X Factory: Bic Runga: Listening for the Weather

Ladies and gentlemen: from Bic Runga's 'Beautiful Collision' album (currently six times platinum locally) comes Listening for the Weather.

This is another very classy example of laconic pop writing from Bic, with a tight familiar structure and easily singable melody.

This song features a descending bass-line figure in the intro and verse (same progression) that harks back to the Pachelbel Canon; a figure that has become part of the popular music vernacular for bass players. It functions as a foil to chords that remain in the same register across a progression, or chords that rise, creating an apparent contrary motion effect in both cases.

The guitar and Wurlitzer (a bit like a Fender Rhodes but with a more pointed attack and tone) parts intermingle in the intro and verse to create a wash of harmony that can best be represented as:

Bb          F/a          Gm          D7

Eb maj 7         Bb                   F

This progression affirms the key of Bb major by using the Primary chords, and particularly the IV - I - V of the second line. The D7 (perhaps Dm7 - rather ambivalent because the guitar says one thing and the keyboard another), retrospectively highlights the Gm chord (relative minor), and provides a smooth chromatic shift up the semitone to Eb which is further enhanced and en-smoothened (!) by its use of the major 7th (D).

The result of all this, if you peel back the layers, is that the note 'D' effectively appears in all of the first six chords (part of the wash of F/a), and this, dear friends, can only lead to the smooth. Yep, The Smooth - remember that.

The vocal melody features a rising four-note cell of d, eb, f, g that occurs three times in succession - economy.

Out of the two verses we go into a pre-chorus build, which, with the introduction of the string section, draws on the verse chords:

Eb maj 7          D7

Gm7         /f#          C9

This very effective passage introduces a great uncertainty in the harmony. The Eb - D - G progression is from the verse - except backwards! Essentially this acts as a modulation to Gm, but we no sooner arrive there, than the bass falls off 'G' and onto 'F#' and we are off again. G falls to C and we hang there, feeling for all the world like we are about to end up in F major (we would have effected a ii - V - I cadence in F), but sidestep instead to Eb maj 7 for the chorus. All the chords in the pre-chorus section have a 'D' in them, and the vocal melody has a repeated 'D' adding to The Smooth.

The chorus is clearly not in the 'key' of Eb, as all energies are focused on getting back to Bb, as follows:

Eb maj7          Bb

Eb maj7          Bb          /a

Gm

What I hope you have noticed is that this chorus has five bars in it. Songwriters out there - if you want to inject something subtle into your songs to give them a different flavour, just try writing sections with uneven numbers of bars in them. It gives a new emphasis to melody and lyrics because of its asymmetry - rhyme takes on new possibilities in this regard. After all - why write everything in bunches of four?

What follows is best described as a 'tag' because it is attached to the arrangement of the chorus, but leads us away and back to the verse. It does this with a descending triad figure in the vocal melody that repeats over the first two chords - d, bb, g followed by a, f, d. Although the chorus has a descending shape to the vocal (6-5-3-2-1 in Bb), the use of neighbour notes 6 and 2 to fill in the triad makes it less obvious. It provides contrast with the verse melody that reappears immediately afterwards.

This sums up the sections of the song, and the overall structure looks like this:

Intro

Verse Build Chorus (tag)

Verse Build Chorus (tag)

Solo (Verse) Build Chorus (tag out)

The simplicity of arrangement is, for me, very appealing. The contrast between the sections is clearly defined because the instrument parts do not simply stack on top of each other; they are interwoven - this is a true arrangement. It doesn't make sense to throw another guitar part on top in the chorus (for example) unless that part works with the existing material. It will muddy the arrangement and obscure the vocal in a song like this - don't do it! The string arrangement adds momentum to the build section and then gets the chorus 'airborne'. This song also features one of the most potent devices for propelling rhythm - the tambourine. Played by percussion master Jay Foulkes, it also contributes to the 'airborne' thing.

Conclusion: economy of compositional material with detailed instrument arrangement and an engaging vocal melody back up the whimsical lyrics of this beautiful song. A complete package.

Next issue we'll do rock. Grrrrrrrrrr.

Stephen Small is a professional musician and Coordinator of Popular Music Studies at the University of Auckland's School of Creative and Performing Arts. He can be contacted at s.small@auckland.ac.nz