Konstnärligt examensarbete
How Different Are Pop & Punk?
Författare: Marcel Tiggemann Handledare: Tobias Rydén Examinator: Professor KG Johansson Termin: VT21 Ämne: Musik
Nivå: Kandidat
Kurskod: 2MU30E
Abstract A look into song identity and the building blocks of music through a process of analysing five different punk songs and then repackaging them into a modern pop production. After completing these new versions, I compared them to their original recordings and discovered that there are more similarities between the two genres than one might initially think, and that each song’s identity was preserved on slightly different levels and in different forms. I discuss my analyses and process in terms of both music theory and non-musical descriptions, leading to generally positive results. Each song was recognizable, but I discovered that some identities were stronger than others because of factors such as original arrangement, era of release or differences in experience from person to person.
Keywords Punk music, pop music, song identity, songwriting, arrangement, cover versions
Thanks § To my mentor, Tobias, for pushing me in the right direction § To my classmate, Jakob, for singing a feature vocal § To all the punk bands I grew up with, for helping me become the songwriter I am today
Table of Contents 1 Introduction 1 2 Purpose 2 2.1 Questions 2 2.2 Terminology 2 3 Method 5 3.1 Overview 5 3.2 Chosen songs 5 3.3 Analysis 1: Song identity with music theory 6 3.4 Analysis 2: Song identity with general adjectives 6 3.5 Practical 7 4 Process & Results 8 4.1 “Crushing Grief (No Remedy)” 8 4.2 “Lying is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off” 8 4.3 “Dear Maria, Count Me In” 9 4.4 “Dance, Dance” 9 4.5 “Learn to Love the Lie” 10 5 Discussion 11 5.1 “Crushing Grief (No Remedy)” 11 5.1.1 Adjectives – Driving, Sentimental & Youthful 11 5.1.2 Overall 12 5.2 “Lying is the Most Fun…” 13 5.2.1 Adjectives – Melancholy, Heated & Emotional 13 5.2.2 Overall 14 5.3 “Dear Maria, Count Me In” 14 5.3.1 Adjectives – Lively, Youthful & Nostalgic 14 5.3.2 Overall 15 5.4 “Dance, Dance” 15 5.4.1 Adjectives – Playful, Energetic & Suspenseful 16 5.4.2 Overall 17 5.5 “Learn to Love the Lie” 17 5.5.1 Adjectives – Energetic, Hopeful & Determined 18 5.5.2 Overall 18 5.6 Similarities between songs 19 6 Conclusion 21 6.1 Overall 21 6.2 Further study potential 21
1 Introduction
My degree in songwriting has placed me in all sorts of interesting sessions and constellations of people, and musical backgrounds has often come up, not only as a point of discussion, but also as a reference to whatever song I or we have worked on in these sessions. I’ve always found this discussion interesting, and the following question of how one’s musical upbringing affects what they create today is equally intriguing. I was raised on mainly rock and punk music – both of my parents introduced me to their favourite rock bands in my early years, and I discovered punk music myself a little later. As I got more into music, I started to broaden my horizons and got into producing electronic music, which eventually led to pop and to my current situation where I write and produce predominantly contemporary music. I have, however, always held on to my roots in rock and punk, and this comes forward in different ways – I’ve played in many bands between the two genres over the years, but I’ve also noticed that I bring influence from these styles, albeit mostly subconsciously, into the writing that I do on a day-to-day basis. This led me to start looking at similarities between the genres, and I realised that rock was pop in the 1970s, ‘80s, and even early ‘90s, but I found that discussions around “classic” rock (as it’s now labelled) were more about the fans than the music, making it less interesting from a songwriting and arranging perspective. Punk music, however, particularly that from the last 20 years, I feel has a lot of un-analysed similarities with modern pop, and I wanted to dive much deeper into this subject.
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2 Purpose
What I aimed to discover during this project was how the building blocks of music affect a song’s overall identity and if it is possible to translate this identity into a different context. This was important to me as it allowed me to analyse my own tastes in music and what I bring with me from my background, which is very different to the genre I spend most of my time working within, and with this knowledge I can hopefully utilize it more actively in the future. While my project is based on cover versions of punk songs, I believe that my method is better described by the term adaptation or repackaging. According to online song database SecondHandSongs, whose primary purpose is cataloguing original and cover versions, a cover is defined as: “…a performance of a work that is not an original, performed by a different artist from the artist performing the original performance.”[1] SecondHandSongs also describe an adaptation as: “…a new version of a work, for instance a translation. An adaptation usually has new credits, and can have original and cover performances as well.”[1] My research lands somewhere between these two descriptions, as I did not simply record my own version of these songs, nor did I translate or adapt the work to a degree that would give me additional credits. As such, I describe my work as repackaging, as I believe this most clearly describes my process and focus on each song’s original identity.
2.1 Questions
§ What are the similarities and differences between pop and punk music? § Which elements of punk work well in a pop context and how can I translate these into a modern production? § How much of a song’s identity is influenced by its arrangement and how much translates between genres?
2.2 Terminology
§ A/B comparison/listening: A method used in different situations where one listens to two songs in short sections and in quick succession to compare different elements. § Arrangement: The term for the combination of topline, harmony, song structure and instrumentation.
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§ Colour(s): A note added to a basic chord (triad) to give it a different feeling or tension, most commonly a seventh. Also known as tensions or extensions. § Dominant: The fifth chord in a scale or key, often used to mark the end of a section and return afterwards to the tonic. § Double-time: A rhythmic feel that speeds up a section to fit two measures into the place of one measure, essentially doubling the overall pulse. § Dub(s): The name for a vocal recording that is identical to the lead but placed differently in the mix to make the overall vocal seem bigger. § Falsetto: A method of singing higher notes by resonating from the singer’s head rather than chest. Also called head voice. § Fill: A short and prominent rhythmic riff used to transition between two sections in a song. Usually played by drums or percussion. § Half-time: A rhythmic feel that extends one measure over the place of two measures, essentially halving the overall pulse. § Harmonies: Backing vocals sung with the same rhythm as the lead line but with different notes, creating a chord in the overall vocal arrangement. Not to be confused with harmony. § Harmony: The accompanying chords to a topline. § Hook: A sequence, either melodic, rhythmic, or vocal, repeated throughout a song with the purpose of being memorable after only a few repetitions. § Key: The musical term for the scale or group of notes that a song is written or arranged in. § Interval: The musical term for the distance between two or more notes. § Major: The term for a chord, key or scale that uses intervals that sound happy or uplifting. § Middle-eight: The musical term for a section of the song which adds an unfamiliar melody to the topline, usually occurring before the final chorus. Also known as bridge. § Minor: The opposite of major; a chord, key or scale that uses intervals that sound sad. § Off-beat: The rhythmic subdivisions that exist between the regular pulse. § Parallel (chord): The name for the triad of opposite feeling (major/minor) but same function in a scale. A parallel triad always shares two notes with its counterpart. § Pulse: The natural and basic rhythm implied by any given tempo. In pop music this is almost always divided into four beats. § Relative (key): The major or minor accompaniment to a key that shares the same group of notes but the opposite feeling, and by extension features the parallel chords more prominently. § Riff: A memorable instrumental melody or sequence that usually appears several times in a song. § Soundalike: A song written and produced to sound extremely similar to an existing popular song, used mainly in films and TV. § Soundscape: The combination of sounds (usually synths, guitars and drums) that create a certain timbre in a production. § Subdominant: The fourth chord in a scale or key.
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§ Swing feel: A rhythmic style that slightly delays the offbeats in a measure, making it less gridlocked. § Synth: A musical sound or sequence created by a synthesizer, digital or analogue. § Tonic: The note or chord that is first in the scale of a key, also used to denote the key. Also called root note/chord. § Topline: The lyrics and vocal melody of a song. § Track: Another name for production. § Triad: A basic chord made up of three notes; tonic, third and fifth. § Vocal chop: A sequence of audio that is clipped and edited from an isolated vocal take to create a new hook or melody.
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3 Method
3.1 Overview
I chose five popular punk songs from the last 20 years, and to discover the similarities between pop and punk I first stripped them down to just chords and melody and looked at the song without its punk arrangement – analysing different elements and taking note of where and how hooks appear, amongst other things. After this, I created a new production and arrangement for each of the five songs in a modern pop style using Ableton Live, several audio plugins and my own collection of studio equipment. I had a reference artist for each production to give me a general sense of direction and sound, and in the same vein chose one or two particular songs from each respective artist that I believed to be very representative of that sound. However, I did not create a soundalike of the chosen reference artist or song - they were simply a metaphorical anchor for my new production to stay on track and up to date.
3.2 Chosen songs
See attachment 1 for a link to a Spotify playlist including all of these songs.
Reference Artist, Title, Year Original Artist Track(s) “Crushing Grief (No Lauv (“I Like Me Neck Deep Remedy)” (2014) Better”) “Lying is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without blackbear (“hot girl Panic! at the Disco Taking Her Clothes Off” bummer”, “half alive”) (2005) “Dear Maria, Count Me BTS (“Dynamite”, “Boy All Time Low In” (2007) With Luv”) The 1975 (“Girls”, “It’s “Dance, Dance” (2005) Fall Out Boy Not Living (If It’s Not With You)”) “Learn to Love the Lie” 5 Second of Summer Four Year Strong (2020) (“Wildflower”)
Expanding on this method further, I began by analysing the identity of the chosen songs, where the identity is built from different elements, and the two main questions I considered whilst redesigning these songs were: § What gives song x its identity? § Did I succeed in preserving the identity of song x after repackaging it into a pop context?
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3.3 Analysis 1: Song identity with music theory
This analysis was not only done before I began to produce, but was continuous throughout my project, spanning from the ideas stage to comparing the finished products to their punk counterparts. I found it useful to often refer back to the original track to re-analyse or even rediscover certain elements. The musical elements that I deemed to be of most importance to a song’s identity were: § Melody § Harmony § Hooks – not limited to vocals, riffs included § Song structure § Vocal arrangement § Tempo I used a combination of three different manners of listening to the songs while working on this analysis – listening to the original recording, playing and singing the song myself with just an acoustic guitar (i.e., the bare bones of the song) and also A/B comparisons between the original recording and the respective reference artist. While these ways of listening are trivial when considering the bigger picture of my investigation, they did allow me to interpret the elements of each song in their own way. The records of this analysis were either completely mental, where I could pair them in my mind with other ideas for arrangement and/or soundscape, or went directly into the respective song’s project in Live, where I began applying them practically straight away. This analysis of musical elements was more for my own creative process, and I made a second analysis of each song’s identity where I described them each with three adjectives that are unrelated to music theory.
3.4 Analysis 2: Song identity with general adjectives
The purpose of this second analysis was to look at the identity from a non-musical perspective, and by extension create a tangible way to grade the amount of identity preserved in my modern productions of each song when compared to the original. As such, I will be discussing this analysis in more detail later in this essay. In addition, this gave my overall project an ease of understanding for those who don’t have musical knowledge. I broke down each song into three adjectives that I thought best described the identity as a whole. These adjectives are as follows:
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Song Adjective 1 Adjective 2 Adjective 3 “Crushing Grief Driving Sentimental Youthful (No Remedy)” “Lying is the Melancholy Heated Emotional Most Fun…” “Dear Maria, Lively Youthful Nostalgic Count Me In” “Dance, Dance” Playful Energetic Suspenseful “Learn to Love Energetic Hopeful Determined the Lie”
I will note here that I chose not to include the lyrics in my first analysis, as I don’t believe it to be important to my project - however, I do consider the lyrics a part of the song’s identity, and thus the text and subject matter did enter into my second analysis to some degree, although I did try not to weigh it too heavily. That being said, leaving the lyrics untouched (I did however make some subtle changes to phrasing) not only allowed me to focus on the identity that the arrangement brings, but also automatically preserve some of the identity in my repackagings.
3.5 Practical
With these analyses finished, I moved on to the practical part of my project - the actual arranging and producing of the pop versions. As stated earlier, my aim was not only to repackage these songs into a modern context, but to keep as much of the song’s identity as possible, both during the creative process and in the finished product. I finished each production at a level as close to “radio-ready” as possible, but I was working under time constraints and of course with more time I could have fine-tuned a little more. Apart from a feature vocal from my classmate Jakob Nilsson (pop artist under the name JVN – I will explain this later in this text), I have done all the recording of both instruments and vocals myself.
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4 Process & Results
With the songs analysed, I picked out any important hooks that I wanted to keep or translate, and from there was able to work outwards with a clear overview of the topline and other important elements. My process for the songs was exactly this – I started with the chorus or a central riff and built the track outwards from there. I find this to be a very solid workflow, especially in pop music, as the chorus is almost always the foundation of the song, and it worked well in this project too. For ease of reading and understanding, I have chosen to discuss each song by itself hereafter, as I feel it will be the best way to discuss the challenges and process clearly. See attachment 2 for a private SoundCloud playlist of my productions.
4.1 “Crushing Grief (No Remedy)”
The biggest change I made here was to the harmony as Neck Deep’s arrangement is so different from mine. Even though they used only four chords, I really didn’t get a pop feeling from their harmony at all, potentially due to the changes in rhythmic patterns and relation to the tempo (half-time or double-time changes). However, the melody is centred around the tonic, and this means that it can thankfully be sung over almost any chord progression within the key, so I was able to modify their harmony to a simpler, 4-bar progression that loops throughout the whole song, giving it a much more modern edge and allowing the focus to lie on the topline. In addition, I used a mild swing feel to give the song more sense of groove and placed a post-chorus section after the third verse, where the original version ended. For the post-chorus hook (which I also used as the intro), I was able to modulate the guitar riff from the intro of Neck Deep’s version into a vocal chop riff which became one of the central hooks of the song, and easily the section that I got stuck in my head the most after working on this track. I also changed the key of the song so I could sing it in a more comfortable register that catered to the new production, as well as dropping the tempo considerably, making the arrangement more closely match the reference artist. Overall, this production turned out to be quite simple and sparce, with focus being mainly on the vocals and groove, which was intentional given not only the reference artist but also the sheer amount of vocals in the song. The vocal arrangement is also simple, with the extra layers consisting mainly of octave harmonies and dubs, although I did add a third harmony in verse three to create some variation from verse two. The original recording was also almost exclusively one lead track, so this translation was an obvious choice.
4.2 “Lying is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off”
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In terms of the song’s bare bones, I didn’t need to adjust very much here - I dropped the key for ease of singing and added an extra chorus at the beginning (this is a structure that blackbear uses often), but apart from this I kept the harmony and general song structure the same, as it was already quite simple and worked well in the pop context. I was able to take some melodies from the original version and use them in my production as well – both the variating tonic-third guitar and the synth riff from the verse fit in my arrangement, albeit with some change to their sound, for example. I ended up with a production that sits well within the territory of my reference artist, blackbear - an overall groovy modern disco tune that mixes pop and hip-hop. This was both in line with the original and with the reference artist, as the topline in the verses is complex and almost rapped more than sung, whereas the chorus feels catchy and poppy, which is also common in blackbear’s music. As such, the verses use a half-time feel, built on heavy but simple drums, which then change to a classic disco beat with heavy focus on the live bassline to support the change in topline in the chorus. In addition, I did adjust some phrasing in the verses to replicate blackbear’s flow, and while Panic! at the Disco included some harmonies in their version, I filled out the vocal package a little more in the chorus.
4.3 “Dear Maria, Count Me In”
In terms of structure, I kept this song the same as the original, however I translated the guitar sections into instrumentals, using their guitar riff and a vocal ad-lib from the end of the second chorus as hooks in these sections. This was a way to make it modern but also allowed me to keep elements from the All Time Low version. Having a K-pop reference group was also a good choice for this particular song, as the harmony is quite complex (even though it only uses basic chords), and K-pop is often a little busier in this regard. This also let me build the production and energy of the track as it progresses - the first instrumental section is very bare, with only kick drum, bass and riff synth, but the final chorus hits with a full orchestra of drums, guitar, live and synth bass, horns and a large vocal package. Also in reference to K-pop, I included a second voice as a feature, starting from the second verse, giving my version more of a group or band feeling. This again is a way to blend the reference with the original arrangement, as the backing vocals in the original version are sung (in part) by different members of the band.
4.4 “Dance, Dance”
Similarly to “Crushing Grief”, I chose to adjust the harmony in my version of “Dance, Dance” to make the arrangement feel more pop. I again created a 4-bar progression that is a variation of the original chords and looped it over the whole track, as this both made it more pop but also made it easier to work within my reference artist, The 1975, as they often have very simple harmony with a more complex topline, and the topline in “Dance, Dance” is quite varying, meaning that interest is not lost when built upon a looping chord progression. This also allowed me to give the overall
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arrangement a major feel, whereas the Fall Out Boy version uses a minor feel. In addition, I dropped the key to put the song in a better range for my voice. I was again able to keep some central hooks from the original version: the one-bar guitar riff heard throughout the verse and right before the chorus, which I transposed up a third to reflect the major feel of my production; the snare fill used before the second chorus; and, most notably, I translated the vocal melody from the chorus into a plucked synth riff used in my intro, post-chorus and outro. These particular sections of the song have the same function as the sections comprising solely of bass guitar and drums in the original recording – to give a rest from the busy vocal – however, I used mine as a continuation of the heightened energy of the chorus sections, rather than dip the dynamics. This allowed me to tie together my structure a little differently than the original, and in this vein, I created a different build up to the middle-eight section, stripping back my post-chorus instead of introducing a new harmony and half-time feel, as Fall Out Boy did. Also in contrast to the original arrangement, I chose to use a fade-out at the end of the song, as this was in line with the retro influence that The 1975 have in their tracks and allowed me to keep the overall energy level high whilst looping the central hook.
4.5 “Learn to Love the Lie”
Being another vocal-heavy song, I chose to create a simpler production for “Learn to Love the Lie”, and I also preserved the harmony as the topline was built very specifically around the chords. My reference for this arrangement was also fairly scaled back, but had focus on certain rhythms and accents, which is something I was also able to utilise in my production, giving it a sense of rhythm that was relevant to the complex harmony. I again dropped the key to fit better in my own register but kept as much of Four Year Strong’s vocal arrangement as possible in my production – Four Year Strong have two lead singers and as such always include a large amount of harmonies in their music, and this was important to have in my arrangement. The middle-eight section increases the energy of the chorus and I chose to portray this by adding a slight change to the soundscape, particularly in the vocal sound, making it stand out a little more as its own element, whereas the rest of the song is built around a cohesive soundscape, so as to not draw attention away from the topline.
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5 Discussion
I was not surprised to find that each song had its own difficulties, but I was surprised that repackaging each song into a pop context wasn’t as overall challenging as I had imagined. Once I had the songs broken down it was easy to pick out any important hooks that I wanted to keep or translate, and I could see the topline clearly and work outwards from there. I do believe that many of the challenges arose from my own over-analysis and perfectionism, and letting go of that is always difficult in any creative field. I will again talk about each song individually for ease of understanding, but I will also talk about the adjectives from my second analysis individually as this allows me to compare the two versions in an insightful manner.
5.1 “Crushing Grief (No Remedy)”
This Neck Deep song was probably the easiest of the bunch, despite it being (arguably) the most drastic contrast from its original version. I believe what made this to be so simple was the stripped back production of my reference artist, Lauv - I didn’t have to put much time into adding layers to fill out the soundscape as the focus lies so heavily on the vocals.
5.1.1 Adjectives – Driving, Sentimental & Youthful
Driving was a difficult piece of “Crushing Grief’s” identity translate, and while I do think my arrangement has a sense of drive, it has a very different feel to the original version. The contrariety lies in the energy of the two tracks – Neck Deep’s version is high-energy from start to finish, whereas my repackaging has a more diverse dynamic range and is really only high energy in the chorus and post-chorus sections. I did find that the topline itself has a driving function and does push the song forward effectively. Whilst recording a test vocal, I discovered that there were interestingly very few places to take a breath, which is easily remedied by recording individual sentences and clipping them together in post-processing (I believe this to be how Neck Deep’s version was put together, and what I did with the vocal heard in the current version), but I initially thought this to be a counterpoint to the topline having a driving function. The reason for this could be a personal opinion or preference, but I often feel that a vocal which can be “humanly” sung without losing breath or being too strenuous helps a song flow. However, when I reviewed the original track, I noticed that the unnatural flow of the vocals was what pushed the song forward so effectively – the lack of space to take a breath and rest from the vocals causes each section of the song to feel unfinished or unresolved, and this in turn builds up energy and tension, which is then released in transition to the next section of the song. Coupled with the fast-paced nature of Neck Deep’s arrangement, it’s impossible not to experience this drive, but without a high-energy support, I didn’t experience the
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drive in the same way. My drums and percussion package definitely helped lift the topline and move the song forward, but not to the same degree as the original arrangement. I found that the sentimentality in “Crushing Grief” comes mainly from the melody and its relation to the key. Most of the notes used are within a fourth interval upward from the tonic, and in this selection of notes two are quite stable (the tonic and the third) and the other two notes (the second and the fourth) can often be experienced as nostalgic or melancholy, but centring around the tonic also gives the topline a feeling of familiarity and safety. The original version couples these melodies with a simple harmony and to me, that gave the song an element of recognition, almost as if recalling a fond memory. In my production, I tried to mirror this with my own (modified) chord progression, but also paired it with a laidback and reflective vocal delivery to preserve this piece of identity. In addition to this, I was tactical when choosing my reference artist, as I experience much of Lauv’s music, both in terms of writing and production, to be sentimental. This made preserving the sentimentality in “Crushing Grief” easy during the process of sound selection and building my track. While youthful is a slightly more abstract adjective to describe the song, I do get a sense of it when listening to the original recording. As such, it’s not something that I was particularly focused on whilst producing my arrangement, but more something I thought about and tried to analyse once I had a complete version of the track. A factor that worked in my favour here is simply putting it into a pop context – contemporary music is populated almost entirely by young artists and as such youthfulness exists without the need to create it, in many cases. Contrary to this, however, I don’t experience my own voice as overly youthful, and even when I sang as poppy and in a manner that reflects the track and reference artist, I’m not completely sold on whether I was able to preserve this factor of “Crushing Grief’s” identity or not. I feel that this is also a very individual perception, and that youthfulness looks and feels different to different people, and thus whether or not my version and Neck Deep’s recording both show this piece of identity is not tangible in the same way that the other adjectives I chose are. Factors such as listening environment or album context could also enter into this analysis – for instance, if I were to place my version in a playlist filled with young pop artists, it could come across equally as youthful, but perhaps being used in a soundtrack to a more serious and mature film would give the opposite experience.
5.1.2 Overall
In my eyes, I was fairly successful at preserving the identity of “Crushing Grief” in my version, but I don’t feel that I was able to take it all the way. This is partly due to what I discussed earlier, the different kinds of drive used and individual interpretation of what is youthful, but also due to just how different the style and sound of my production is. If played side-by-side, I have no doubt that a listener would be able to discern that they are in fact the same song, but I do not believe that many people
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would be able to pick out which song this is simply by listening to my arrangement, unlike some of the other songs I repackaged. In that regard, I cannot claim to have fully succeeded with this track.
5.2 “Lying is the Most Fun…”
I came into this song with a fairly clear vision, and as such I didn’t find too many hurdles while arranging. Producing the track turned out to be a little more of a challenge, mainly in terms of sound selection, but I did end up with a production that mixes pop and hip-hop, and I feel this really works for “Lying…” as the topline is also somewhere between these two genres, with fast-paced phrasing in the verse and a catchier chorus melody. I found there to be many similarities between the three adjectives I chose for this song, and as such there is quite a bit of crossover between the elements that make up these pieces of identity.
5.2.1 Adjectives – Melancholy, Heated & Emotional
There are many layers to this song’s composition that evoke a melancholy feeling. Both the harmony and the melody centre themselves around the parallel minor to the tonic, the subdominant and the interval between them. What I believe creates this feeling is that both of these chords have what I call “matching sevens” in the key – the tonic parallel is a minor chord and has a minor seventh, whereas the subdominant is a major chord and has a major seventh. In addition to this, the seventh in the tonic parallel is the ninth on the subdominant, and while these notes don’t appear in the chords themselves when played, there is a keyboard riff that adds these notes to the mix, so the result is a kind of wash of unfamiliar notes that doesn’t really let you land anywhere. The exclusion of the dominant as an important chord in the progression also reflects this, as the dominant usually marks where a phrase ends and returns to the tonic. What this does is puts pressure on the arrangement to build and release tension via dynamics or vocal performance, while all the time having an underlying blanket of melancholy, and this works well in conjunction with the next adjective, heated. Following on from my discussion on the melancholy identity of “Lying…”, what I found to be heated in this track comes from the dynamics controlling the tension in the song. Due to the wash of chords, there’s a lot of focus on the energy of the different sections of the song, and this is something I actively focused on while arranging and producing my version of the track (and I firmly believe that Panic! at the Disco also did in their version). There’s a lot of stop and start in this song; for instance, the inclusion of long verses but very short pre-choruses gives the song an uneven feel and really applies the brakes right before the chorus, where the throttle and energy kicks in again, This is also mirrored by the use of staying on the same chord throughout the pre-chorus, and I personally find it to be very effective. On top of this, the overall division of energy in both the track and the vocal performance reflect this, and the
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combined effect gives off a vibe of being excited or aroused even – this song really evokes teenage lust in my mind. I feel that emotional combines the previous two adjectives, and as such the compliment of the topline, track and division of energy works in its favour. In the same vein, it was easy for me to preserve this section of the identity while working on the other two, as they all fit together cohesively.
5.2.2 Overall
In my eyes, I was able to completely preserve the identity of “Lying…” with my production. As I discussed earlier, the song itself already had a very strong identity in its bare bones, and translating that was of course simple, as I left most of the arrangement as it was. I will also mention that I was again tactical in selecting my reference artist, for two reasons: first, blackbear has elements of these adjectives often in his own music; but also because his writing takes inspiration from pop-punk music of the era that “Lying…” was released in. In terms of production, I had a lot of fun putting this track together, and being able to utilise my analysis of the aforementioned adjectives in a modern context was an interesting process. Translating both the melancholy wash of notes and the dynamic push and pull from the original version and combining them with riffs from the original and a modern sound was challenging – sometimes it was difficult to decide which notes should go to which instruments, but I went on gut feeling for most of it and personally believe that I succeeded with this production. If you were to play my version without listening to the original first, I do think that it would be recognisable as Panic! at the Disco’s song.
5.3 “Dear Maria, Count Me In”
Similarly to “Lying…”, I didn’t find “Dear Maria…” to be very challenging, as most of the arrangement worked well in the pop repackaging, so I was able to focus more on the production and delivery to make it modern. This also landed in a sort of disco- pop soundscape, and I feel my production here is one of the best out of this project, clearly translating the song’s identity between genres.
5.3.1 Adjectives – Lively, Youthful & Nostalgic
I think the lively nature of “Dear Maria…” is impossible to ignore, in both the original and in my production. The topline itself is full of energy and variation, and this really makes the song come alive, regardless of its supporting arrangement – which I discovered when I began this project and was figuring out the harmony and playing these songs with just my acoustic guitar. This made preserving this part of the song’s identity fairly easy, as I simply had to pair the topline with a production which featured an overall sense of energy, but also some dynamic range. I feel as though I succeeded in this regard – the original arrangement uses variations between single
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and half-time to help give the song dynamics, but I chose to create more of a consistent rise in energy in my version, which I mentioned in my results section. As I discussed earlier with “Crushing Grief”, youthful is an interesting description in the sense that it can be experienced differently by each individual. In contrast to my thoughts about “Crushing Grief’s” youthfulness, however, I found there to be quite a lot of this feeling in “Dear Maria…’s” melodies, and in that vein, I believe it to be generally easier to experience it as part of the song’s identity, and in turn to translate it into a different context. The use of a very major-feel melody and harmony, particularly in the chorus, combined with a very high register for a male, gives off a feeling of teenage or college music, not unlike that heard in typical youth TV or film (something that is much less apparent in “Crushing Grief”), and as this lies in the foundation of the song, I feel it would be more of a challenge to remove this than to keep it (perhaps I could explore this further in the future). I will again note that I don’t believe my own voice to be particularly youthful, but I believe adding a second voice to the mix helped create a greater sense of youthfulness and thus allowed me to keep more of the identity as a whole. I found that the nostalgia in “Dear Maria…” came from the same place as the youthfulness – the topline and its relation to the harmony – and these two adjectives feel very connected to me, perhaps because I’m outside of my teenage years and feel a sense of nostalgia in the adolescent-esque melody, as discussed in the previous paragraph. Regardless of my own personal experience here, I did find that the use and placement of the important chords in the progressions also strengthened the nostalgic side of the song’s identity. Different sections of the song start with different chords in the scale: the verses begin with the tonic; the chorus with the tonic parallel and the post-chorus sections with the subdominant. This, similarly to the wash of notes I described in “Lying…”, doesn’t give the listener a clear sense of stability, and thus evokes different moods in different sections of the song, similarly to a nostalgic memory – parts of it are fond, parts of it less so, and there’s always a sense of longing attached as it is not the present. In this sense, purely by leaving the harmony as All Time Low had it in their original recording, I was able to preserve this part of the identity quite easily.
5.3.2 Overall
In my mind, “Dear Maria…” was an all-round success in terms of preserving its identity, and when played side-by-side to its original version, would likely be the easiest to recognise straight away out of the songs I’ve worked with in this project. This is thanks to the song having such a strong identity in its foundation – the adjectives I chose are all grounded heavily in the topline and harmony, and by keeping those the same, I believe that you could translate it into any genre or context without having to sacrifice any of its identity.
5.4 “Dance, Dance”
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“Dance, Dance” is unique in this project as it is the only production that has a different feel to the original – my version using a major feel as opposed to the minor feel of Fall Out Boy’s recording (as mentioned in my results section). This was both positive and negative, as I do believe that the major feel helped lift the song and become more poppy overall, but it did also present challenges when preserving the identity.
5.4.1 Adjectives – Playful, Energetic & Suspenseful
The topline in “Dance, Dance” was where I found the most playfulness, making my work with this piece of identity quite simple. Each section has its own interesting flavour: the verse is fairly stable but flows into a transition line that is almost completely spoken word; the pre-chorus is a scale-ascending melody coupled with a fast rhythmic pattern; the chorus features a falsetto jump which acts as a very effective hook; and the middle-eight (also used before the second chorus) is a kind of melodic reversal of the chorus that feels very bouncy. In addition to this, each of these sections sits in its own pocket of tonal range within the scale, and the combination of all these things really delivers a full package of vocals that fill out the song nicely. This range of functions gives the song an overall playful energy, but also the individual sections have their own touch of playfulness, and due to this, I was easily able to preserve this identity by keeping the topline as Fall Out Boy designed it. In the same vein, I focused heavily on my vocal performance here to make sure to sell this feeling in my version, and was again tactical when selecting my reference artist – The 1975 also often use a playful topline in their songs. Where my version starts to fall short, however, is with the next adjective, energetic. I do experience a strong sense of energy in both versions of “Dance, Dance”, but due to the big contrast in style between the two recordings, the energy feels very different when comparing them. This is partly due to the change from minor to major feel, as this obviously shifts the whole tone of the track, thus affecting the division and experience of energy, but I believe this disparity to be centred around the arrangements of each individual production. I initially believed the tempo to be one of the most important factors here, but with my version being only four beats per minute slower than the original, I realised that it was more about how the tempo is experienced. In Fall Out Boy’s version, the prominent use of double-time throughout the track makes the song seem much faster than it actually is, giving it a higher sense of overall intensity. This energy level is increased even more by using a double-time feel with multiple instruments at the same time: the best example of this is in the chorus, where the entire band (drums, both guitars and bass guitar) all play within this rhythm, but this liveliness is even apparent from the beginning of the song where the drums and bass guitar accentuate each off-beat, setting the double-time tone for the rest of the song. My version, on the other hand, uses regular time as the central groove, and while this still has a clear energy attached to it, it is definitely a stark contrast to the double-time feel of the original recording. If I were to compare this to motion, I could describe the Fall Out Boy arrangement as running, whereas my own production is more akin to strutting.
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Due to this, determining if this section of the song’s identity translates between contexts is difficult to solidify, as I do believe that energetic describes both versions of “Dance, Dance” but is experienced differently in each respective recording. I did attempt to smooth this disparity by modulating and re-using the original bassline, as I found this to be important in the overall division of energy in Fall Out Boy’s arrangement, but couldn’t get it to work with my reharmonization and regular time feel. In terms of suspense, I found that my version ended up even further away from the original than with the energy. The issue here is that suspenseful music often has a particular harmony or melodic structure that creates tension with specific tones and chords, and this exists in the original arrangement – two examples of this are, if we think of a minor key: the use of the major dominant in a minor scale, which appears often throughout the song; and the guitar riff in the verse (also the transition into the chorus), which utilises the second (or ninth) note in the scale, which is famously unstable in relation to the tonic and also the fifth of the dominant. Both of these create a natural tension in relation to the key, simply because of the intervals associated with the notes, and the placements of these chords and riffs in Fall Out Boy’s arrangement only strengthens the aforementioned suspense. In addition, minor keys and songs with minor feel tend to be naturally more suspenseful because of the overall feeling of the minor scale. As such, by modulating my production into the relative major key and adjusting the chord progression accordingly, the sense of suspense was largely lost and left to be carried more by the structural side of the arrangement rather than the melodic side. While I do believe that there is still a sense of dynamics that utilise the build and release of tension in my version, without the underlying harmonic foundation it does not come across nearly as suspenseful as the original recording.
5.4.2 Overall
I feel that “Dance, Dance” landed in an interesting situation where, by analysis, the identity didn’t translate fully, but the song is still recognisable in my repackaging. I don’t doubt that a knowledgeable listener would be able to pick the song from listening to my production, and while I believe this is mainly due to the unmistakeable topline, the way that my twist of soundscape in turn twisted the identity of the song is interesting as it resulted in a modulated overall identity, whereas the other songs I worked with were a little more concrete in terms of identity preservation.
5.5 “Learn to Love the Lie”
This was the most challenging track of the five featured in this project, and despite it being the song that I am overall least pleased with, I do believe the identity to be intact, and most of my qualms about this song lie more in my own perception of the production and its soundscape and direction, rather than the actual arrangement of the song.
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5.5.1 Adjectives – Energetic, Hopeful & Determined
I found a similar disparity in energy between the original version of “Learn to Love the Lie” and my repackaging as I did with “Dance, Dance”. The arrangement contributes a great deal to the overall dynamics, and even small changes can affect the experience at large. As such, I found my version to have less energy as a whole, but I didn’t find the cause to be the same as for “Dance, Dance”, which centred around the timing and rhythmic feel, but instead identified the cause to be the difference in instrumentation between my recording and Four Year Strong’s. Despite sharing a similar distribution and gradual increase of energy over the course of the song, the original production has more of a blanketed instrumentation, leaving very few empty spaces and giving the track more intensity overall. In addition, the prominence of live drums in the band context of the original version is a big contrast to contemporary pop, simply because it is uncommon for a drummer to not play for large sections of a song, whereas a pop production may feature longer measures with less elements in this area. My repackaging, despite keeping the song structure the same, loses power in some sections, particularly the verses, where I chose to scale back the arrangement and soundscape to try to keep the track modern. While I do believe this was the correct choice for the production as a whole and that my version still has a sense of liveliness, I also recognise that this did make my arrangement less energetic in comparison. The hopefulness in “Learn to Love the Lie” comes from the topline, and I believe both the melody and the harmony to have significance here. The melody features many sequences of ascending notes followed by descending notes, and is experienced as a forward motion through the song, like the lifting and dropping of each leg in turn while walking, and when this is coupled with the general dynamic escalation of the arrangement, the overall vocal feels like it’s constantly moving upward. The harmony works similarly here, utilising the most familiar chords in the scale (the tonic, subdominant and dominant) to ground the listener, but it also joins them with unexpected chords and places them in such a way that creates forward motion. When the two come together, the result is a major feel arrangement that is simultaneously uplifting and accelerating, and thus by leaving the topline as it was in the bare bones of the song, I was able to translate the hopefulness into my own repackaging. Determined, in many ways, is a combination of the other two adjectives discussed here – in my eyes, determination is the application of hope, or in better terms, giving hope enough energy to come to life. In this sense, the marriage of the musicality attached to the energy and hopefulness in “Learn to Love the Lie” is what gives off this feeling, and by extension any work done to preserve these two pieces of identity naturally affects the amalgamation of them. I did discover, however, that the determination was strengthened by the vocal performance in Four Year Strong’s recording, and while I believe I could take this even further, I was mindful of this whilst recording the vocals for my own version and feel as though I successfully reflected the delivery in the original arrangement.
5.5.2 Overall
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While I may not be completely happy with my end result for “Learn to Love the Lie” in terms of production, I do believe that I was able to preserve the identity for the most part. The contrast in sound from the original recording did affect the energy, and in that sense, I think it would be fair to say that my repackaging has an overall modified identity, but by being able to translate riffs and other elements from Four Year Strong’s arrangement and not needing to adjust the topline, I can confidently say that I was able to retain the song’s identity as a whole.
5.6 Similarities between songs
As discussed earlier, I did find similarities and some common challenges in the repackaging process of each song, particularly when I used the same adjective to describe two songs, namely youthful (“Crushing Grief” and “Dear Maria…”) and energetic (“Dance, Dance” and “Learn to Love the Lie”). I thought it interesting that “Dear Maria…” was generally more youthful than “Crushing Grief” and as such found it easier to translate in my version of the former, and this only strengthens my argument about youthfulness being a very individual experience and difficult to identify in a concrete manner. Working with energetic, however, gave very similar results in both “Dance, Dance” and “Learn to Love the Lie”, where I found that the energy was extremely influenced by the arrangement and instrumentation, and the change in styles between the originals and my versions resulted in a modified but still clear division of energy. Perhaps the most interesting discovery that isn’t related to the specifics of identity, however, is that the three songs that were released in the mid-2000s (“Lying…”, “Dear Maria…” and “Dance, Dance”) were generally easier to translate into a pop context, whereas the other two, post-2010 songs (“Crushing Grief” and “Learn to Love the Lie”) had more challenges regarding their overall identity. I believe this to be because of what was popular and trendy in these different eras – the mainstream of the mid-2000s included quite a lot of pop-punk music, and much of the pop heard on the radio had elements of punk mixed in. This in turn caused the songwriting behind punk music to become more mainstream, and as such many punk songs from that era could be described as pop songs with a punk arrangement. This began to shift in the late 2000s, however, and when punk became a more underground subgenre again, bands didn’t find the need to write their songs in that way to stay relevant. That being said, it is evident from my productions and discussion that there still exists many similarities between contemporary music and post-2010 punk – whether this is a residue of the mainstream punk of the mid-2000s, I am unsure – but I found it intriguing to actively discover a discrepancy between the two decades.
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6 Conclusion
6.1 Overall
This has been a widely interesting look into not only punk music, but the general building blocks of composition and how a song is given its identity, and also a fun way to challenge my own arrangement and production knowledge. I can confidently say that I succeeded in preserving each song’s identity for the most part, and in the process discovered that some arrangements have stronger senses of identity than others and – more importantly – why this is the case, which is something that I can take with me and hopefully apply to future projects and my career in general. I am not surprised that there are so many similarities between pop and punk music, but discovering which elements can cross between contexts and work well in different genres gave me an insight into my own musical background and how that influences what I write today, even if the genres are very different on the surface. While five songs is a small number in comparison to the vastness of both pop and punk music respectively, I think that the songs I selected were perfect examples for this project and my findings have reflected and expanded on many thoughts and hypothetical discussions I’ve had during my years in the music industry. The area of song identity is intriguing and I feel that this project has created a good foundation for future discussion about song identity, and even if it’s just for the sake of my own curiosity, I will definitely pick this subject up again.
6.2 Further study potential
Both during and after this project, more questions and areas of interest came up that I can see myself investigating in the future, as this feels like an unexplored concept that could be fleshed out much more. A simple way to expand on my study is to show my productions to other people, both by themselves and side-by-side with the original versions, and get external opinions on the identities and discuss how these identities translate across genres. This would be interesting as these experiences would be unbiased because the listeners won’t have been a part of the whole production process, like I have. The other obvious choice is to try this process with different songs, and this opens up many ways to expand my project – you could translate other punk songs, another specific era, or other genres completely. I have personally considered branching out into older punk (such as Dead Kennedys, The Clash and Sex Pistols) and classic rock, but more interestingly, music that doesn’t feature melody as a prominent part of arrangement. This could take me into subgenres such as hardcore punk, metal and even hip-hop, and would add the challenge of creating or discovering melody in a topline where it doesn’t naturally exist. In a similar vein, looking at pop music from different decades and translating their identities into a modern production would provide some interesting results, although this kind of repackaging is already common with cover versions, particularly on YouTube.
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The final way to expand my work that I deem to be of interest would be to modify a song’s identity instead of preserving it, which I mentioned briefly in parentheses whilst discussing “Dear Maria, Count Me In”. The easiest way to do this would be to try to create the opposite song in a sense – find the antonyms for each descriptive adjective and build a new harmony and arrangement from there. This would be an intriguing challenge and give insight into how to evoke different feelings with music and the theory behind this kind of translation. All of these follow-up projects would be a great addition to the work that I’ve done and discussed in this paper, and, in that vein, I believe that my process has not only been informative and given me an interesting insight into both my own musical influences and the building blocks of songs but has also laid a solid foundation for future research into the subject of song identity.
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Attachments
Attachment 1: Reference Tracks Playlist https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4hrhw4D7EYTfRJdN257VA3?si=SqPNX-zYQFeODyQxbWphwA Attachment 2: My Arrangements Playlist https://soundcloud.com/endrsgame/sets/how-different-are-pop-punk-pop/s-vRpcZLocjxy
References
[1] SecondHandSongs 2021. Introduction to the database, SecondHandSongs, viewed 30 March 2021, https://secondhandsongs.com/page/Introduction 5 Seconds of Summer 2020. Wildflower, online audio, accessed 13 March 2021, https://open.spotify.com/track/6qlcjGJPTZEwR8nf2nSe9C?si=5b_fNX66Rg2m6Da IvNqlwA All Time Low 2007. Dear Maria, Count Me In, online audio, accessed 13 March 2021, https://open.spotify.com/track/0JJP0IS4w0fJx01EcrfkDe?si=0q6y_9J9Qle5Pe8awh hYaA blackbear 2020. half alive, online audio, accessed 13 March 2021, https://open.spotify.com/track/3Aua1bpEgSQvAOKgwUsS5g?si=mUX3QN0mQW aZzMmEdQA8vw blackbear 2020. hot girl bummer, online audio, accessed 13 March 2021, https://open.spotify.com/track/2mt1IqcFyY1zmYZT8Q3xw9?si=ePGegcAeSxKZY vfCp-TJzA BTS 2020. Dynamite, online audio, accessed 13 March 2021, https://open.spotify.com/track/4saklk6nie3yiGePpBwUoc?si=Pgv0ZI0- SmCToUrEXuYbSw BTS, Halsey 2019. Boy With Luv (feat. Halsey), online audio, accessed 13 March 2021, https://open.spotify.com/track/5KawlOMHjWeUjQtnuRs22c?si=fidf_RzgQc2aVp0 ugHMVng Fall Out Boy 2005. Dance, Dance, online audio, accessed 13 March 2021, https://open.spotify.com/track/0a7BloCiNzLDD9qSQHh5m7?si=uRjP_bK6QpWP5 YYw5cCZpg Four Year Strong 2020. Learn to Love the Lie, online audio, accessed 13 March 2021, https://open.spotify.com/track/3WwRWXVHZj1PCj0HMlb0fo?si=ChmJ95MRRqC grgiWSUx4hQ Lauv 2018. I Like Me Better, online audio, accessed 13 March 2021, https://open.spotify.com/track/2P91MQbaiQOfbiz9VqhqKQ?si=9zzzObFKTZWwf SdN5JpwFg Neck Deep 2014. Crushing Grief (No Remedy), online audio, accessed 13 March 2021, https://open.spotify.com/track/0OgP3aqNy7EySxfJxmdg5j?si=WI__JCrrTkKA- VZVYz1Cuw
Panic! at the Disco 2005. Lying is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off, online audio, accessed 13 March 2021, https://open.spotify.com/track/0MSC5BYWcNhcBNNYORXZyj?si=7BbKYx8HSv ej1r0FoU_tbg The 1975 2013. Girls, online audio, accessed 13 March 2021, https://open.spotify.com/track/5WSdMcWTKRdN1QYVJHJWxz?si=XWnXz7qGS CGqJzUwiv1Y0w The 1975 2018. It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You), online audio, accessed 13 March 2021, https://open.spotify.com/track/3TgMcrV32NUKjEG2ujn9eh?si=e4KbisfNSsKGHe OrTHLWGw