis typology outlined and implemented in the literature review.
In my career as a songwriter, I have had an understanding that songs are vehicles for storytelling and throughout this research songs can be viewed as narrative acts. The problem that I identified in my practice was a lack of knowledge regarding how this storytelling was executed. As this research project progressed, I identified a gap in the knowledge between instructional literature and scholarly literature. This research argues that an inherent relationship exists between musical structures and narrative development. To trace the development of knowledge throughout the course of this research project, a practical interrogation of musical structures was required via a collection of 10 original songs. Developed in the first 12 months of the project, these songs were produced to the standard expected of a major label demonstration
(or ‘demo’) recording. These demo recordings clearly outline the lyrics of each work and a written lyric sheet accompanies each song (a comprehensive set of lyric sheets can be found in Appendix D).
An Outline of Album One
Album One is a set of 10 songs recorded between January 2015 and July 2016.
Each of the 10 creative works were developed as part of an A&R development project associated with Sony Music Entertainment Australia. The songs were thus produced to a quality acceptable for submission to a major record label’s A&R department.
Each sound recording was developed through a combination of a home studio,
Queensland University of Technology’s (QUT) Z9 studio facility and QUT’s
Gasworks studio facility. In all cases, the researcher solely authored the lyrics that were submitted as part of this research, except where indicated. In those cases where co-writers were involved, the writing sessions were at the insistence of Sony Music
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Entertainment Australia. The creative works are presented as links in this collection, with the track listing, release information and individual recording credits outlined below. In addition to the hyperlinks located in this section, a full list of links to the sound recordings is located in Appendix E.
Album One: An Exploration of Structure
1. Track 1: Let me down (3:28)
This song was written in February 2014, recorded over 12 months from
March 2014 to 2015 by Mr Levi Dowsett and myself, mixed by Allan
Chang and mastered by Ross Fraser at Sony Music Australia. The
recording was released commercially under contract by Sony Music
Australia in May 2017 and totalled over one million streams over various
streaming platforms by January 2018. Richard Kingsmill premiered the
sound recording on Triple J radio in May 2017. Origin Publishing,
Sydney, Australia, currently administrates the song.
2. Track 2: Ain’t it love (3:53)
This song was written in January 2015, recorded over six months from
February to July 2015, mixed by Andy Shanahan of Fuse Mix Suite and
mastered by Joseph Carra of Crystal Mastering, Melbourne. The song was
not selected by Sony Music Australia for release, but was premiered at the
SXSW music conference in 2017 by manager Marcus Knight. The sound
recording is yet to be released; it is slated for release in album cycle two
in mid-2019. Origin Publishing, Sydney, Australia, currently
administrates the song.
3. Track 3: Broken arms (3:45)
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This song was written in May 2015, recorded over four months from June
to September 2015, mixed by Andy Shanahan of Fuse Mix Suite and
mastered by Joseph Carra of Crystal Mastering, Melbourne. The song was
not selected by Sony Music Australia for release and has not been slated
for any future development. Origin Publishing, Sydney, Australia,
currently administrates the song.
4. Track 4: Don’t you love me (3:11)
This song was written in July 2015, recorded over six months from July to
December 2015, mixed by Andy Shanahan of Fuse Mix Suite and
mastered by Joseph Carra of Crystal Mastering, Melbourne. The song was
not selected by Sony Music Australia for release and has not been slated
for any future development. Origin Publishing, Sydney, Australia,
currently administrates the song.
5. Track 5: Mountain fire (3:28)
This song was written in April 2015, recorded over eight months from
June to January 2015, mixed by Andy Shanahan of Fuse Mix Suite and is
yet to be mastered. The song was not selected by Sony Music Australia
for release and has not been slated for any future development. The song
was selected by an undisclosed electronic music act for commercial
remix. Origin Publishing, Sydney, Australia, currently administrates the
song.
6. Track 6: Run for cover (3:50)
This song was written in December 2015, recorded over five months from
January to April 2016, mixed by Andy Shanahan of Fuse Mix Suite and
mastered by Joseph Carra at Crystal Mastering, Melbourne. The song was
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shortlisted by Sony Music Australia for release; however, there is no
slating of the song for future release. Origin Publishing, Sydney,
Australia, currently administrates the song.
7. Track 7: Trouble (3:50)
This song was written in May 2016, recorded over four months from May
to August 2016, mixed by Andy Shanahan of Fuse Mix Suite and
mastered by Joseph Carra at Crystal Mastering, Melbourne. The song was
not selected by Sony Music Australia for release and there is no slating of
the song for future release. Origin Publishing, Sydney, Australia, currently
administrates the song.
8. Track 8: Don’t wanna know (3:57)
This song was written in June 2016, recorded over four months from June
to September 2016, mixed by Andy Shanahan of Fuse Mix Suite and
mastered by Joseph Carra at Crystal Mastering, Melbourne. The song was
not selected by Sony Music Australia for release and there is no slating of
the song for future release. Origin Publishing, Sydney, Australia, currently
administrates the song.
9. Track 9: Yourself (3:35)
This song was written in August 2016, recorded over three months from
August to October 2016 and mixed and mastered by Andrew Ward as part
of a pre-production submission to Sony Music Australia. The song was
not selected by Sony Music Australia for release and there is no slating of
the song for future release. Origin Publishing, Sydney, Australia, currently
administrates the song.
10. Track 10: Mama said (3:16)
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This song was written in August 2016, recorded over three months from
September to November 2016 and mixed and mastered by Andrew Ward
as part of a pre-production submission to Sony Music Australia. The song
was not selected by Sony Music Australia for release and, at the time of
this writing, remains unreleased. There is no slating of the song for future
release. Origin Publishing, Sydney, Australia, currently administrates the
song.
Musical Form and the Creative Work
In this section, I draw on the insights provided by the contextual review of the musical structures contained in the 300 pop songs, by examining, interrogating and exploring these findings through practice. The popular songs that were created as part of this research use the most common structures found in the contextual review, as framed by Murphy’s (2011) typology. It is through this practice of songwriting that this exploration occurs. Several broad observations can be made regarding the 10 songs (see Figure 12). This section will outline the musical forms used for each creative work and will discuss the commonalities and differences between the works as a collection and compared to the contextual review.
In the contextual review, Murphy’s fourth form was found to be the most common. Subsequently, most works within the research reflect this commonality.
Seven of the 10 works in Album One strictly adhere to Murphy’s fourth form:
Ain’t it love
Broken arms
Don’t you love me
Mountain fire
Run for cover
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Yourself
Mamma said.
During the process of creating these works, several characteristics were observed. In every case that employed Murphy’s fourth form, several similar musical elements emerged. Rhythm, meter and section length remained consistent, despite no intentional design behind any of these elements at the time of composition. These commonalities resulted in several unintended correlations that may explain why the fourth form is so popular. All the works that used the fourth form shared details of timescale. The practical implications of the fourth form result in a consistency of running time among the sound recordings. This consistency mirrors the instructional literature’s advice for both ‘getting to the chorus’ (Blume, 2011, p. 53) in a timely manner and hitting the two-minute wall with new musical content (Murphy, 2011).
As observed through my lens as a practitioner, once Murphy’s fourth form was used to guide the songs’ composition, the development of musical and lyrical material became more obvious in its execution. This may be due to the fourth form acting as a language of its own that signals a particular approach to composition and writing. For instance, in Ain’t it love, the basic harmonic material remains unchanged; however, the changes between sections are signalled effectively by timbre and melody in an obvious and almost expected manner. This highlights that the fourth form is so common that it establishes an implied expectation in the listener. This could explain why the second-most common form found in the contextual review was an alteration of the fourth form. Playing with listener expectations by altering form may provide points of interest in a creative work.
A key finding in the contextual review of musical structure was that Murphy’s model did not account for a large proportion of the forms located in the dataset. In the
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300 songs, 22 per cent of the works could be identified as having all the elements of
Murphy’s form, but containing alterations that did not adhere strictly to Murphy’s model. In the same dataset, 15 per cent of works were deemed to be so far from one of Murphy’s forms that they were considered anomalous. To explore this finding, three works were developed that either altered the fourth form or were completely set apart from Murphy’s model. The song titles and forms are as follows:
Let me down
o verse, chorus, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, middle eight, chorus, chorus
Trouble
o verse, pre-chorus, chorus, pre-chorus, chorus
Don’t wanna know
o verse, alternative chorus, alternative verse, chorus, middle eight,
chorus.
Regarding Trouble and Don’t wanna know, the variations made to musical structure were intentionally anomalous in the context of Murphy’s model. From a composition perspective, this altered musical structure made the development of musical materials difficult. The lack of common structure removed elements of sectional signposting that had signalled the need for musical change in the other fourth form works. This resulted in problems of lyrical development. Interestingly, while the number of sections contained in both anomalous works was significantly under the average outlined in the contextual review, the running length of both works was at the upper threshold of commercial acceptability, as discussed in the instructional literature. In offering anecdotal evidence of this issue with timescale, a later comment was made by Sony Music Entertainment Australia that both these anomalous works were ‘too long for radio’. This issue speaks to the nature of musical
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form itself; namely, that form is a familiar structural device that may be a substantial contributor to signalling listener expectation. In these two works, when this expectation is completely removed, the compositional and lyric writing elements became harder to develop and the timescale did not reflect the parameters set by the instructional literature. Therefore, Let me down was developed as an experimentation with Murphy’s fourth form that, while not adhering completely, contained enough fourth form structure to be identifiable.
Figure 12. Number of each Murphian section used in the 10 songs created for Album
One.
Let me down employs Murphy’s fourth form with only a slight variation: it does not contain a pre-chorus between the first verse and chorus. Outside this alteration, it adheres to the fourth form model. Therefore, the song shares several of the similarities found in the other works in fourth form. The work contains the average number of sections as found in the contextual review and it adheres to the time parameters as outlined in the instructional literature. The development of the
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song is also similar to the fourth form works. In Ain’t it love, a continuous harmonic device was employed with timbre and melody that was used to signpost sectional changes. Let me down employs the same type of typical and repetitive harmonic device; however, the pre-chorus is signalled by a change in this harmony. Similarly,
Let me down uses melody to signal sectional changes elsewhere in the song. Instead of removing listener expectation, as was the case in the anomalous works, the slight alteration of form in Let me down allows for unexpected listening in a familiar musical framework. This speaks to the reasoning behind the prevalence of altered fourth forms within the contextual review of 300 songs. While the interpretation of popular success is limited in this context, Let me down was premiered by the number one youth radio broadcaster in Australia (Triple J) and received one million streams across multiple platforms.
To ensure academic rigour in this kind of action research, it is crucial to highlight how research outcomes serve to inform future practice. My initial implementation of Murphy’s fourth form emerged intuitively from my songwriting and compositional practice. The common nature of the form provides a framework that creates listener expectation. When this expectation is removed, the process of composition and writing and the timescale of each section becomes unclear. However, when slight alterations to the fourth form are made, compositional and lyrical elements are implied by form—yet there is still an alteration to listener expectation.
This may account for the popularity of these forms. However, the exploration of structures anomalous to Murphy’s model did not provide evidence regarding why such a large percentage of the works contained in the contextual review were anomalous. This may be due to a lack of depth or subtlety in Murphy’s model and more research could be performed to investigate such aspects of this form.
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Locating Tacit Knowledge of Narrative in Practice
In this section, I discuss the pre-existing knowledge present in Album One regarding narrative and structure that can be observed in my practice process. I use the term tacit knowledge as outlined by Gascoigne and Thornton (2013), in that I discuss the presence of patterns and structures in the creative work that align with theoretical considerations that were not consciously part of the creative practice.
While this element of the research project explores, interrogates and experiments with musical structures in popular songs, each work contains lyrics that represent a story.
Within the confines of each song in Album One, the lyrics form narratives.
Chronologically, this practical artefact was developed prior to my research of narrative theory. Therefore, examining how these narratives operate within this exploration of musical structures demonstrates the tacit knowledge that existed at the time of creation. The following section discusses observations regarding the operation of narrative in Album One , by comparing each of these songs and the examples mentioned in Chapter 2. Thus, this section establishes the tacit knowledge expressed through practice, evaluates this tacit knowledge and compiles this information into theory to inform Album Two.
Several observations are possible from my broad reading of Genette’s (1981) typology of narrative voice. For example, in all 10 creative works, the narrator was positioned in a homodiegetic story. This positioning was framed by a first-person, direct address conversation between the narrator and an implied existent. In Let me down, this positioning is exemplified in the chorus lyrics, ‘Let me down easy, when you’re done’. Similarly, in Ain’t it love, this homodiegetic location of a first-person narrator is clear in the line, ‘Just a broken man, behind this broken door and you left me all alone’. This positioning is also located in Adele’s Hello (Adkins & Kurstin,
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2015) and OMI’s Cheerleader (Pasley et al., 2015), and is in line with the perspectives on songwriting represented by the instructional literature. Within these conversational lyrics, other similarities exist in relation to the theme of love, which is the key thematic concept underscoring Album One . When examining how I presented the theme of love, the most common themes used were romantic relationships, loss and substance abuse. This thematic commonality shares similarities with the songs in the contextual review, including Magic!’s Rude (Atweh et al., 2013), John Legend’s
All of me (Stephens & Gad, 2013) and Taylor Swift’s Blank space (Swift, Martin &
Shellback, 2014a).
In this chapter, uncertainties surrounding tense and intradiegetic information emerged in the practice. The uncertainty of tense resulted in unclear chronologies of narrative in most creative works, which obfuscated the story-level details, such as happenings and existents. These uncertainties and unclear details may be due to a lyric writing process that is uninformed by narrative theory. Chapter 6 takes this into consideration when using the findings about structure from Album One to inform the theory on which Album Two is developed. Therefore, Album Two exists as an exploration and interrogation of the findings from the literature review and the observations made during the creation of Album One. Specifically, it explores narrative functions within the confines of the common structures found in popular music as defined by the contextual review. This process follows the action research model by building observations of practice into theoretical knowledge that informs the development of new creative work.
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Chapter 6: Practice Two—An Examination of Narrative in Pop Song Lyrics
The following chapter reports, evaluates and discusses the second set of creative works developed as part of this research. These creative works serve as an investigative and experimental practice of narrative within the musical structures identified in the contextual review and interrogated by Album One. With Kemmis and
McTaggart’s (1988) action research spiral in mind, the works herein are informed by the reviewed literature on narrative theory and by findings regarding structure from
Album One and the contextual review. Candy and Edmonds’s (2018) fluid understanding of practice-led research leads Album Two to consider the theoretical observations made outside musical form as resulting from Album One, specifically regarding the uncertainties of tense and narrative (Genette, 1982). This chapter then assesses the analytical value of the typology of narrative equilibrium that was posited in the literature review before finalising some observations regarding narrative theory and structure in the creative works.
In this chapter, I provide detailed information regarding the 10 creative works that were developed in the second stage of research. This is followed by a discussion of how narrative operates in each work and generates observations and correlations between these creative works, the creative works located in Practice One and the songs that comprise the analysis performed in the literature review. In addition to the discussion on narrative, this collection of creative works is subjected to the analytical typology developed as part of the review process of this research. The findings resulting from this analysis form the basis for further discussion and observations made regarding the operation of narrative in popular song. Chronologically, this practical artefact was created after both the review stages of this research and Practice
One. Therefore, the results focus on narrative, with an assumption that the reader has
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been informed about the significance of musical structure in Chapters 2, 3 and 5. The findings from this chapter and those from Practice One are brought together in
Chapter 7, where all 20 creative works involved in this research are exposed to the same narrative analysis typology that was implemented in the literature review. This analysis is designed to provide insight into how this research has affected the evolution of the creative process throughout this project.
Each of the following songs was produced to the standard expected of a major label demo recording. The lyrics of each work and a written lyric sheet accompanies each demo song. A comprehensive set of lyric sheets are located in Appendix D.
An Outline of Album Two
Album Two is a set of 10 songs recorded between July 2016 and January
2018. As with Album One, each of the 10 creative works was developed as part of an
A&R development project associated with Sony Music Entertainment Australia. The same licensing, authorship, production and recording details are present in this artefact as in Album One. The creative works are presented as links in this collection, with the track listing, release information and individual recording credits outlined below. In addition to the hyperlinks located in this section, a full list of links to the sound recordings is located in Appendix E.
Album Two: An Exploration of Narrative
1. Track 1: Deluded (3:20)
This song was written in September 2017, recorded over three months
from September to December 2017 and mixed and mastered by Andrew
Ward as part of a pre-production submission to Sony Music Australia.
The song was selected by Sony Music Australia for release and the release
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of this recording was slated for May 2018; it yet remains unreleased.
Origin Publishing, Sydney, Australia, currently administrates the song.
2. Track 2: This ain’t love (3:37)
This song was written in August 2017, recorded over two months from
September to November 2017 and mixed and mastered by Andrew
Ward as part of a pre-production submission to Sony Music Australia.
The song was selected by Sony Music Australia for release. The
recording was slated for July 2018 as part of an Extended Play (EP)
release. Origin Publishing, Sydney, Australia, currently administrates
the song.
3. Track 3: Gun shy (3:07)
This song was written in February 2017, recorded over three months
from March to June 2017, mixed by an unnamed third party and
mastered by Leon Zervos of 301, Sydney. The song was selected by
Sony Music Australia for release and was released commercially under
contract on 17 July 2017. The sound recording was premiered on the
Triple J radio show, Home and hosed, with Dom Allesio. Gun shy was
featured on Apple Music’s Best of the week playlist and has totalled
over a quarter of a million streams on various streaming platforms.
Origin Publishing, Sydney, Australia, currently administrates the song.
4. Track 4: DNE (4:08)
This song was written in October 2016, recorded over two months
from October to December 2016, mixed by Andy Shanahan of Fuse
Mix Suite and mastered by Joseph Carra at Crystal Mastering,
Melbourne. The song was shortlisted by Sony Music Australia for
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release, but remains unreleased, and there is no slating of the song for
future release. Origin Publishing, Sydney, Australia, currently
administrates the song.
5. Track 5: Break the rules (3:43)
This song was written in September 2016, recorded over four months
from September to December 2016, mixed by Andy Shanahan of Fuse
Mix Suite and mastered by Joseph Carra at Crystal Mastering,
Melbourne. The song was shortlisted by Sony Music Australia for
release, but remains unreleased. The sound recording is not slated for
any future release. Origin Publishing, Sydney Australia, currently
administrates the song.
6. Track 6: Give it to me (3:28)
This song was written in August 2016, recorded over four months from
September to December 2016, mixed by Andy Shanahan of Fuse Mix
Suite and mastered by Joseph Carra at Crystal Mastering, Melbourne.
The song was shortlisted by Sony Music Australia for release, but
remains unreleased. The sound recording was slated for release in July
2018 as part of an EP release. Origin Publishing, Sydney, Australia,
currently administrates the song.
7. Track 7: Hurt us (3:04)
This song was written in January 2017, recorded over three months
from January to March 2017 and mixed and mastered by Andrew
Ward as part of a pre-production submission to Sony Music Australia.
The song was shortlisted by Sony Music Australia for release, but
remains unreleased. The sound recording is not currently slated for
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release. Origin Publishing, Sydney, Australia, currently administrates
the song.
8. Track 8: Ordinary day (4:09)
This song was written in January 2017, recorded over three months
from January to March 2017 and mixed and mastered by Andrew
Ward as part of a pre-production submission to Sony Music Australia.
The song was not shortlisted by Sony Music Australia for release;
however, it was slated for release in July 2018 as part of an EP
commitment. It currently remains unreleased. Origin Publishing,
Sydney, Australia, currently administrates the song.
9. Track 9: Higher (3:45)
This song was written over a 12-month period from May 2015 to April
2016, recorded over 18 months from May 2015 to December 2016,
mixed by Andy Shanahan of Fuse Mix Suite and mastered by Joseph
Carra at Crystal Mastering, Melbourne. The song was shortlisted by
Sony Music Australia for release and is slated for release as a single
commitment later in 2018. It currently remains unreleased. Origin
Publishing, Sydney, Australia, currently administrates the song.
10. Track 10: Broke (3:05)
This song was written in September 2017, recorded over a one-hour
session in September 2017 and mixed and mastered by Andy Ward for
the purposes of a song sketch submission to Sony Music Australia. It
was shortlisted by Sony Music Australia for further development, but
remains unreleased. The sound recording is not slated for any future
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release at this time. Origin Publishing, Sydney, Australia, currently
administrates the song.
Effects of Practice One
Practice Two is an experiment in narrative and musical form that is informed by the Practice One findings. Therefore, this section discusses how these findings and resulting theorisation affected the development of Practice Two, starting with a broad structural analysis of Album Two. The most common form found in the contextual review was Murphy’s (2011) fourth form. Seven works in Album One explored this form and I explored how the major reasoning behind the prevalence of this form may be its function as a temporal framework. In addition to the time-based design of this form, it was posited that the frequent use of this form might have developed listener expectations over time. This expectation and the subversion of listener expectation was discussed as a reason for variations of Murphy’s (2011) fourth form being the most common anomalous forms found in the contextual review. With these findings in mind, Album Two further explores these forms to expand on the knowledge resulting from Practice One.
In Album Two, there were six works developed in fourth form. Of the remaining four, two works explored the common variations of fourth form and two exist as a further interrogation of forms that are anomalous to Murphy’s model (see
Figure 13). The six songs written to further explore fourth form were:
1. Deluded
2. This ain’t love
3. DNE
4. Break the rules
5. Higher
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6. Broke.
Figure 13. Number of each Murphian section used in the 10 songs created for Album
Two.
While each of these works used fourth form as its musical structure, there were major variances in the running time of the sound recordings. In DNE (4:08), this was due to an extended musical introduction; in Higher (3:45), a slower tempo resulted in a longer run time. This indicates that there is a threshold to how slow a song can be while using fourth form and adhering to the temporal limitations outlined by the instructional literature. This also indicates a threshold for the length of a musical introduction in works using fourth form with the intent of the same time limitations. In most cases, the use of fourth form provided a reliable method for ensuring that the running time of sound recordings remained within the accepted limit of approximately 3 minutes and 30 seconds.
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Ordinary day explores the anomalous form used in Album One as the structural framework for Let me down. This work employed a tempo very close to that of Let me down and provided a different running time. The 4:09 running time is not due to any extended introductions or slower tempos; instead, it was because each section was of equal length, which was not considered at the time of composition.
While this work provides an excellent analogue of Let me down in structure, it does not reflect the time limitations as outlined in the contextual review.
One anomalous structure present in the contextual review included the addition of a secondary part, or B section, to the chorus. The genre most commonly using this technique was electronic dance music. Gun shy explores how narrative might operate in such an anomalous form.
Another common anomalous structure found in the reviewed 300 songs was a variance on Murphy’s (2011) third form. Here, the basic third from structure was followed; however, rather than an instrumental section, a middle eight lyrical device was employed. This form was used in several works in the review, including Iggy
Azalea’s Fancy (Kelly et al., 2014) and Gotye’s Somebody that I used to know (de
Backer, 2011). In Album Two, Give it to me uses this variance to explore the effects that form may have on the operation of narrative. As outlined earlier, the most common anomaly found in the contextual review was a variance of the fourth form.
Album Two uses Hurt us to explore this form and its possible effect on the development and progression of narrative.
Therefore, Album Two comprehensively outlines the most common musical forms, as explored in the works of Album One. While establishing how Album One affected the structural choices of the works contained in Album Two is essential to understanding the research, Album Two also exists to interrogate narrative operation
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and the literature review findings. The following section discusses the outcome of this inquiry.
Narrative Operation in the Creative Work
This section discusses the results of a broad reading of Album Two by using a narratological lens and compares the collection of works involved in the literature review with the works generated in Practice One. Following this comparative discussion, this section explores how narrative theory affected the process of lyric writing and examines how Todorov’s (Genette, 1980) model assists in visualising similarities in narrative progression.
By viewing Album Two through a broad reading using Genette’s (1981) typology, several commonalities emerge. As outlined in the literature review, it was suspected that Genette’s separation of narrative voice involving the positioning of the narrator in relation to the story was of little value, considering the listener assumptions involved in performing a song. Specifically, it is assumed that the singer is the narrator retelling a story in which they are involved. This homodiegetic positioning was universally applied across the works examined in the literature review. Subsequently, all songs created as part of Album Two position the narrator in this way. While many of the works share several commonalities, this positioning is the only universal factor.
The first separation viewed in the creative work relates to narrator positioning by way of extradiegetic level. All songs were presented in first person; however, a common element of change existed between first-person declarative statements and direct address conversation. In Gun shy, this change occurs between verse one and pre-chorus one. The verse engages in a direct address conversation with an implied existent in the line, ‘Are you gonna join me, in the place where we were young and
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we were all that’. The first-person declarative statement is then used in the following section when the lyrics read, ‘we are young, we are young, we are young but, we ain’t gun shy’. In writing these lyrics, I deliberately wanted to create a declarative voice while still indicating the role of the other existent in the story. This was achieved by using the first-person plural pronoun ‘we’. This implementation had an unexpected secondary affect in that the section became inclusive of the listener, implying that the term ‘we’ involved them directly. This change in extradiegetic level is also observed in the interplay between the pre-chorus and chorus sections in Broke. In this work, the narrator is relating situational information via conversation with an implied existent in the lines, ‘and every other day, I wanna make you stay, you should know, I’m broken’. This lyric is followed by a repetitive iteration of the song’s main proposition in the lines, ‘piece me back together, take me to where it can hurt, I’m broke, I’m broke, I’m broken’. In these lines, a change occurs between the strict direct address pronouns of ‘you’ and ‘I’ to a self-referential statement regarding the narrator’s state of mind. Similar to Gun shy, I implied the involvement of the other existent without using the appropriate pronouns; however, this chorus lyric only achieves this due to the context provided by the preceding section. This indicates that, at least in this case, the surrounding sections of a song provide context that can alter any section’s meaning.
To mirror the findings of the narrative analysis introduced in the literature and contextual review, I implemented changes in Genette’s elements between musical sections at many levels throughout the songs on Album Two. One of the most consistent changes was in the timing of narrative voice. In Deluded, this change occurs between the verses and pre-choruses. During the verse, the narrator speaks in a simultaneous voice describing events as they happen in the lines, ‘remember when,
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we would call it love, we were gonna see the sights’. While this lyric is relaying prior situational information, it is undertaking a simultaneous direct address conversation.
This voice time alters in the next section and shifts to an interpolated voice in the lines, ‘people looking in and they see the fight, you and I know who is wrong and right’. Again, the analysis of this voice is not in the information being relayed, but rather in the positioning of the narrative voice and time in the story’s progression.
This is observed in all other works evidenced in the table of narrative analysis (see
Appendix C); however, whether the affect occurs within the song’s structure is inconsistent. In Higher, this change of voice time occurs between pre-chorus and chorus. In the lines, ‘take a breath and put on my shoes, only you and only I can feel the simple truth’, the narrator is engaged in a real-time conversation with the implied existent. This changes in the chorus when the lyrics read, ‘getting higher, getting higher, getting higher’, which is an interpolated provision of information not operating in a linear timeline. This provides evidence that the change in narrative voice time is a commonality among all the creative works. This is further supported by this technique occurring in the 14 songs that were analysed as part of the literature review.
In the previously mentioned review, there were two cases in which the focalisation shifted from internal to external. In Justin Bieber’s What do you mean?
(Bieber et al., 2015), there is a shift in focalisation between chorus and verse in which the narrator describes their knowledge of an existent’s behaviour in the verse, yet spends the entire chorus positioning themselves as having a lack of knowledge. This is evidenced in the line, ‘I’m running out of time’ in the verse, leading into the line
‘what do you mean’ in the chorus. This instability of focalisation between sections is explored in the work, Break the rules. The song employs an internal focalisation for
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the main body of the song, as heard in the lines, ‘I could be your lover or a fool, all you’ve got to do is break the rules’. The shift in focalisation occurs in the chorus when the lyrics change to a line of questioning: ‘why are we holding on, why are we holding on’. Similar to Bieber’s What do you mean? (Bieber et al., 2015), Break the rules presents the chorus and key proposition of the song in question form. While this occurs in other works in the collection, on this occasion, the narrator has less knowledge than the implied existent and the focalisation shifts to external. This attempt to mirror the review findings of 14 surrounding creative works demonstrates how a change in focalisation can occur between sections. As no case existed where a song was entirely externally focalised, Album Two contains no attempt to explore this as a creative option.
In the works contained in Album Two, there is a consistency of sectional narrative function. While there are several similarities in the changes found between sections, there is inconsistency regarding where these changes occur and between what sections. Subsequently, it is difficult to prescribe a specific function to any particular musical section; however, there was one section in which consistency of function was present. In the works with a middle eight, these sections shared a commonality on an intradiegetic level. The intradiegetic level relates to the information that is being delivered; for the middle eight, the information was reflective in all cases. This is best evidenced in Ordinary day: ‘when I think of all the trouble that I drink well maybe I don’t wanna do this anymore’. This reflection is also present in the lines, ‘how can you believe, the bullshit and hate that you speak’, in the middle eight of This ain’t love. This consistency of intradiegetic information reflects several works within narrative analysis performed in the literature review. Miley
Cyrus’s Wrecking ball (MoZella, Moccio, Skarbek, Gottwald & Walter, 2013)
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exemplifies this reflective content in the lines, ‘maybe I should have let you in, maybe
I should have let you win’, in the middle eight section of a fourth form song.
Importantly, this consistency even occurred in works in which the fourth form was not used. In Hurt us, the musical structure is anomalous to any of Murphy’s forms, yet the middle eight functions as a reflection on the intradiegetic information preceding it.
Thus far, examining and experimenting on the narrative operation of each section within Album Two provides insight into the commonalities of function. The next section of this chapter further explores these commonalities across entire forms, examining how narrative functions in Album Two by using a broad lens.
Visualising Narrative Progression
In this section, I interrogate Album Two using Todorov’s typology of narrative progression and his understanding of narrative equilibrium. As outlined in the literature review, Todorov’s model allows for a macro lens of examination when tracing the path of narrative progression through the musical structure of a song. The information gathered from the narrative analysis informed by Genette (1981) was used to attribute an equilibrium value to each section. This typology built visualisations of narrative progression and easily identified patterns within the musical structures.
As described in the previous section, six of the 10 songs developed for this research employed Murphy’s (2011) fourth form as the musical structure. When the typology of narrative progression was applied to these works, the findings were consistent. All Album Two songs follow the same pattern of narrative progression. In each case, the verses had a contributing function, while the pre-chorus destabilised the narrative and the chorus had a zero affect. This is consistent with the findings from
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the analysis of fourth form works performed in Chapter 3. As with the consistency of time discussed in Chapter 5, fourth form works appear to share a consistency of narrative progression. This indicates an implicit familiarity to this form that establishes listener expectation. Each work contained in Album Two was not explicitly designed to follow the same narrative progression patterns, yet all works shared a consistency of narrative equilibrium. This indicates that some implicit tacit knowledge is contained in my own practice of fourth form and that this knowledge is linked to an established narrative progression function present in the contextual and literature review.
In addition to this consistency among fourth form works, several other correlations were highlighted by this research process. In every case, the verse sections had a contributing effect on narrative equilibrium. This mirrors the review findings of the surrounding works in which 26 of the 30 verses had a positive value assigned in the Todorov analysis (see Figure 14). This indicates a frequently implicit narrative function located in the verses of pop songs that establishes, contributes and returns to the narrative equilibrium.
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Figure 14. Number of sections using the four possible functions of narrative equilibrium in Album Two.
In all cases, the narrative information that was delivered provided situational detail regarding time, place or relationships. This phenomenon was present in the
Todorov analysis of the surrounding creative works, indicating that the intradiegetic function of the verse is to provide context via situational detail. When combined with the findings regarding narrative equilibrium, this data points to a fixed narrative operation contained in pop song verses. Specifically, the pop song verse is a homodiegetic simultaneous narrative that is used to establish equilibrium by providing situational context.
While the use of fourth form seemed to provide consistent results regarding narrative equilibrium, works anomalous to Murphy’s model resulted in inconsistent results regarding narrative equilibrium. In Ordinary day, the chorus contributed to narrative equilibrium, while the choruses in Hurt us had a destabilising effect. This
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destabilisation of narrative was also located in the chorus of Gun shy. Interestingly, due to the two-part chorus structure, the B section of the chorus had a contributing effect on narrative equilibrium. In Give it to me, there was little variation in the narrative equilibrium, with the pre-chorus being the only point of destabilisation. This speaks to the narrative purpose of the pre-chorus. With the exception of Gun shy, all pre-choruses present in Album Two had a destabilising effect on narrative equilibrium. This reflects the findings from the analysis of narrative progression in the surrounding works. In 11 songs containing pre-choruses, seven songs attribute a destabilising effect to the pre-chorus. This indicates that in most cases involving the presence of pre-choruses, they have a destabilising effect on the narrative. Combining this information with the location of the pre-chorus—namely, between the verse and chorus—one can argue that in a high percentage of works, the pre-chorus exists to contract or destabilise the narrative equilibrium established by the verse.
The only remaining section to be addressed is the chorus. As discussed previously, in the works that employed Murphy’s fourth form, chorus function was consistent with Todorov’s analytic. In Album Two, each of these choruses had a neutral effect on narrative progression: neither offered stabilising context, nor sought to disrupt it. This highlights the findings of the Todorov analysis performed on the surrounding creative works. In each case in which the fourth from was employed, the chorus had a neutral effect on narrative equilibrium. While it is tempting to generalise the function of the chorus from this data, it is important to note that these observations are only relevant to works written in the fourth form. Therefore, within the confines of the familiar fourth form, the chorus appears to provide a momentary pause in narrative equilibrium. This pause occurs three times throughout the form, resulting in works ending in a neutral equilibrium. Therefore, in the fourth form, the verse
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establishes an equilibrium that is disrupted by the pre-chorus. A chorus then momentarily halts this disruption. Perhaps the intradiegetic function of the chorus is to provide a reason for this disruption to narrative equilibrium. To triangulate the
Practice Two findings, Chapter 7 addresses this question by subjecting Album One to the same narrative analysis.
While the contextual review provided the theorisation for the creative works contained in Album One, Album Two served to explore and interrogate how musical form informed narrative development in song lyrics. Therefore, the most common forms located in popular songs were tested and evaluated using a practice-as-research approach. The resulting information informed the theorisations that led to the development of the second album. Album Two explores narrative influence within the confines of the most popular musical forms and the findings have been outlined in this chapter. Chapter 7 further refines the knowledge gained via this process and establishes a new theorisation that is informed by the data obtained from both
Practices One and Two.
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Chapter 7: Discussion and Conclusion
This chapter concludes this thesis with a discussion of the theories that I have explored and developed throughout the research project. As well as outlining the key theoretical elements, I posit some potential areas of research in which this new theorisation may be implemented. To ensure this discussion is as informed as possible, some final analysis must occur. Therefore, all artefacts resulting from the creative process are subjected to the standard of analysis that is present in both the review stages. This chapter begins by ensuring the creative works from both Albums
One and Two are subject to the analytical method discussed in the literature review— specifically, to the typology informed by Todorov’s narrative equilibrium. The data resulting from this final analysis are then reviewed, as in Chapter 6, and are included in an overall discussion of the research as a whole. An in-depth summary of the research’s implications in general is provided, as well as the effects and influences it has specifically on my practice methodology. This chapter ends with a summary of how the analytical models developed in this research may be implemented to encourage further discourse.
A Narrative Analysis of Album One
While the development of Album One occurred prior to the use of this research’s narrative analytic (Genette, 1983; Todorov, 1971), a review of Album One resulted in considerable correlations between Album One, Album Two and the reviewed 300 surrounding creative works. The following section highlights some key examples of these commonalities to frame a discussion on the theorisation resulting from this research as a whole.
The structural analysis performed as part of the contextual review served as the foundation for the narrative analysis of the works contained in Album One. As in
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Chapters 3 and 6, a broad reading of each song was performed using a narrative theory lens informed by Genette’s (1981) typology of narrative analysis. As was the case in the literature review and the review of Album Two, a clear number of correlations emerged. The narrator’s positioning was consistent with the research to date in which, in every case, the narrative was an intradiegetic homodiegetic voice.
This narrative voice positioning reflects the advice in the instructional literature regarding the intimate nature of popular song lyrics; in the lyrics of popular songs, the narrator is most commonly speaking in a first-person conversation and is positioned as an active existent within the story. Given that this homodiegetic voice was present in all the reviewed work, both surrounding and original, one can argue that the instructional literature provides a valid observation in stating that the narrator is always an existent involved in the story that is located in the pop song lyrics.
Similar observations were made regarding the commonality of narrative time.
In some cases, narrative time changed between the sections of a particular work. In
Broken arms, this change occurs between the pre-chorus and chorus. The pre-chorus employs a simultaneous voice to the events presented in the story in the lines, ‘Are you losing your love, am I using your love’. This lyric is answered in the chorus in an interpolated voice, informing the listener via a request that the narrator wants the implied existent to ‘take me up in your broken arms’. This interaction reflects the theory discussed in Chapter 6 regarding the nature of the pre-chorus and chorus relationship—namely, the destabilisation in the pre-chorus to which the chorus responds.
This destabilisation of narrative equilibrium is also observed in the lyrics of
Ain’t it love, which occur in a similar pre-chorus and chorus location. In the lines, ‘no more, was it worth it all, all the time you stole’, the narrative time operates in
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simultaneous conversation with an implied existent. Following the pre-chorus lyric, the narrative shifts to an interpolated voice that introduces the key proposition of the song in the line ‘Ain’t it love’. This is an example of how the relationship between pre-chorus and chorus can operate to destabilise the narrative equilibrium.
When examining Album One at an extradiegetic level, there was one commonality: the narrative voice was either presented in a first-person declarative statement or in a direct address conversation. In Run for cover, all sections share a direct address conversational approach with no change between sections. This reflects the findings from the narrative analysis of the 300 surrounding works, as demonstrated in the lyrics of Adele’s Hello (Adkins & Kurstin, 2015) and All about that bass by Meghan Trainor (Trainor & Kadish, 2014). In some songs of Album
One, changes between first person and direct address occurred. In Mountain fire, the chorus uses no pronouns and the lyrics cannot be positioned without the context of the pronominal use in the surrounding sections. This concurs with works like OMI’s
Cheerleader (Pasley et al., 2015); here, ambiguity exists regarding the position of the narrator in the chorus in which the narrator quotes a third-party existent. This speaks to the significance of the pronouns used between sections and the extradiegetic context that they provide.
The story information being delivered on the intradiegetic level shares several correlations with both Album Two and the review of the surrounding creative works.
Most works in Album One had verses that delivered situational information designed to provide narrative context; for example, ‘I play sober, you be throwing back the holy roller, jack the drugs and take the damn controller, just another day in my bipolar paradise’ from the song Yourself. In this verse, situational information provides context and establishes a narrative equilibrium. The song moves into the pre-chorus
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with the lines, ‘It don’t count at all, it just rolls like droplets of water’. This interpolated comment offers counter information to the situation described by the verse. This concurs with Album Two’s findings regarding the intradiegetic function of both the verse and pre-chorus. In a review of Album One, the intradiegetic level frequently functions as it does in Album Two and the reviewed contextual works.
Album One and Narrative Equilibrium
When applying a typology of narrative equilibrium to Album One, there is some variance in narrative progression; however, in most cases, each section mirrors the narrative function outlined in Chapter 6. Across the collection of works, all verses functioned to contribute to or establish narrative equilibrium. Similarly, in nine of the
10 cases, the pre-chorus sections destabilised the equilibrium established by the situational information that was delivered in the preceding verses. These commonalities occurred in both the creative works using fourth form and those anomalous to Murphy’s model (2011). Trouble was the single case in which the pre- chorus did not have a destabilising effect; instead, it contributed to narrative equilibrium. In this work, the chorus was responsible for destabilising the narrative, which mirrors the function of the chorus section in Bieber’s What do you mean?
(Bieber et al., 2015). Importantly, this song did not follow Murphy’s typology of form and not only contained an anomalous structure, but an anomalous chronology of narrative equilibrium.
Album One’s works that use Murphy’s (2011) fourth form had a universal consistency of narrative function for each section with the structure. This supports findings from the analysis of the fourth form works and provides further evidence of a consistent narrative function in the sections of fourth form songs. This finding speaks
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to the familiarity discussed in both the analysis of Album Two and the 300 surrounding creative works outlined in Chapter 2.
In addition to viewing narrative function across an entire form, Album One provides further evidence regarding consistency of the narrative purpose of individual song sections. In all cases in Album One, the middle eight sections had a destabilising effect on narrative equilibrium. When examining the intradiegetic information of the middle eight, a similar function became evident. More specifically, the middle eight most commonly operates as a reflection on the situational information that is developed throughout the preceding sections. This supports the notion of an inherent narrative that is purposed to each musical section of pop songs (see Figure 15).
Figure 15. Number of sections using the four possible functions of narrative equilibrium in Album One.
Triangulation occurred through the broad reading of Album One, which was led by Genette’s (1981) typology of narrative analysis; the tracing of sectional development of narrative using Todorov’s (Genette, 1980) concept of narrative
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equilibrium; and the observations made during similar research into Album Two and the surrounding 300 songs comprising Chapters 2 and 3. Thus, the research is informed by considerable academic rigour regarding the effects and influences that narrative has on pop song lyrics.
A New Theorisation of Narrative in Popular Song Lyrics
This section highlights the commonalities of narrative between the 300 songs comprising the contextual review and the creative works created as part of this research. By developing new theories of lyric writing from the knowledge gained during this research project, this section will respond to the question: how can narrative inform, affect and influence the lyrics of pop songs?
In the previous section, several possible new theories were highlighted. To structure this section, the following discussions will generate observations regarding the following theories:
1. Fourth form is a musical structure led by temporal limitations that, due to
its familiarity, contains an implicit narrative structure.
2. Within the lyrics of popular song, the narrator is best positioned as a
homodiegetic intradiegetic voice.
3. Certain sections of a pop song can have a specific narrative function.
4. An intrinsic and common relationship can exist between the sections of
pop songs that follow a pattern of narrative equilibrium.
Temporal Considerations and Musical Form
In refining the knowledge gained from this research project into a concise collection of theories on songwriting, this section begins with a discussion on musical structure and form. Among the most common forms contained in the 300 reviewed works comprising the contextual review, Murphy’s (2011) fourth form was most
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prevalent. This form was found to be a reliable tool for ensuring that sound recordings met the strict time parameters, as outlined anecdotally by the market and the instructional literature. In addition to this time constraint reasoning, and perhaps because of it, the fourth form has an implicit familiarity. The research found that songs that made minor variations to the fourth form were more common than other anomalous forms. This is perhaps due to the familiarity of the fourth form and, where the structural signposting is slightly altered, there is still an implicit familiarity for the implied audience or listener.
When attempting to construct creative works outside fourth form and close variants, a temporal issue emerged. In the creative works developed in this research, all three works using an anomalous form exceeded the prescribed time limits of a pop song (Murphy, 2011). While Trouble from Album One fit the tempo parameters and section number limits of the popular song, its irregular form signified that the work exceeded the described temporal limits. Correlating with these temporal anomalies was an inconsistency or randomness in narrative equilibrium. As previously mentioned, works using familiar structures had consistency among narrative purpose from section to section; however, where the musical form was irregular, so too was the sectional narrative function.
Positioning of the Narrator
Viewing this project as a narratological lens on the inquiry, several theories can be posited from the consistencies and commonalities among the works involved.
The most prominent of these commonalities relates to the positioning of the narrator.
All songs across all collections of creative works involved in this review positioned the narrator as a first-person character within the story being told. Using Genette
(1981) as a terminological guide, all studied pop songs position the narrator
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intradiegetically as an homodiegetic voice. This reflects the instructional literature’s assertion that a song should always be a first-person conversation. Further theory can be argued from the data resulting from the analysis of narrative voice. As outlined in the instructional literature, a song is a story well told in a conversational style (Blume,
2011). This conversational style is led by the use of homodiegetic singular and plural pronouns in combination with the second person ‘you’. The use of the second-person pronoun implies the involvement of a second existent in the story; this indicates conversation within a lyric. Therefore, this research argues for the use of an intradiegetic homodiegetic narrative positioning in combination with the second- person pronoun to imply a conversational lyric.
Narrative Equilibrium in Sectional Function
As outlined in the previous section on form, Murphy’s (2011) fourth form was the most common structure employed in all the creative works involved in this research. The research argues that fourth form is used to ensure temporal limitations and that the common nature of this structure can establish the listener expectation of form. When this form was employed across the selection of creative works, there was a consistency of progression in the narrative equilibrium. In 86 per cent of cases using
Murphy’s fourth form (2011), the following narrative equilibrium function was present:
1. verse one: established equilibrium
2. pre-chorus one: destabilised equilibrium
3. chorus one: no contribution to equilibrium
4. verse two: established equilibrium
5. pre-chorus two: destabilised equilibrium
6. chorus two: no contribution to equilibrium
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7. middle eight: new story information destabilising equilibrium
8. chorus two: no contribution to equilibrium.
While some creative works deviated from this model, most followed this progression of narrative equilibrium. Therefore, an implicit progression of narrative equilibrium exists in the most common form used in the collection of pop songs examined and developed in this research. The relationship between this musical form and narrative progression remains unclear; further research is thus needed to establish whether the temporal constraints of the musical form are causally linked to the equilibrium progression.
To establish this model of narrative progression, Genette’s (1981) typology of narrative analysis was used to inform a broad reading of the lyrical texts. While examining the narrative patterns contained in the musical structures of pop song lyrics, several commonalities of individual sectional function emerged.
Sectional Narrative Functions in Pop Song Lyrics
As further refinement of the research developed, individual sections began to emerge as having their own narrative function. Additionally, and perhaps due to the commonalities of narrative progression, several intradiegetic and extradiegetic observations were made. In most cases, both in works with common forms and across works with differing structures, the individual sections of pop song lyrics shared a narrative function.
The creative works that comprised the 14 songs in the contextual narrative review and in both Album One and Album Two had verse sections that were designed to deliver situational information. This information functioned as a description of time, existents and events to provide situational context and establish narrative equilibrium. An estimated 89 per cent of the works comprising this research began
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with a verse; the purpose of those verses was to provide situational context.
Therefore, pop songs most often begin with an establishment of narrative equilibrium that is made clear in a verse providing situational context.
In addition to observations made regarding the purpose of the pop song verse, there were several commonalities found among other sections and their narrative function. In Murphy’s (2011) fourth form, as in most other works, the pre-chorus destabilises narrative equilibrium. This destabilisation occurred by creating uncertainty regarding the information established by the verse. This uncertainty was achieved by delivering information that either directly contradicted the information presented by the verse, or that used conjunctions that implied uncertainty, such as
‘but’ or ‘if’. Therefore, it is posited that the pre-chorus exists as an uncertainty statement creating narrative doubt about the information delivered in the preceding verse. In most works in which the pre-chorus and chorus structure was present, the uncertainty generated by the pre-chorus acts as an implied question without having to explicitly prescribe a line of inquiry. This implicit question speaks to the narrative function of the chorus and may provide insight regarding why the chorus most often had a zero contribution to the progression of narrative equilibrium. To examine this theory, the pre-chorus must be observed in the context of the proceeding chorus.
While the pre-chorus acts as a line of inquiry, the chorus can act as an answer.
As discussed in Chapters 5 and 6, the chorus section was most commonly the site of the pop song’s key proposition statement. However, in most cases, this proposition does not provide a positive or negative effect on narrative equilibrium; rather, it exists to explain why the story is being communicated, or the reasoning behind the events relayed in the song thus far. It is argued that the chorus exists as a pop song’s key
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proposition statement and it exists without the uncertainty provided by the pre-chorus; therefore, the key proposition contained in the chorus is not clearly justified.
In addition to the three most common sections in pop songs (verse, pre-chorus and chorus), most musical structures employed in the review process and the creative works contained a middle eight section. Using Todorov’s (Genette, 1980) equilibrium model, the middle eight mostly served to further disrupt the progression of narrative equilibrium. This was not achieved by the same intradiegetic functions as in the pre- chorus. Instead, the middle eight most commonly employs uncertainty by introducing
‘what if’ propositions, in which the narrator most often uses reflections such as a question or declarative statement. As observed in this research, the middle eight can serve to destabilise the progression of narrative equilibrium and can help provide a new context that reframes the key proposition statement contained in the final chorus.
My research has identified and allocated a particular narrative function to each of the sections contained in popular song forms. Therefore, I have identified
Murphy’s fourth form as one of the most common structures used in the pop paradigm. Pop music structures follow a conversational structure comprising situation, question, answer, situation, question, answer, reflection and answer with new contextual lens. This pattern of narrative function is much like a micro-drama in which the three-act narrative occurs twice, then ends with a narrative coda that revises the main themes. As a practitioner, this understanding of narrative operation in the lyrics of popular songs not only provides a model on which new work can be constructed, but it can also be a point of divergence to inform further exploration of how changes in structure can alter the flow of narrative.
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Scope for Future Research
To respond to the question of how a narrative can inform, affect and influence the lyrics of pop songs, a model of narrative analysis not implemented before in the study of music and lyrics was developed. Several new theories of lyric writing in popular songs were also posited. The following section outlines some of the areas in which the analytical model may be valuable to research and outlines the potential for further research that explores the theories mentioned here.
Future implementations of the Murphy (2103), Genette (1981) and Todorov
(Genette, 1980) models used for examining the progression of narrative equilibrium may start with similar strands of research. Within narratological and musicological research, considerable opportunities exist to use this model for researching other musical genres. For example, an examination of musical structure and narrative in country music would result in considerably different findings to those of this current research. Importantly, this current research project is not only genre specific, but it is also limited to market placement and specific time periods.
Future research into pop songs that have not received a number one chart position may provide new insight into narrative’s influence and effect on the genre in a broader context. Additionally, research involving number one charting pop songs beyond 2007–2015 could provide insight into how song structures and narrative have changed over time. Further, using pop music from different markets may demonstrate how those markets are separate or similar to the ones outlined in this research. This model can, therefore, be applied to any musical form that includes lyrical content and the range of alternative uses for this analytic may apply to many markets, periods, genres or languages.
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When applying this research outside musicological studies, this model requires only spoken words and identifiable structures to be implemented in a valuable manner. Tracing the progression of narrative equilibrium in feature films, plays or short stories may provide insights into previously unidentified correlations between structural and narrative elements. The analytical model may thus be used in the study of any narrative that has a discernible or formalised structure, as is the case with some public speaking or teaching practices.
In addition to implementing the analytical model employed in the research, the theories of songwriting resulting from the research may have multidisciplinary applications. In musical or lyrical studies, these theories can be tested in practice and may be a valuable instructional tool for the teaching of songwriting. Outside songwriting studies, these theories may translate into other practices. Potential exists for these theories to be overlaid into any practice in which music with lyrics is present. Regarding music videos, creative teams generating visual narratives might use these theories to realise more narrative content in their work. The same may prove possible for choreographers, set designers or live performances. These theories may be valuable in situations requiring the understanding of how narratives inform, influence or affect structure; they may also be important in situations where non- narrative structures require an alternative understanding.
In this chapter, data resulting from the review chapters and the practice chapters were compiled to create a new theory in pop song lyric writing. This theory focuses on developing a deeper understanding of narrative in pop song lyrics specific to the practice of songwriting itself. Using this practical approach, the research has interrogated the assertions made by authors of instructional literature regarding songwriting to find a deeper understanding of how narrative can influence and inform
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pop song lyrics. This practice-as-research project used theory from existing narratological discourse to examine narrative practices in popular song lyrics, then applied this theoretical framework to develop a new analytic specific to narrative progression and development in popular song forms. It is my hope that this work inspires and stimulates new discourse in popular music theory and subsequently encourages the creation of new musical works that test the theories posited in this research and in the larger field of songwriting.
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Appendix A
Link to Analysis of 300 Songs: https://www.dropbox.com/s/pguxsba49cr1gb2/Structural%20Analysis_300%20Numb er%201%20Singles_Submission%20Draft%20v1%20.xlsx?dl=0
166
Appendix B
Lyric Sheet of 14 selected works: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1xzqnu25mk8v3n4/Lyric%20Sheet%20%E2%80%93%2
0Narrative%20progression%20typology.docx?dl=0
167
Appendix C
Link to data from narrative analysis: https://www.dropbox.com/s/7c5pv43t5duu9gj/Narrative%20Progression%20Typolog y%20Results_%20Submission%20Draft%201.xlsx?dl=0
168
Appendix D
Links to Lyrics Sheets:
Album One: https://www.dropbox.com/s/mr94e33uujfo7hc/Lyric%20Sheet%20Album%201.docx
?dl=0
Album Two: https://www.dropbox.com/s/98kks6y4pg9a263/Lyric%20Sheet%20Album%202_disc ussions.docx?dl=0
169
Appendix E
Links to folder containing creative works:
Album One: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/xdq9elwqyyqxztz/AADSrrZUzyAcQcIdygYuQd4Da?dl =0
Album Two: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/zu6kcw4xg85vgla/AAATzdrpU17v6t94w5O5NRhWa? dl=0
170