Lyrics and theme
Evoking an enthusiastic evenings recreation at a night club the singer urges herself to dance. The vocals are heavily treated with auto-tuning, giving them a hard rasping edge, and also with reverb and a dub like echo, suggesting the altered frame of mind caused by adrenalin and alcohol.
Form
An instrumental version of the chorus is used for the intro. The first four bars are the lead synth riff which is then joined by two bars of base synth chords and then four bars where the drums are added. The rhythm is a two bar pattern alternating between four to the floor and back beat.
The verse is in two eight bar sections. In the first the tune has an AABA pattern, the second ABAB. The chorus bursts in and consists of eight bars. There is a single bar recovery before the next verse.
The second verse has a new lyric for the first section and repeats that of the first verse for the second section. There is no pause between the chorus and the third verse.
Surprisingly the tune for this verse is a quite distant variation on that of the first two verses. The two sections to the verse each consist of two pairs of two bar answering phrases.
There is a four bar pre-chorus where the drums are dropped, followed by the standard eight bar chorus. There is then a twenty bar breakdown, with its own four bar intro and two eight bar sections, before returning to pre-chorus and chorus. The chorus has an extra, higher, vocal track to mark the climax, a descant.
The outro is simply the single bar recovery we heard after the first chorus.
Overall the form is: Intro Verse Chorus Single-bar-recovery Verse Chorus Verse Pre-Chorus Chorus Breakdown Pre-Chorus Chorus Single-bar-recovery.
Some Final Thoughts
"Just Dance" has quite a complex form, considerable symetry and develops throughout. The first two verses set the scene after which we arrive at the dance floor for a medaly of songs within the song. In previous decades hedonistic dance music was much simpler. There is enough musical material here for several disco tracks. In those days you would have expected a number one single, particularly one which had extensive daytime radio play, to be dumbed down and middle of the road, if not a cynical manipulation of the public. "Just Dance" is more adventurous than this and more like an example of a specialist genre. It is ironic that Lady Gaga, who derives her surname from Queen's description of pap radio music, should be an example of how the Internet killed the radio gaga star.
Wednesday, 1 April 2009
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Auto-tuning is not without its controversies. For example http://www.hometracked.com/2008/02/05/auto-tune-abuse-in-pop-music-10-examples assumes that it is not artistically valid as an effect, and there is a comprehensive discussion about this and the tastefulness of it. I just point it out and speculate about why it has been used.
ReplyDeleteIs it a breakdown or a bridge? Brewster and Broughton ("How to DJ Right", 2003, p.79) distinguish between a breakdown and a break - "Breaks are for the drummer; breakdowns are for hands in the air". So it is certainly not a break, and it is climactic. There is some breaking down of the arrangement and as this is in the context of electronic dance music this justifies the term breakdown.
ReplyDeleteits all a bit too mainstream for me - are you sure this music bears serious analysis? Autotune or whatever seems to me to be the opposite of musical creativity - there isn't much difference between entirely computer generated music. At least metal is more about riffs, rhythms and sound as an assault on the ears - at least it gets the emotions going. A lot of this techno stiff just leaves me cold...
ReplyDeleteI guess this is the unusual thing about this blog. Rather than deciding if the music is good or bad, or what kind of a listener I am, I just look at the music to see what is there. It is a different kind of game and more to do with the music that gets thrust upon you rather than the path you chose to tread.
ReplyDeleteThere is much in what you say. The music is not serious, but maybe of unexpected subtlety, Autotune can destroy the individuality of the voice, and there are genres of music which offer more musical scope, dance music having obvious constraints.
I do think it is worth giving some surprising things a close look: as Lex, the villain in the Superman film said
"Some people can read War & Peace & come away thinking it a simple adventure story whereas others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets to the universe".