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.

Saying Something Nice: Train

I consider some music lousy. I think I have good reasons. Even so, I've never been able to answer for myself one question: if that music brings other people pleasure, who cares? I like music; why should I denigrate anybody else's enjoyment of same? And it seems even less arguable that MAKING the music is a pleasure to the people involved, who almost always also have far more songwriting skills and/or musical chops than I do. Who the hell am I to criticize?

I want to focus this blog on music I like, even if some of the discussion will come in the form of constructive criticism. But if I'm trying to find a better way to talk about music, it's also important to be able to apply it to the music I like least. And any honest way of doing so needs to acknowledge that I still have reasons for disliking the music, even if I'm trying to get away from the sorts of blanket dismissals or snarky one-liners that ultimately attack people who are just enjoying music.

So my first shot is this: after acknowledging my snarky worst impulses, I'd like to try to find something genuinely and substantively nice to say about music I dislike. Then I'd like to return to criticizing, but with the hope that saying something nice results in a more balanced and constructive critique. 

I'll give myself a relatively tough assignment to start: Train.

Tempting Snarky Dismissal: Middle-aged guys trying to act half their age by making drippy, dumbass pop music.

Hey, Say Something Nice: They consistently try to do something a little different with their lyrics. Most traditional pop lyrics, in English-professor terms, use terminal rhyme, where the rhymes occur at the end of the end of each lyrical clause. A clear example from the Magnetic Fields ("I Don't Believe You"), where the rhyme occurs at the end of each distinct statement:

So you quote love unquote me
Well, stranger things have come to be
But let's agree to disagree

Stephin Merritt is often clever enough to write interesting lyrics within this scheme, but a lot of pop music ends up relying on clichéd, overly familiar rhyme schemes to make this work. Lenny Kravitz's "Fly Away" is the first major offender that comes to mind- sorry, Lenny, but it just sounds thuddingly unoriginal to sing about how you want to fly so very high into the sky.

So credit to Train for breaking out of this structure by using internal rhyme, where the rhyme occurs in the middle of the second statement, rather than with the last word. This is standard in "Hey Soul Sister":

I knew I wouldn't forget you
So I went and let you blow my mind

The way you can cut a rug
Watching you is the only drug I need

Using a different scheme allows the lyrics to achieve a different sound and cadence on what's otherwise a rather straight-ahead pop song. And that also provides a melodic twist, since the vocal melody and phrasing is modified from the sorts of standard patterns that fit terminal rhyme.

Why That's Not Enough: They may be structured differently, but Train's lyrics are still awful enough to detract from whatever musical qualities they may have. I don't mind bland or vague lyrics that fit a song- early Beatles songs, for example, aren't exactly masterpieces of lyrical sophistication, but they fit the simplicity of the music, and they don't distract from the quality of the songwriting. But I do find that if lyrics don't sound at all like something actual things humans would say, it takes me out of the song. Take this internal rhyme scheme in "If It's Love":

My feet have been on the floor, flat like an Idol singer
Remember winger, I digress, I confess you are the best thing in my life

A different structure is more trouble than it's worth if you have to throw in a distractingly random reference to an '80s hair band to make it work. And even that's not as bad as "Calling All Angels":

When children have to play inside, so they don't disappear
While private eyes solve marriage lies 'cause we don't talk for years
And football teams are kissing queens and losing sight of having dreams
In a world where what we want is only what we want until it's ours

Who has ever used the phrase "marriage lies"? Who are the "queens"? How can you lose sight of HAVING dreams, as opposed to losing the ability to achieve them?

I find these lyrics bad because they're silly and laughable enough to dominate my listening experience and my post-hoc memory of the song. But they bother me for a deeper reason, too: they sound lazy. It clearly sounds like they threw in "cut a rug" because it's the first thing they thought of to rhyme with drug. And I'm guessing they weren't intending to take a stand against gay football players, but they apparently didn't think enough about their lyrics to realize that's the most logical way the "Calling All Angels" passage reads in context. I care enough about music to spend time on this blog trying to express that in writing. I think it's fair for me to ask musicians to make more of an effort than this in return.