Song: Mean Artist: Taylor Swift (Originally published Nov.28, 2011)

From Wikipedia: “Earworm, a loan translation of the German Ohrwurm, is a portion of a song or other music that repeats compulsively within one’s mind, put colloquially as ‘music being stuck in one’s head.’ ” According to statistics, 98% of us get earworms at one point or another. They apparently last longer in women, and annoy them more :-). I would have to say that I suffer from earworms moreso because I’m always listening to music more intensively when trying to figure out chords, licks and lyrics for my guitar students. And I’d have to say that Taylor Swift tops my list of earworm-causing songs. Bad, you say? Actually, not at all. If you’re a songwriter, the earworm is your friend! You want parts of your song to stick in people’s heads, the longer the better. Hooks are often a cause of earworms. Do you remember James Blunt’s song “You’re Beautiful”? That earworm drove me nuts for days after I worked it out for a student. Blunt repeats that phrase over and over in the chorus and it was a huge hit for him. No wonder!

A lot of my students are young girls and many of them love Taylor Swift. Her latest album, “Speak Now” is an evolution of sorts for her because she wrote every song on her own, whereas in previous albums she occasionally had co-writers. “Speak Now” and “The Story of Us” are examples of solid songwriting, and given that she is only 22, she’s got a lot more potential hits in her yet. I especially like the song “Mean”, which I will explain later in this article.

So what is it about Swift’s songs that make her so successful? Well, first of all, they are pretty much all about love or overcoming adversity, which is what young girls especially want to hear. Her songs are totally autobiographical and she freely admits that fact. Write what you know 🙂 I don’t always advise making your songs autobiographical only because sometimes it can get you into trouble! But the fact is that most young songwriters (and yes, I did this too when I first started writing) are really just trying to get something off their chest, trying to express their angst or desires and songwriting is the vehicle to do that. Her style of writing, Country Pop, is for the most part upbeat and engaging and most of all, she sounds fresh and real.

One thing I really admire about her is that when she sings live, she doesn’t rely on autotune to keep her on pitch. Some have critisized her for being a bad singer when they hear her live, but listen up folks! The rest of your idols “can’t sing” either! They all use autotune and would probably sound like Swift, or worse, if they didn’t have it.

Back to her songwriting: I’m going to take a look at Taylor’s song “Mean”. The story behind the lyric is basically Taylor’s response to all of her critics, but when I first heard the song and read the lyrics, it seemed to have a much more universal message. This is a key point in songwriting…if you are writing an autobiographical song, make sure you don’t give too many specific details! Why? Because you have to allow enough room for your listener to make the song their own. That’s what a universal message is; something that has meaning for everyone. So here are the lyrics to “Mean”, with my comments included in red:

You, with your words like knives
And swords and weapons that you use against me,
You, have knocked me off my feet again,
Got me feeling like I’m nothing.
You, with your voice like nails on a chalkboard
Calling me out when I’m wounded.
You, pickin’ on the weaker man.

The best thing about this verse is the first word “You”. If you listen to the song, it’s singled out and pointed: YOU! followed by her accusatory statements. I like the “voice like nails on a chalkboard” and “words like knives and swords” demonstrating her pain.

PRE-CHORUS:

Song:  Pumped Up Kicks Artist:  Foster The People (Originally published Nov.28, 2011)

I can always tell when a song has caught the imagination of a lot of people because I start to hear about it from my guitar students.  It doesn’t even have to be a guitar song per se, but as soon as my students begin referring to it, especially if the students are of different ages, it piques my interest. Such was the case with Pumped Up Kicks by Foster The People.  It’s a very simple song, musically, with a little bass/guitar riff repeating through most of the song and the same four-chord progression.  For simplicity’s sake, I have the guitar capo’d on the 1st fret so my beginner students can play it using Em, D, G and A, one measure per chord.  The bass riff extends over that four-chord progression as well, but you can also play it on guitar, as some of my more advanced students like to do.

But the lyrics belie the chord progression underneath them:

Robert’s got a quick hand

He’ll look around the room he won’t tell you his plan

Got a rolled cigarette

Hangin’ out his mouth, he’s a cowboy kid

Yeah, found a six-shooter gun

In his dad’s closet hidden with a box of fun things

I don’t even know what

But he’s comin’ for you, yeah he’s comin for you, hey

CHORUS:

All the other kids

With the pumped up kicks

You’d better run, better run

Outrun my gun

All the other kids

With the pumped up kicks

You’d better run, better run

Faster than my bullet

Joni Mitchell once talked about the pathos of songs and how it is often created by marrying “sad” lyrics with “happy” music.  That isn’t a direct quote, but something I heard her say in an interview about her songwriting a long time ago.  In the case of Pumped Up Kicks, the lyrics are rather violent, talking about a brooding kid coming to school with a gun that he got from his father’s closet.  Sound familiar?  Not only did he find the gun, he found it with a bunch of other “fun things”.  He warns the rich kids with the “pumped up kicks”, the high-end shoes, that they’d better outrun his gun, and be faster than his bullet.  But underneath this strangely dark lyric, the chorus melody is an upbeat, almost happy ditty.  And it works. I’ve heard this song peripherally, in stores and on TV shows and I certainly recognized it when a student said she wanted to learn it.  But it wasn’t until I examined it lyrically did I realize what it was about.  In fact, I would venture to guess that a lot of people would probably find the song really appealing and not have paid much attention to the meaning of the lyrics right away.  Once the message reveals itself the song takes on a whole new dimension, but as disturbing as the topic is, it doesn’t lose it’s upbeat quality.

Sometimes the production of a song can do a lot to drive the feeling of it.  This recording employs a “radio” effect on the vocal (when the voice sounds like it’s coming out of a cheap radio) in the verses, creating a kind of detached, strangeness to the dialogue.  And there’s that ever-present, simple little lick and the bright chorus with multiple vocals having an anthem-like quality that definitely keeps it memorable. When songwriters sit down to pen a song, the chances are that most of the time they aren’t thinking about things like “pathos” and production, it just comes out the way it does.   I don’t know which came first in this case, lyrics or music, or that little happy riff, but Pumped Up Kicks definitely came together in a successful way.

IJ

Listen to Pumped Up Kicks: