Another Kid with a Dream- Creating an Interesting Middle 8

Youtube Analysis Available Here: https://youtu.be/nrLsB2ZKCgU

Throughout this song, the chord progression mainly revolves around the ii-V-I in the verses and at the end of choruses, but the chorus’ main progression features a pedal between B minor and A, which sort of implies a V-I in D, being that D occupies the 3^rd, 5^th and 7^th of B minor 7th. This could also be construed as D major 6^th.

During the middle 8, I have channelled the style of Jeff Buckley, a prominent 90s singer songwriter, who was famed for using unusual chords and tensions within the songs of his 1994 album “Grace.” The falsetto vocal and high pitching of the melody sits well over the top of the chord progression, which descends through a D major scale starting on Gmaj7. This looks as follows:

The last section of this chord progression, starting on Gmaj7, is a typical movement between Maj7 and Melodic Minor, the use of a Major or Major 7^th to a minor or min6 chord has been seen in the works of The Beatles, (Something, Nowhere Man) Bob Dylan, (Simple Twist of Fate) Oasis, (Don’t Look Back in Anger) Stevie Wonder (Lately, Overjoyed, Love’s in Need of Love Today) just to name a few. The effect of this small progression is to evoke a very happy to very sad contrast, whilst not alienating the listener by using overly complex or jarring chords.

Lyrically, the last half of the progression appears during the line, “I’m waiting for your song, to carry me along, but my worst fear is that it just won’t come,” which reflects the sense of pensiveness and introspection expressed within the chord qualities.

The solo section features Spaghetti Western sounding, Telecaster played, bubble-picked harmonies with an accompaniment of driving guitar chords and strings. This was purposely designed to heap pretence on the character being sung about in the song, as if they see themselves as the hero of a western movie or a cool customer full of mystery, walking off into the sunset of life. The harmonies are stacked in thirds over the chord progression of B minor and A, but the strings follow A with a B at the top on the second chord. Again, this is an occurrence of the Mu Major sus9 chord which adds to the Western energy created in the solo.

Other instances of pretence in the lyrics are where the character complains about people who are ‘too pretty to work for anything,’ becoming jealous of those who take the fast track in life because of their good looks and charisma, with no talent behind them. This is ironic, because the character has outed themselves, with their use of simplistic chord progressions and cringeworthy obvious rhymes that they have no talent either, so what are they complaining about? This is an indicator of how I have created a character in the lyrics, which is a cartoonized and exaggerated manifestation of fleeting thoughts I’ve had about life, society, and music as an industry. My real attitude is far closer to being normal and calm about the amount of work people put in and realising that other people’s struggles may not be obvious to us. But to assume that they have no problems removes all doubt from their head that you are the wrong person to be around.

Youtube Analysis Available Here: https://youtu.be/nrLsB2ZKCgU