Gone Fishin'

I'm just about to start a new job, and I won't have as much time for blogging as usual, so I'll be taking a short hiatus. Back in a few weeks!

Why Matchbox Twenty is So Bland

Compared to many other criticisms, I've found that calling music "bland" seems to make you more vulnerable to being perceived as a pompous ass. I think it has to do with the fact that the word implies a deficit, whether of musical interest, creativity, inspiration, etc., etc. When you break out the criticism you're implying that you have some sort of vision for what good music should be, but you can come off as focused more on slagging music that doesn't meet that vision than articulating what exactly the vision is.

Even articulating the vision you have, as I've tried to do in some posts here, only deflates some of the pompousness. You're still talking about the bland music in a way that defines it purely in terms of its failure, rather than as a real piece of music that several living humans probably worked hard to make. The best possible option, it seems, is to try and discuss as fairly as possible what's not working for you in the moment, to find affirmative signifiers of blandness rather than defining it in terms of what it lacks.

Matchbox Twenty has been one of my paragons of blandness for basically my entire music-listening life. (Their first album was released in 1996. Yes, you really ARE that old.) My first instincts for explaining why are, of course, in terms of deficits. Their lyrics are full of clichés. Their melodies and chord progressions are standard and predictable, without any of the surprises that make a band like Sloan sound fresh. Their arrangements are standard modern pop-rock productions without any color from unique instruments, unusual sounds, interesting layering. And here I am sounding like a puffed-up arbiter of musical taste, complaining how an undeniably competent and popular rock band doesn't live up to my standards as one random yahoo from Wisconsin.

So I went back and listened to every major single of theirs, and some of the songs from Rob Thomas' solo career, to see if I could start over with a new definition of their particular flavor(lessness) of bland. The lyrics certainly still weren't all that great- it's simply too late in my music-listening life for me to hear anything fresh in in straightforward pleas for a baby to come home or complaints about feeling a little crazy. I've already noted that weak lyrics are okay as long as the music is decent, but it still wasn't. And I'd like to try out two new definitions for why that's the case.

1. Their lack of rhythmic power results in rock songs that don't rock. Consciously or not, we associate rock songs with energy- they're supposed to be blasted out of car speakers, make you lose yourself in tightly packed crowds at concerts. A Matchbox 20 song like "Bent" is written like a rock song, with loud electric guitars and a soaring chorus, but it's so rhythmically flat that it never feels at all energetic. Listen to the drums under the chorus: they're just playing a plodding, steady beat that you or I could lazily tap out on the end table- there's no groove, no force, nothing that grabs. There's a decently written hook

Now compare that to the Goo Goo Dolls "Slide." It's tempting to lump the two bands together as fairly straight-ahead rock bands that were popular at the same time, but "Slide" feels much more energetic because it's doing a lot more rhythmically: the insistent strum of the guitar, a syncopated bass drum rhythm, a tambourine helping to hustle the beat along. No one's going to call it the most innovative song in the world, but it has enough of a kick that I'd never call it bland.

2. The weak vocals limit the emotional palette of the songs. Rob Thomas has one vocal tone and one only: a strained-sounding tenor that communicates emphasis and emotion almost entirely by increasing the strain. That works fine with songs that focus on stress or desperation, like "Push":

But the vocals just sound out of place in songs that try to strike a different tone. To me the most glaring example is "Smooth," his duet with Santana. The lyrics and video alike seem to suggest this is supposed to be a party song, and, well, a smooth come-on to Rob's female companion. When the chorus asks her "give [him] his heart, make it real, or else forget about it," everything else about the context suggests this is supposed to be teasing banter. But growled through Rob's standard delivery, it sounds more like a threat, one that somewhat stifles the lighter tone of the rest of the arrangement.

Taken more broadly, Thomas' ever-consistent vocal style pivots his songs into bland-ville because it also stifles love songs, laments, and other emotions whose musical effectiveness merits a lighter vocal touch or a richer vocal tone. His songs quickly begin to sound unremarkable and samey, because whatever other parts of the arrangement may do to achieve their nuance, craft, and emotional effect, they're largely subsumed under an unchanging and rather unremarkable vocal style. As I've said before, I'm fine with weak singers, but the successful ones find ways to make their vocals serve the songs (or at least pick songs that stay within their limited wheelhouse).

Are these criticisms generalizable to the broader world of bland music? Perhaps. Weak vocals- or, more precisely, vocals that don't support the emotional tenor of the song- can always flatten out musical strengths. And the first point might apply generally in the sense that bland music lacks some of the basic characteristics we expect for its genre- which could just as well be, say, beauty in a ballad as energy in a rock song.

"Sexy and I Know It" Is a Great Song. Seriously.

Lyrically great songs, as I wrote below, lay out an effective narrative over a supportive musical backing. The examples I picked to illustrate were those that achieved greatness addressing rich, emotionally freighted topics of loss, loneliness, redemption.

Here's the thing- "Sexy and I Know It" has lyrics that communicate another common human emotion just as effectively: horny dumbassedness. As I write this, I haven't listened to the song in weeks. But right off the top of my head, I can think of numerous lines in the song that strike that tone in a way that's both memorable and at least a little bit clever- "animal print pants on patrol," "passion in my pants," "no shoes no shirt I still get service." They're delivered with complete conviction, with nothing overtly jokey or ironic to undercut them. And they're backed up by music that supports and reinforces that kind of open silliness- a synth riff with an unexpected, goofy-sounding high note at the end of the phrase, those "aahs" as they demand you look at their body, and a beat that, as numerous YouTube commenters attest, is simple and bouncy enough to get their small children dancing.

Those precisely meet the criteria I laid out for strong lyrical songs. The difference between this and a song that meets those criteria by soberly addressing love and regret is between the ends of the songs, rather than the means. You may well think that loss and redemption are more appropriate topics for quality music than flopping your dick around in a speedo, and there's a clear logic to that. It's consistent with the sort of distinctions that people have been making for decades between the "highbrow" material they're willing to teach you in college and "lowbrow" disposable fluff.

But my guess is that even if you appreciate and embrace some "highbrow" art like jazz music or classic literature, you've also done at least one, and possibly all three, of the following in relation to this song or other equally "lowbrow" songs:

1. Openly danced to it at a wedding;
2. Watched the YouTube video to laugh along with friends;
3. Jokingly yelled a catchphrase (here it would most likely be "I WORK OUT!") from the song.

For "Sexy and I Know It," I've done all three. And I'm further willing to bet that the sheer, memorable ridiculousness of this song will make it more likely that I remember it in 20 years than a lot of music with the more traditional trappings of quality. I'll remember more archetypally "great" songs like those by Iron & Wine and the Mountain Goats, too, but I'll be more likely fondly remember "Sexy and I Know It" than a lot of only moderately successful attempts at traditionally "great" music.

To recap: "Sexy and I Know It" successfully communicates an emotion we've all felt; I've enjoyed it lyrically, musically, and visually; and I'm confident I'll remember it fondly down the road. Those are exactly the types of experiences that explain why I listen to music in the first place, so why should I get hung up on exactly how and why it succeeds? It just sounds like great music to me.

Song of the Week: Basia Bulat, "5/4"

"5/4" is a just a singer with a guitar, live-recorded in open air, and yet it sounds incredibly rich and full. Part of that is Bulat's strong vocals. She's got that same subtle ability as Shearwater's Jonathan Meiburg to smoothly transition between multiple vocal tones, which she uses here to turn an airy folk-song verse into a piledriving chorus and get a lot of musical power out of the contrast.

After a few more listens, though, what really impresses is the guitar harmonies. That driving chorus riff is rhythmically strong and immediately memorable, and it would probably be easy as a songwriter to double down, strum the hell out of a few simple chords, and call it a fist-pumping song well done. But Bulat opens up entirely new layers by including some unexpected minor-key high notes in her guitar chords throughout, adding a twinge of sadness that pushes against the extroverted rhythmic power of the riff. The result is a single guitar that supports a range of emotional tones, and a song that sounds just as rich and full as what many bands get out of a roomful of instruments.

This video has the added virtue of catching a wonderfully concise depiction of someone becoming a new Bulat fan. Keep an eye on the guy in the green sweater after he first walks into the terrace at about 1:35. He's passing through, stops, clearly thinks he needs to keep going around 2:00, but can't help but get sucked in until the end of the song. Who knew how fun it would be to watch a convert in real time?

The Value of Lyrics, Part 2: Words for Music

I can name plenty of examples where great lyrics make for great music, well beyond the two I highlighted in the last post. Even so, it should go without saying that music doesn't need lyrical value to be great, given how much of the classical and jazz canons have no lyrics at all. And I'd go further and say that there can be great songs with lyrics that are adequate, even forgettable and mediocre, because they're cases where the vocals are serving a primarily musical purpose. In the terms I've laid out in the last post, the vocals on those songs, and whatever they may be saying, are used as an "instrument" of melody and rhythm more than as a means to deliver a narrative. They're words for music, rather than music for words.

Most of what we think of as classic pop music fits this description; even the best of its kind is commonly accompanied by pretty standard-issue sentiments of love or (less frequently) freedom or regret or late nights out partying. But those lyrics often work just fine for capturing what the music itself is doing most of the work to communicate. The Shazam's "Some Other Time," for example, is a pretty straightforward, unremarkable lyrical narrative of lost love, filled with the most obvious relevant clichés: it wasn't meant to be except maybe in a dream; the singer wouldn't change a thing; the lover's name is now just another word. Those clichés, though, are supporting a pretty terrific pop melody that uses minor-key chord changes to more effectively strike the same tone of wistfulness and regret. If the lyrics were awkward enough to distract from the music, a la Train, they'd be a problem. But in this case, they're forgettable lyrics that still fit the song well, because they're consistent with, and supportive of, emotions the music more memorably evokes.

The point may come though even more sharply with musicians who openly acknowledge that they make up lyrics to fit their music. Carl Newman of the New Pornographers, for example, has been far from shy in saying that "the song is more important than the lyrics" for him and that lyrics have to "suit the song" regardless of whether it makes sense or even "ruins the narrative." And that attitude is clear in a song like "Sing Me Spanish Techno," which is utter lyrical nonsense from the title on down. But Newman makes a great song out of it because he has a fine sense of how to make his words suit the music.

For one thing, the words are still coherent enough in terms of subject-verb agreement, sentence structure and the like. More important, close listening demonstrates that his word selection carefully supports the musical grammar of the song. The verse grounds its melody in sharp rhythmic accents- grounded in the drums and hard strums on the acoustic guitar, but further enhanced by lyrics with lots of consonance. "Picking the glass off the ground" is meaningless as language, but it puts hard consonants right on the musical accents. By contrast, when the song transitions into a more legato vocal melody at about 1:30, the lyrics start relying more on words like "hills" and "refused," with softer consonants and vowel sounds that sound better extended to whole notes than, say, the hard "a" of "glass." All the nonsense words, in short, are quite effective as musical decisions.

Sigur Ros takes the approach of musical language to its logical conclusion. Jonsi claims he's singing in a made-up language called "Hopelandic," but it's even only a language in the loosest sense; the band's own website has also acknowledged that it's no more than "a form of gibberish vocals that fit to the music." That fit, on a song like "Svefn-G-Englar," follows many of the same fundamental principles as Newman's- long, open vocal sounds to support the legato lines of most of the song, with more consonance and harsher vowel sounds when the song briefly transitions to a more dissonant harmonic structure shortly after 6:00. It's the purest example possible of using the voice as instrument, with no narrative content- or even linguistic meaning- whatsoever.

So, after about a dozen paragraphs of rambling on, I can finally get back to where I started: foreign-language lyrics. (Still here, Allison? Anyone else who managed to stick around, you should go read her blog when you're done here.) Since I'm monolingual beyond some basic Spanglish, there aren't any foreign lyrics that can hold linguistic meaning for me. But they can work just fine as they result in vocals that work well as an instrument. I judge them the same way I would any other instrument: whether it works as a harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic contribution to the arrangement.

Often enough, foreign-language songs pass that test just fine. Nothing in the "Gangnam Style" vocals, for example, seems distracting or out of place in terms of consonance or vowel sounds. But given that other languages are bound to have different cadences, different sounds, different norms of articulation, they probably ARE more vulnerable to failing to meet the expectations for "natural" lyrical sounds I've learned as an English speaker. From the first moment of the Spanish song below, I can't get past a lyrical line that sounds, to me, both cluttered and awkwardly articulated, with lots of pleghmy consonants and hard vowels. For all I know, they're trying to articulate something narratively here that I'd find meaningful if I could interpret it. Or I could well be more acclimated to their vocal sounds if I were a Spanish speaker. In either case, I don't think I'm fit to judge the quality of this music, since it may be best measured against criteria that are outside the realm of my experience. All I can say is that, for that same reason, it's not for me.

Song of the Week: Shearwater, "Lost Boys"

If I asked you to name a great vocalist, my guess is that you'd first think of a strong vocalist, the Whitney Houstons or Jeff Buckleys whose vocal power sounds like it could level buildings. But I've noticed that a number of my posts have led to the same conclusion that effective vocals involve finding a fit between singer and song, which for some music could work just as well with a nasal honk or with subtle understatement as it could with a traditionally "great" vocalist.

Now, I'm certainly not going to say Whitney Houston or Jeff Buckley weren't great singers- they were. What I would argue is that there's also a second type of great singer who can combine vocal skill and the musical sensitivity to find a fit with multiple different types of musical backings, and "Lost Boys" is perfectly constructed as Jonathan Meiburg's case for inclusion. The song is basically two very distinct takes on one melody- a light, airy version focused on strings and bells, followed by a harsher, strummed, drum-heavy recapitulation. Meiburg's vocals shift significantly to support both, with a rich, vibrato-laden falsetto that shifts to powerful, unadorned belting. It's instantly obvious Meiburg is a technically gifted singer; on the second verse, for example, he has the sort of elemental power in his delivery that hits you in the solar plexus. But even more to his credit is his ability to shift his voice easily to make it the best instrument in very different musical settings.

On another note, the developing theme in the songs of the week so far- you know, all two of them- is the effective use of crisp, loud drums underneath arrangements that are otherwise melodically rich and ornate, even pretty. I like pretty songs quite a lot for a bearded, emotionally reserved midwesterner, but the biggest challenge even the best of them face is fusing the melody with enough energy and momentum to keep it from sounding insubstantial. The drums here and in "Mute" are prominent and powerful enough to provide that drive, while keeping to simple beats that provide support to the melodies without overcoming it. Done right, it's a marvelously effective approach.

The Value of Lyrics, Part 1: Music for Words

I got a request from a friendly reader for my take on songs with non-English lyrics. Gladly! But since I'm me, and this is the blog that it is, I'm going to start by trying to figure out my general theories on lyrical value, then pivot back to explain how non-English lyrics fit in. (Allison, you know me well enough to know you weren't about to get a direct answer.)

As I've started doing research for the blog, I've discovered that while most academic musicologists, (like my pal Leonard Meyer) focus on classical music, there's actually a fair number writing about popular music. One of them, Richard Middleton, has proposed that there are three different uses of lyrics within the context of a whole song:

1. "Story," which emphasizes narrative and tends to be performed in a manner close to the speaking voice;

2. "Affect," which emphasizes the expressive nature of the words and "tends to merge with melody;"

3. "Gesture," which emphasizes "words as sound" and effectively uses the voice as "an instrument."

This framework makes a lot of sense. The sources I've read seem to agree with my biggest initial reservation, which is that "story" is not a common usage compared to the other two. There are certainly examples out there (country story-songs, rap that emphasizes the words rather than the rhythm of the delivery, that Shawn Mullins song from back in the '90s), enough to merit their place in a general model, but they're not common enough in my musical experience to need much more discussion. I'll just post that Shawn Mullins song and leave it at that.

Middleton's other two categories, though, capture a useful distinction. The way I'd put it is that most songs with lyrics can be great in one of two ways: either the music can support strong, memorable lyrics ("affect"), or the sound and tone of the lyrics can support strong, memorable music ("gesture"). In short, a great song can either offer music for great words, or words for great music.

Underlying that statement is an assumption that the music and the lyrics both need to meet some minimal level of quality for a song to be successful. A great musical arrangement still isn't going to work that well as a song if it's accompanied with, say, lyrics as distractingly lazy as Train's. Nor will great lyrics work without an adequate- and appropriate- musical backing; sensitive love-song lyrics are going to lose some of their impact backed with death-metal music, and any example of good lyrics are going to lose some of their weight and enjoyment if I still don't want to listen to the musical backing.

Put another way, great songs have both great music and good lyrics- the distinction is that in many songs, one plays the lead role and one plays support. I have no way to quantify this, but I feel safe in saying that, more often than not, music is in the lead role; melodies run through my head more often than do lyrics that resonate on their own terms. (This probably also has something to do with the fact that talented musicians are invariably going to make music, while talented writers may well go into poetry or short stories or whatever instead of becoming lyricists.)

That said, there are songs where the lyrics carry the primary weight of quality for me. Within the confines of a standard-length pop song, that's typically not a matter of a complete thought- it's usually a matter of using just a few words to communicate something vivid. The lyrics of The Mountain Goats' "Broom People" are a total of 101 words, but line by line, it uses its economy to capture a gut-punch portrait of an abusive household, both visual (the "white carpet thick with pet hair") and experiential (a sighed reference to "well-meaning teachers"), and with clearly personal details like the abuser's old car in the garage. (John Darnielle has been upfront about saying that the whole album addresses his life with an abusive stepfather.) It's a bit like a great establishing shot in a movie, communicating worlds in brief images.

Iron and Wine's "Dead Man's Will" achieves much the same, in its slightly different, eponymous form. It's a very structured approach of finding four expressions of "buried" love, all well-drawn in a few words, and all the more powerful for being driven home as the narrator repeated chorus beg for his "love to reach you all."

Both of these are, even on paper, great writing. But part of what makes them stick as great LYRICS is because the musical accompaniment provides such effective support. It's not just that the music meets our basic expectations for the tone of the song- relatively slow tempos, sweeping high notes- though that obviously helps. Both lyrics stand out so powerfully because there are a range of subtle musical cues that support, reinforce, even expand upon their tones and connotations.

In both cases above, much of that subtle success is in the way the music introduces a note of hopefulness and grace into devastating subject matter. Dead Man's Will is, on first listen, appropriately funereal, with the slow tempo of a funeral march and a choral arrangement that evokes a hymn. Upon further listening, though, that choral arrangement contains even deeper resonance. The musical arrangement drops out on the final chorus at 2:20, an effective decision to make stark the lonely cry of the narrator. But it's followed by a wordless chorus that swells the harmonies we've already heard before, and it's easy to start imagining that the father, mother, brother, lover, are now the ones singing. In purely musical terms, it's a nice way to open up the strong melody for a final spin. But it's also a way to suggest that his love has reached them all.

Broom People seems like a bit of an odder case at first, with dramatic piano chords and a thrumming cello line that seem too energetic, too anthemic for a story of a child writing down "good reasons to freeze to death." Until Darnielle pivots at the end of the verse to talk about the arms of another (a girlfriend, most likely) that turn him into a "babbling brook." On paper, the structural choice to dwell on what's at home is effective for dramatizing the draw of his escape, yet the pivot lands with even more force by resolving the tension between music and lyric.

It remains true that for me the impact of both songs is lyrical, the near-physical impact of invoking an abused child's "friends who don't have a clue" or hearing the posthumous regret of a man too "scared and stupid" to find love. But they're great as songs because the music is pumping the lyrics full of life. It can work the other way, too, and I'll take up that topic in the next post.

Song of the Week: Youth Lagoon, "Mute"

The posts here have gotten rather uniformly long and theoretical and detailed. To balance things out a little, I'm also going to start doing weekly short posts focusing on a single song. First up: Youth Lagoon's new single "Mute," from their just-released and enjoyably titled album, "Wondrous Bughouse."

Two things will probably be clear to you by about two minutes in (I just verified by testing on my wife): 1) the song pretty easily meets my criteria (and anyone else's) for sounding "unique" and different and 2) not necessarily in a good way, since it's mostly due to the screechy, harsh feedback that takes over at 1:05 and recedes in and out for the rest of the song.

I've emphasized before that adding "unique" elements isn't good enough if they don't seem to fit in the musical mix. It sure sounds at first like the feedback doesn't here, given how dissonant it sounds over what's otherwise a highly melodic song. But after several listens, I've come to think that it is the good kind of unique; there's an identifiable, and very interesting, musical idea behind the feedback.

The point comes through best during the guitar solo that starts at 2:57. Taken note for note, the solo itself is anthemic enough to plausibly be one some mulleted '80s rock guitarist could be playing at the front of the stage with one foot perched on an amplifier. And there's a certain set of connotations that comes along with that image- of a high-volume, beat-heavy hard rock arrangement smoothly sculpted to emphasize power, perhaps presented with ripped jeans and stage fireworks- that the feedback acts to twist and subvert. It's taking something associated with familiar notions of masculinity and (musical) force and turning it into something melancholy and crumbling in a way I haven't quite heard before.

My wife suggests that using more traditional (and harmonic) chimes or bells would make the whole thing sound better. She's right, but under a different conception of what the song should be. That would make for something that sounds more like a familiar chamber pop anthem (a la Coldplay, perhaps), and it could probably serve as a well-written example of the form. Hell, that's even a form I like. But for an intensive listener like me who's trying to avoid the saturation principle, I find it even more rewarding to see someone attempt a largely new musical idea- and succeed.

Fanfarlo and the Challenge of Craftsmanship

To this point, I've identified my definition of craftsmanship in terms of music having unique characteristics, or maximizing musical nuance (aka Birdy's Law), or enjoying the unexpected. All of which combine to support my longstanding tendency to like songs with multiple layers and complex arrangements.

It's tempting to suggest that there's a basic principle of probability at work: the more that's going on in a song, the more likely there's something that appeals to me through nuance or surprise.  To the extent that's true, though, there's also a risk: it may increase the probability that I come across something that I think doesn't work. Particularly since precise, complex arrangements aren't exactly easy musical accomplishments to achieve at all, much less make effective.

Fanfarlo reflects both the pleasures of craft and the difficulty of finding that complex alchemy that makes it work. Their debut album, Reservoir, consistently hit my sweet spot for arranged, nuanced pop. In "Ghosts" alone, there are a half-dozen pieces of craft that stand out as quite effective on their own terms, and even more so taken together.

1. The ability to integrate, and smoothly move between, a wide range of different instrumental tones and timbres, from the thumping bass at the beginning to the airy vocals at :46 to a mix of horns, piano, and strings for the bulk of the song.

2. Their ability, once those various layers are introduced, to combine them in varying ways to d.rive numerous dynamic shifts through out the song- the build on the bridge, after 2:30, is the most prominent example.

3. The drummer's effective use of his whole kit to support the instrumental tones of the song, relying on crisp hi-hat to support the thumping base, than switching to cymbals to support the lighter horn harmonies on the chorus.

4. The winding horn hook on the chorus, which hits a gratifying resolving chord at 2:01, but toys with expectations by spinning off into different variations on the melody line rather than overusing that resolution.

5. The singer's (and trumpeter's, a few times) effective use of controlled vibrato on his high notes, especially valuable for minimizing any vocal strain that could conflict with the bright, smooth instrumental tones.

6. The use of handclaps to reinforce the snare beat (first starting at 1:26)- subtle enough I didn't recognize them on the first listen, but very effective in strengthening the beat while avoiding any sharp rhythmic that could conflict with the smooth tones.

I could do the same for most of the other songs on the album. And 2011's follow-up, Rooms Filled With Light, demonstrated that they certainly hadn't lost that skill set; "Dig" does a similarly fine job of arranging multiple tones, and while also evolving their sound by focusing more on keyboards and synthesizers than the organic tones of Reservoir.

However, many of the other songs on Rooms Filled with Light make other arrangement choices that are significantly less successful. "Tunguska," for example, makes its slow tempo sound plodding through heavy drumming that stays almost unfailingly on plain, quarter note beats, and a zither with a strum so heavy it takes nearly a full beat to register. There's just as  many different layers and tones as the songs above, but the plodding takes much of the energy out of the interplay, and the use of a low organ that fills the space between other layers also dampens that spark.

The band also tries to push the boundaries of its sound by including some overt dissonance. There's nothing inherently wrong with dissonance, but the band doesn't integrate it well enough into the full arrangement to make it work. The verses of "Tightrope" start the song off with the same kind of bouncing bass and loping rhythm that worked so well for "Ghosts," but the chorus loses much of its momentum through dissonant and monotone vocals that coexist awkwardly with the clean harmonic work underneath. And the friction sounds even more off-putting during the bridge at 3:10; while "Ghosts" worked within its harmonic structure to develop a rich, impactful build on "Ghosts," the band instead chooses to use aharmonic horns that sound more an intrusion.

The album's first single, "Shiny Things," is perhaps an even clearer example of the same issue. The band uses a dissonant guitar bend as, in effect, its primary chorus hook (starting at 1:34 the first time out), but does nothing in the rest of the arrangement to make the sound feel like a natural fit. They might have been able to achieve that integration by introducing a few dissonant tones somewhere in the verses that would establish the dissonance as part of the harmonic structure of the full song, or by using the first occurrence of the dissonance to influence the arrangement thereafter. Instead, the bend occurs just on the two choruses, and again sounds more like an intrusion.

The typical critical terminology in a case like this is to say that the second album is a "decline" or a "disappointment" after the strengths of the first, but that doesn't feel right. Fanfarlo is still trying to do right by my values; they're very clearly working to find an effective balance between maintaining an effective core sound and trying to find the variations and new ideas that make it fresh. To these ears, they just misfired a few times in trying to do so, and that doesn't make them any less of a respectable and able band. It seems a lot more fair to point out what this misfires, do so in as constructive a fashion as possible, and express a sincere hope that they can find their way back to the right alchemy the next time out.

The Beatles, Sloan, and the Evolution of Expectation

I started this blog with a quote from Leonard Meyer, calling out for the "some account of the meaning, content, and communication of music" better than the "special jargon" currently available. I've since tried to develop my own account stated in my own terms, based on my own experience. Now seems like a good time to circle back to Meyer, who offers his own interesting answers, and ones that I think fit within the concepts I've developed for myself.

Meyer's stated goal is to identify the sources of musical emotion and meaning, which isn't necessarily the same thing as my attempt to define perceived quality. I think we're on the same wavelength, though. I've described multiple ways in which I define quality based on the sort of points of craft and subtlety that also create emotional responses- minor chords on Justin Vernon's guitar, or the cracks in Freedy Johnston's voice. If we're not talking about the same thing, we're talking about close correlates.

Meyer's basic approach is to extrapolate a theory of musical emotion from a more general psychological theory of emotion, conflict theory. Meyer notes that divergent theoretical lines within the field still jointly accepted the basic premise of the theory, that emotions occur when a stimulus cannot be otherwise resolved physically or mentally. (At least he claimed this was a consensus at the time he wrote in the '60s; if there are any psychologists reading, please call me out if this is horribly outdated). He cites the basic example of smokers getting angry or depressed when they unable to meet satisfy their desire for the next cigarette; an opposite example could be feeling joyful when, say, the taste of food introduces a positive sensation that's not offset by a negative sensation.

In the musical context, Meyer suggests, the baseline- the equivalent to the point before the new stimulus is introduced- is musical "style": the instrumentation, rhythm, harmony and other basic musical characteristics we have learned and accepted as "normal." Those styles create "customary and expected progression[s]" of sounds that, upon being learned, lose some of their impact for the listener. At that point, it becomes the "deviations" from those styles that carry emotional impact by, in effect, serving as a new stimulus. Moreover, a given deviation can become part of a broader affective work because can "the listener will do his best to relate it to the style, to understand its meaning," and put it within the broader context of a whole musical work.

"In short," concludes Meyer, "embodied musical meaning...is a product of expectation," specifically the interplay of the expected and the unexpected. Which seems to fit with both of my criteria for identifying new music I like. My search for something "unique" within a still-familiar style has obvious parallels. And to the extent I've been able to define "good songwriting" or "craftsmanship" to date, it's also been in terms of adding something I perceive as "new" to the familiar- whether it's choices of instrumentation and arrangement that refresh so-called retro musical styles, or finding a way to do arrange something differently within a familiar pop song structure.

I'm therefore comfortable adopting the basic premises of Meyer's theory as a way to flesh out the vocabulary and the conceptual structure of what I'm already trying to do. And I think a good example that fits Meyer's particular emphases is my relationship with the Beatles and their musical followers.

Below is "Can't Buy Me Love," which to my ears, and I'm sure many others, sounds like a pretty clear and pure example of a familiar style. This is true in immediately identifiable ways: guitar-bass-drums instrumentation, verse-chorus-verse structure, guitar solo in the middle. But even though we may not process it as consciously, for me, and I suspect for many of you, the melodic and harmonic contours of the song sound familiar as well. The memorable musical components- the chord change under the chorus (first at about :06) the way the vocals change to a flatter, bluesier version of the melodic line in the second line the verse (i.e. at about 1:00), the structure of the three-part harmonies, and many more- are all, in Meyer's terms, "customary and expected progressions" for the pop-rock music we've been hearing for most of our lives.

The Beatles are legendary in large part because they had such a significant role in establishing those tropes as customary and expected- "Can't Buy Me Love" captures a style that didn't even exist 10 years before this song, but is still a big part of our shared musical experience 50 years later. And even though I was born long after they broke up, I maintain a lot of affection for them because they still played the same role in establishing foundations of my personal musical world; I listened to them a lot as a teenager, when my own musical expectations were still in the process of being formed.

Since the Beatles serve as such a core pillar of my musical taste, I'm still obviously interested in seeking out bands in the same vein. But those bands bear a different burden than the Beatles did in forming my taste. If the bulk of what they do is follow those same customary and expected progressions, the appeal is limited; it's probably just going to sound to me like something the Beatles did better (which may in part actually just mean that the Beatles, for me, did it first). It's the band that's able to consistently and effectively subvert some of those expectations that can continue to succeed.

In the world of specifically "Beatle-esque" music, I'm not the only one who thinks Sloan stands out as a band who's represented some of the best of the form for 20 years running. All the songs below are going to sound immediately familiar to you (and the album covers even look familiar, what with their penchant for the four-slightly-awkward-guys-looking-back-at-you picture.) But with Meyer's theory in mind, it becomes clear for me that Sloan's been able to build their deserved reputation in part on their ability to balance the pleasures of the familiar form with some subtle and clever subversions of the expectations that creates.

"Can't You Figure It Out," for example, shares some of the exact tropes of "Can't Buy Me Love;" listen to how the vocals repeat the melody line at :30 in bluesier fashion at :33, just like in the Beatles' verse. But the chorus sounds both memorable and fresh because they subvert the chord change the Beatles have also led you to expect. Stop the video at :41, right before the chorus hits, and see if you can envision how you think the musical aspect of the chorus is going to sound. If you've listened to enough of this sort of thing as much as I have, you may well be able to envision a harmonic chord that "resolves" the preceding chord progression in the way the Beatles have led you to expect. It's not what Sloan does, though- they move to a sharper, more dissonant chord that makes an impact in part because it manages to sound "correct" without being the answer we're (perhaps subconsciously) being led to expect.

"Coax Me" follows another familiar trope- perhaps less-used by the Beatles than fellow '60s-pop travelers like, say, the Byrds- of basing the song in large part on a winding, picked single-note guitar melody. Songs like that tend to be described as "jangly," in part because they tend to use light arrangements and pretty-sounding harmonies, as in "Mr. Tambourine Man":

In this case, Sloan subverts the expectations for such "jangly" songs by putting the melody in a particularly sad-sounding minor key. The rest of the arrangement is still very much in the Byrds' vein, but the harmonic choice achieves an air of melancholy that adds something "new" to the familiar form.

Sloan is also just as likely to subvert expectations through their song structures as their harmonic choices. Most Beatles songs, certainly from their "early" period up to 1966, follow a pretty tight verse-chorus-verse structure, with little variation. That repetitious structure can be incredibly effective for burrowing songs into the pleasure centers of your brain, especially when the melodies themselves are so strong, but it creates its own set of expectations- when the second verse ends, you know the second chorus is coming. "Another Way I Could Do It" has the sort of melody I'd probably still enjoy having repeated- but instead, Sloan cycles through numerous variations that find new, enjoyable angles on the underlying melody. After establishing the melody in the first minute, they repeat only the second half of the melodic phrase at 1:00; introduce a new guitar melody at 1:12; transition into an ascending bridge at 1:28; and repeat only the first half of the original verse phrase at 2:00 in order to transition to a new variation on the ascending bridge at 2:15; then they have a slow outro starting at 2:47 that inverts the arrangement that comes before by vocally harmonizing what used to be the guitar melody. That's five good spins on a strong melodic idea without a single full repetition, and that winding structure can still pleasurably subvert my structural expectations even after multiple listens.

Even much simpler structural variations can have impact. "Losing California" modulates the key upward on the final chorus, which I've already complained about as an overused trope. But while the standard pop songs does this by simply doing a chorus and then repeating it with the modulation, Sloan structures it in a different and clever way. After two verses and choruses, they plant the seed for the modulation through a short bridge at 1:17, which modulates upwards at 1:30 for just a second before dropping back to the original key. Then they follow through on the modulation at 2:20 by interposing the bridge between the final verse and the chorus- then following through on the modulation. It doesn't make the trope any less common- but I still find it quite enjoyable in this particular context because the song successfully subverts my expectations for when and how it's going to happen.

Now, I didn't even consciously notice most of these choices over a decade of listening to the band. I've just considered them good songwriters, good craftsmen, examples of Beatles-esque music still done well. But Meyer's vocabulary, integrated into my own more self-conscious criteria I've laid out in previous posts, provides a pretty persuasive way for me to better articulate what those general phrases mean.

Black Joe Lewis, Sharon Jones, and the Limits of Defining "Retro" Music

It seems difficult to read about Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings or Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears without seeing the words "retro" or "revival". I think this is simply meant to be descriptive: they're trafficking in varieties of funk, soul, and R&B that the general public and serious music fans alike perceive as historical. But in broader perspective, there seems something a little odd about that perception.

Compare them to the A.V. Club's top 3 albums of 2012: Frank Ocean's Channel Orange, Japandroids' Celebration Rock, and the Cloud Nothings' Attack on Memory. The historical reference points for each are just as obvious- Prince-like smooth R&B, Springsteen-esque drama-rock, and a mix of pop-punk and raw '80s post-punk, respectively- and reviews haven't hesitated to point them out. Yet not once in those reviews have I seen the words "retro" or "revival" associated with them. Instead they're using "influences" or "reimagining" their genres- probably intended as innocent descriptors themselves, but ones with less of a whiff of dust and cobwebs about them.

I don't get it. With some exceptions, any music with any degree of recognition and popularity is going to use the song structures, instrumentations, production techniques and other trappings of a specific, definable genre. (And the exceptions- say, EMA- can usually be defined as mixing multiple definable genres.) For all but those few fans of the avant-garde, I think it's fair to say it's typically a precondition to enjoyment- we need some sort of context. So why are Sharon and Black Joe "reviving" "old" genres, while, say, the Cloud Nothings are simply following in Fugazi's footsteps?

Is it because their genres are tied to the '60s and '70s, while the three albums above are tied more closely to the '80s? Maybe so- for someone my age, that's the difference between hearing the genre on an oldies station or hearing it in more contemporary contexts. But at a certain point making such a division seems like a fallacy. You may or may not like a given genre, and your preferences may well be connected to your generational touchstones. But if we're just trying to identify good music in and of itself- to rate an album or judge the best of the year- it seems fairer to focus on what they're doing with the tools of the genre they've taken on for themselves.

Personally, this brings me back to the two core criteria posted below: whether a band is avoids the saturation principle either by doing something that sounds new and unique relative to my accumulated listening experience, or by demonstrating those characteristics of craft and good songwriting that I'm slowly working to define. And I'd argue that Black Joe and Sharon face at least as much of a burden for me in reaching those criteria as the other artists mentioned above. I'm familiar enough with smooth R&B and Springsteen, but they're not integrated into my bones the way the Motown sound is.

Yet for me, both bands get over the line with creativity and appeal to spare. The vocals are a big part of it: both can belt it out just as well as the forebears they're "reviving," whether that's Wilson Pickett or Tina Turner. But that presence alone isn't enough. The Detroit Cobras, for example, have been doing fine work for over a decade finding little-known garage-rock songs and singing the hell out of them. But at the same time, most of their music feels more deserving of the slightly derogatory connotations I see in a term like "retro"- not just because they're digging up vintage material, but because the performance as a whole never seems all that distinctive, with a basic instrumental setup and straightforward arrangements. They're doing justice to the genre, but it doesn't sound as fresh and vital as the first time I heard James Brown, and it's not something I can see myself returning to all that often.

Black Joe Lewis and Sharon Jones may not sound original after hearing James Brown, but to my ears they DO sound fresh and vital, because they're following Birdy's Law: they're doing more with the genre, putting their own stamp on it. For Black Joe Lewis, the biggest part of this stamp is the Honeybears' ability to convey a sheer energy that keeps with Joe's vocals. I'm a particular fan of the driving, nonstop guitar line in "Livin' in the Jungle," which rapidly jumps between notes in a melody that still sounds unpredictable after a dozen listens. Or listen to the way the band uses multiple tricks- higher horn notes, the use of a splash cymbal, a general crescendo- to drive the horn lick to more powerful level the third time it's repeated at :37 and 3:30.

Sharon Jones, meanwhile, has the benefit of some fine arrangers within the Dap-Kings. The musical pieces of "How Long Do I Have to Wait" are perfectly familiar, from the wah-wah guitar to the short horn stabs to the thick Motown-style bass sound. But much like Phoenix does in a more poppy vein, they're put together so smoothly and tightly that they still sound new.

Or take my favorite single musical moment of theirs to date, the low guitar tone underneath the chorus lines of "Give It Back," at :56 and 1:38 and 2:18. The layering of that tone on top of the bass sounds incredibly rich, in a way I haven't heard before in similar songs- and in a way that might not have sounded quite as clear coming through a '60s-era control board.

All this said, I acknowledge that mileage may vary greatly in your appreciation for genres like this. I'm seeking out craftsmanship and uniqueness quite deliberately, and if you aren't, it's totally understandable that your saturation point for this type of music has already been hit by your exposure to the historical classics. That, in turn, may lead you to categorize these bands as "retro" while others are merely "influenced." But I suspect that says more about your relative genre preferences, or the public profile of a given genre, than anything more definitive about the music. Within a genre you follow and love, it hardly seems right to call anything "retro" or "revival" music. They're just open books on which the great artists can continue to place their own stamps.

Poking at Albums with "Pokey Midsections"

I am a major cheapskate who buys a lot of music, and still buys it in album form. (I attribute the album-buying primarily to the presence of good used CD stores near home, but inertia and creeping curmudgeonliness probably have something to do with it, too.) The listening habit I've developed to square that circle is to listen to every album I buy at least 10 to 12 times, usually concentrated over the course of a week or so before I move on to the next album.

The habit is partly a means to ensure I feel that I'm getting my money's worth out of my purchases, but I think it's stuck because it's also paid off musically. A number of my favorite albums- Talk Talk's "Laughing Stock" and "Spirit of Eden," The Flaming Lips' "Embryonic," Panda Bear's "Person Pitch," the Mountain Goats' earliest albums- I found either unremarkable or off-putting on the first listen; it was the concentrated, repeated listening that revealed their qualities.

I by no means consider this the "right" way to listen to music, just the way that's worked for me. But I'm sure it has had a significant effect on the fact those favorite albums are what they are. For one thing, it probably ties in to how I define terms like "craftsmanship" and "good songwriting". I'm probably going to be more impressed by musical decisions that don't fully pay off until the seventh listen than someone whose listening habits are less intensive or systematic, and emphasize them more heavily in my personal definition of those general terms. (There's probably a lot of writing to be done on that topic; I'll save it for future posts.)

I've also found that I tend to disagree with the common album-review complaint that an album has a "slow midsection" or starts strong before declining in quality, and I suspect I can define that difference very specifically in terms of listening habits. I can't speak authoritatively for any given reviewer, but I think it's fair to say that they're listening to music with some different parameters than mine. Most clearly, they're facing deadline pressures to finish reviews by release dates, while I take as much time as I please- and this may place fairly strict limits on the time they listen to the album, depending on how soon in advance they can get review copies. While I'm devoting my leisure time to these albums in as deliberate a fashion as I like, I assume most reviewers are trying to juggle one review among various other work tasks. And while I can ramble on as long as I like on this here blog, many reviewers are probably facing some degree of restraint on their word counts, creating the imperative to highlight their most concise criticisms (or praise).

The result I frequently see is that I agree with reviewer criticisms of weak sections of albums on roughly my third or fourth listen- and disagree after several more of my listens. Pitchfork hung much of its criticism of Elbow's most recent album, "Build a Rocket Boys!," on the criticism of a "pokey midsection" that "abates melodically." As far as I can infer, this has to be the two tracks between "Neat Little Rows," which the review itself highlights as "stomping," and "High Ideals," which has arguably the most complex arrangement on the album. Those two tracks didn't register with me much, either, for a while. But listened to on its own terms, it sounds to me like "Jesus is a Rochdale Girl" has just as much melody as anything else on the album- it just took a while to come through in the album context because it's so much quieter than its surroundings. I'll still grant that "The Night Will Always Win" may be one of the weaker songs of the album, but it can't bear the weight of a "pokey midsection" all by itself.

Pitchfork similarly criticizes the songwriting on the Title Tracks' "In Blank" for "petering out a little" after a strong first four songs. (Not intending to pick on Pitchfork here- I see this in reviews from plenty of sources, these are just the examples that are coming to mind.) Which, again, is consistent with my experience on early listens; the first four songs were so immediate and consistent to dominate my experience. But that eventually smoothed out a few listens later- the chorus of "All Tricks" has just as much melodic snap as anything on the album, it just took a few more listens to sink in.

I'll admit I don't have authoritative knowledge of the process by which the reviewers listened to these albums. But this is a pattern I see often enough to make this a reasonable hypothesis: reviewers can tend to have less immersive listening experiences to an album than I will, and that are more likely to diverge in opinions on album pacing as a result. To be clear, I don't find anything wrong with this. Reviewers may be less immersed for reasons outside their control, and there may be plenty of other listeners who listen to music differently than I do anyhow.

I should note that I also believe my system may bring its own biases to the table. I may have a tendency to underrate albums that are oriented towards immediacy and don't gain as much value-added on the tenth listen. This may drive me away from, say, even the best of simple punk-pop, as much as I might enjoy the first-listen experience. I also may have a tendency to dismiss albums that don't vary much in tempo, tone, or melody for the entire duration, even if I might enjoy any given song on the album if it came up in an iPod shuffle. At some point in the future I'll have to revisit some music that could fit either description and put these guesses to the test.

Was Whitney Houston Born 25 Years Too Early?

Whitney Houston deserves every bit of the praise and honor she got when she died young a year ago today. She's one of a small handful of the greatest vocalists in the 50-some years of modern pop music, and I think that's all the more remarkable considering she came of age in the absolute worst point for her particular talents.

Houston released her first album in March 1985, smack in the middle the most synthesizer-slathered period in pop music. The highest-selling albums of the previous 12 months were "Thriller," "Purple Rain," and "Like A Virgin;" even Bruce Springsteen broke out the synths on his album later that year. Houston (and her handlers) obviously weren't about to go against the prevailing winds.

The results are good songs, sung brilliantly. But on a song like "How Will I Know," her vocals don't come through as well as it feels like they should, and I blame the synths. It's most obvious on the chorus- her voice comes through plenty strong in the more spacious arrangements of the verses, but even her mountain-leveling pipes sound like they need to compete with the synth stabs that are carrying the instrumental hook.

Same sort of deal on "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" (released two years later). The arrangement gives the first three chorus lines plenty of room for her vocal power, but the addition of the synth hook on the final line doesn't sound like it's strengthening the power of the song so much as presenting another powerful sound that has to compete with Whitney's voice.

I can't help but conclude that, while Whitney can make a lot out of those songs, they're simply not an ideal fit for what she brings to the table. This is consistent with the fact that her two most lasting contributions to popular memory are the comparatively unadorned versions of "I Will Always Love You" and the national anthem. And, coming from the opposite direction, I think it's also consistent with the fact that plenty of popular and/or (in my opinion) great synth-pop doesn't involve strong vocalists. Britney Spears is a perfectly competent vocalist, but she's nowhere in Whitney's league. Yet when you listen to a song like "Oops I Did It Again," her thinner voice fits more naturally with the bed of synths than Whitney's belting, at least to my ears.

Or take Cut Copy's "Far Away", perhaps the best song on what I'd consider the best synth-pop album of the past decade. Like on the Houston songs, the core synthesizer melody sounds particularly full and powerful here, but Dan Whitford's vocal line projects a light tone that makes it sound less like a "lead vocal" than a polite, gentle countermelody under the driving synth hook.

I have at least two theories about why strong singers and synth-pop sometimes coexist awkwardly.
1. Basic acoustics. Synthesizers can fill up the frequency spectrum as or more easily than any "natural instruments," especially in an era like the mid-'80s where the production norm is to place them so prominently in the mix. There's just so much sound going on instrumentally that it's for the better if vocals come across in a somewhat secondary, subordinate role.

2. Our own preconceptions. We perceive vocals as an organic sound, and synthesizers as an inorganic, artificial sound. Which, perhaps subconsciously, makes it feel a bit unnatural for such powerful examples of both stacked on top of each other. This may make more sense when you think of the inverted version of the Houston example- it would almost undoubtedly sound odd to hear artificial, autotuned vocals over music based on naturally recorded piano or acoustic guitar.

Maybe it's one of those, maybe it's both, or maybe you might not even hear what I'm hearing anyways. The upshot, in any case, is this: Whitney's a deserved legend based in large part on music like the above. But if she was born 25 years later and came of age today, her pop template would be Adele rather than Madonna. I can't help but think the result might have been even better for her legacy.

Saying Something Nice: Miley Cyrus

See the previous post on Train for an explanation of this series.

Tempting Snarky Dismissal: We're talking about a revenue stream on a Disney executive's ledger more than we are music.

Hey, Say Something Nice: I'm guessing it wasn't Miley herself, but someone made a clever musical decision at the end of "Party in the USA."

The final minute of the song (starting right at 2:30) repeats the chorus twice. The standard approach in radio pop with this structure is to modulate the key a half-step (or maybe a whole-step) upward on the second chorus, which makes everything sound just a little bit higher and, as the link notes, "very uplifting." I'm sure you've heard what I'm talking about even if that description wasn't helpful- for an example, start at 2:36 below, then listen to the change at 2:55.

Thing is, this modulation is such a cliché that Marshall Crenshaw was ironically calling it out thirty years ago (at about 1:20 below- he does it at the bridge rather than the final chorus, but it's the same modulation for the same musical purpose). For me, any unironic use of the modulation at this point is a pretty blatant violation of the Saturation Principle. It's the audio equivalent of tired lyrical clichés like flying away into the sky- it's so obvious it just sounds lazy.

Whomever arranged "Party in the USA" found an impressively simple way to get the musical power and momentum the modulation (is supposed to) provide without succumbing to the cliché. The first ending chorus sounds just like it did earlier in the song. But instead of modulating that same arrangement for the second chorus (at about 2:55), the arrangement adds two tones on top of the existing instrumentation: a low, piano-type sound close to pitch to the existing bass line, and a higher-pitched bell sound.

What these two additions do is thicken the chord used in the original chorus. Stated another way, it takes the harmonies established by the instrumental track and makes them sound fuller and richer. Which, at least to my ears, adds a lot to the arrangement in a way I haven't heard much before. As far as I'm concerned, pop arrangers should start raiding this good idea. It could become saturated itself at some point, but for me, at least, there's a long way to go to reach that point.

Why That Isn't Enough: I still think there's more than a grain of truth in that snarky dismissal, and her vocal tracks are the clearest proof.

Miley has a nasal honk of a voice. There's nothing inherently wrong with that; I like a number of singers with similarly nasal voices, chief among them Freedy Johnston and John Darnielle. Part of their appeal is that both are strong lyricists. I'm willing to forgive more in the way of vocal shortcomings to someone who has a lot to say. But both also find musical ways to make their vocals fit well within their songs, despite their lack of a traditionally "good" voice.

Freedy Johnston, for example, commonly uses two strategies. The first is to write songs that rely on minor, dissonant, or otherwise "different"-sounding chords and tones. The guitar riffs in "On the Way Out" all sound a bit sharp and abrasive, and that makes his voice sound like a fairly natural fit. This is the reason I think "Party in the USA" works better than the most of the other Cyrus songs I've heard- her voice doesn't seem out of place with the gnarled chords of the guitar riff.

Second, Johnston successfully performs slow, spare, traditionally "pretty" songs through careful vocal control. He sings low in his range throughout the verses of "The Mortician's Daughter," so that the nasal inflection doesn't overwhelm the sometimes-minimal guitar accompaniment. He also undersings the more dramatic runs of the chorus; listen to the way he gets vocal power out of cracking and softening his singing (for example, around the 1:00 mark) under the swelling instrumentation. I suspect that if Johnston tried to keep up by singing louder, it would sound to most listeners like an exposure of his vocal shortcomings.

But keeping up is exactly what Miley does on many of her slow songs. She's trying to sing it the same way a more "traditional" singer would, and it just makes her nasality sound more obvious. Listen to the build at about 2:40 of "The Climb." She starts by undersinging the quiet first lines, but her vocal dynamics proceed to follow the music, and sound reedy and thin for the comparison.

That doesn't appear to be an exception either, based on pretty much the whole of this song:

Both songs have arrangements and structures that sound pretty standard for female pop singers, and it's clear that someone like Kelly Clarkson would sound more natural singing them. It's possible they're just honestly trying and failing, but it seems more likely that this indicates her handlers are often just giving her the same songs and arrangements they'd be giving any pop starlet, rather than trying to tailor her work to her strengths (and weaknesses). To me that's a pretty strong suggestion that her career's being managed more as a revenue stream than an effort at musical accomplishment.