{"id":534,"date":"2021-01-06T17:07:00","date_gmt":"2021-01-06T17:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gcolemanmn.wordpress.com\/?p=534"},"modified":"2023-08-25T11:17:45","modified_gmt":"2023-08-25T11:17:45","slug":"take-it-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/2021\/01\/06\/take-it-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Take it UP!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Originally published as part of the Digestable<\/a> newsletter.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Okay nothing hard hitting from me this week, just a little bit of corny fun to finish out the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t really have any desire to engage with Dirty Projectors beyond the album they made with Bj\u00f6rk<\/a> but the song Up In Hudson<\/a> from their last album is really an achievement. The song is about frontman David Longstreth\u2019s break-up with his girlfriend\/bandmate Amber Coffman but what really struck me about the song was its chorus.<\/a> The very Joy Division<\/a> lyrics \u201cand love will burn out\/and love will just dissipate\/and love\u2019s gonna rot\/and love will just fade away,\u201d contrast with a joyful ascending melody that, upon first listen, I could swear was a reference or allusion to a different song.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turns out what I was hearing was actually three different songs that all use the same joyful adrenaline boosting musical trope as Up in Hudson: taking it up the octave. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some music theory background: in western music, there are seven notes in any normal scale and the bottom note in the scale is called the \u201ctonic” or just \u201c1.\u201d The tonic is the note all the other notes in the scale are based on and gravitate towards. After you go up all seven notes in a scale, the whole thing repeats, the 8th note just being a higher version of the tonic. The 8 note distance between a lower note and its higher repetition is called an \u201coctave.\u201d The scientific reason an octave sounds both the same but also higher is that the sound wave of the higher note vibrates exactly twice as fast as its lower octave. If you want a deeper dive into this kind of stuff I can\u2019t recommend mathemusician ViHart\u2019s video essay Twelve Tones<\/a> highly enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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But if it doesn\u2019t make sense don\u2019t worry. Octaves are a real physical thing AND all western music is based around them, so even if you can\u2019t wrap your head around it theoretically, you can definitely still hear them. Take the very festive example of Mariah Carey\u2019s All I Want for Christmas Is You. At the end of the song when the Queen of All Lambs goes \u201cAll I want for Christmaaaaaaas iiiiiiiiis\u2026.. YOUUUUUUUU!<\/a>\u201d That climatic YOUU is the tonic taken up the octave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So here\u2019s the thing: when your brain has been raised on western music, hearing someone \u201ctake it up the octave\u201d like Mariah does is super duper gratifying. A lot<\/a> of songs<\/a> end by leaping<\/a> up the octave<\/a> to give the listener a little adrenaline boost that says \u201cwoohoo what a song!\u201d But Up in Hudson and the following examples don\u2019t wait until the end of the song or even to the end of the chorus to hit you with an octave leap. They jump right out and smack you in the face with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exhibit One: Justin Bieber\u2019s Somebody to Love<\/a>. Not only does the octave leap at the top of the chorus make you want to punch your fist in the air, it\u2019s really fun to listen to Usher run vocal circles around baby Bieber. I also like imagining a younger Hailey Baldwin listening to this song and being like, \u201cSomeday, that\u2019s going to be me.\u201d The early-chorus-octave-leap-idiom (ECOLI for short) speaks to The Bieb\u2019s urgency. Yes it\u2019s a little cheesy but it\u2019s 2010 and Baby Bieber doesn\u2019t have time to wait until the end of the song to take it up! He Needs Somebody To Love right now and he\u2019s not holding back at all.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exhibit Two: Swedish<\/a> singer September\u2019s Cry For You<\/a>. This song is So Eurodance and So Very 2008. The video is Phenomenal, very gay, and yes the octave leap at the top of the chorus is very fist pump worthy. This is what I love about the ECOLI. Its emotional power and repetition makes it come off as cheesy and overdone, but doesn\u2019t negate the essential truth, honesty, and vulnerability of the moment. When I listen to this song I know deep down that September is right. This person WILL never see her again. And who IS going to cry for them? Definitely not me!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exhibit Three: So what if a song embraced the ECOLI with an octave at the beginning of its chorus, but also the octave leap was the entire song. Yes I\u2019m talking about Eric Prydz\u2019s iconic Call On Me<\/a>. This is the ECOLI apotheosis. Mx. Prydz (yes another Swede<\/a>) sampled the already cheesy ECOLI chorus of Steve Winwood\u2019s Valerie<\/a> and made A Whole Song out of it. At first glance the video<\/a> is some kind of straight man 80\u2019s aerobics fantasy, but I\u2019m making the Jack Halberstam<\/a> approved choice to purposefully misread it as the story of an AMAB egg<\/a> breaking out of their shell through a femme-led erotic aerobics lesson.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I mean seriously, is this the belly button of a hetero cis man? I\u2019m just saying, they\u2019re taking an all femme aerobics class and clearly rolled their shorts up to make them even shorter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, after these four examples, what can the ECOLI teach us? If anything, I think it shows there\u2019s value in being goofy and cliche, that discovery can come from wild abandon. The ECOLI rejects the convention of holding back, of saving the best for last, The ECOLI is indulgent, honest, and vulnerable. Also, if you put these four songs together, they make a story which is fun: Desperation (Bieber<\/a>), Infatuation (Prydz<\/a>), Dissolution (Dirty Projectors<\/a>), and Liberation (September<\/a>). That\u2019s all I\u2019ve got for you! Wishing you a lovely end of the year!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally published as part of the Digestable newsletter. Okay nothing hard hitting from me this week, just a little bit of corny fun to finish out the year. I don\u2019t really have any desire to engage with Dirty Projectors beyond the album they made with Bj\u00f6rk but the song Up In Hudson from their last… Continue reading Take it UP!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-digestable","tag-music","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":740,"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534\/revisions\/740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}