For example, where you expect the beat to kick off in the chorus, there is no beat and it doesn’t get going until the back-end of the chorus, but somehow it still works. At some points, some of the sections are 24+ bars! However, the song sounds continuously fresh and interesting because of the use of different singers at different song sections or different phrases, call and response techniques, and the stop’s and go’s and variations in the production are unpredictable. The song structure is difficult to figure out because the song does not utilize familiar bar lengths (like 8 bars or 16 bars) for sections of the song. Given that the song will probably get a lot of club play, I guess the 16 bar intro is okay but generally speaking, I think that 16 bars is too long these days.
Anyhow, I THINK the song structure goes something like this: Intro (16 bars)-Chorus (40 bars)-X (8 bars)-Y (16 bars)-Chorus (24 bars)-Y (16 bars)-Z(16 bars)-Chorus (24 bars) The intro of the song is 16 bars which is surprisingly long these days, but at least the song jumps right into the chorus which is definitely the hot part of the song. Instead, I will use the following terminology X, Y, Z to denote certain repetitive sections within the song that are like verses. I actually had a difficult time figuring out where the sections began and ended as it doesn’t really follow a typical Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus-Bridge-Chorus structure nor does it utilize well-defined verses or pre-choruses – to me its not clear where these sections begin or end as you cannot tell them apart based on chord progression or energy level (the song is pretty much high energy the whole way). Song Structure: This song utilizes an unorthodox song structure that I’ve never seen before and unusual section lengths. Time/Key Signature/BPM: 4/4, G major, 128 bpm Songwriters: Pineda, Allan/Riesterer, Frederick/Adams, William/Ferguson, Stacy/Guetta, David/Gomez, Jaime
YOUTUBE BLACK EYED PEAS I GOTTA FEELING LYRICS SERIES
I sincerely hope and believe you will gain some useful insights into hit songwriting from this series (and do share if you find any insights that I missed):Ĭhart Position: No.
So here we go, here is your first Hit Song Analysis. 1 charting song of the week (which may not necessarily be one that I personally enjoyed) and another high charting song during that week (one that I actually enjoyed). I will generally analyze two songs per week, usually the No. By understanding and knowingly incorporating some of these elements into our songs, it is my belief we will be able to reach new heights in our songwriting. So in the spirit of that, this series will focus on the songwriting and production techniques used in current hit songs that propelled those songs to the top of the charts. I once took a seminar with a well-regarded producer who said “The radio is my teacher”. This is the first post of an ongoing weekly series called “Hit Song Analysis”.