The Performance of Identity

No one knew what to make of Britney Spears at the turn of the twenty-first century, perhaps because she performed so many conflicting identities: innocence and maturity, purity and dissolution, naiveté and self-awareness. While her public image has dominated this narrative, decidedly less attention has been paid to how Spears expresses multiple identities through her music. In “Oops! . . . I Did it Again,” discussed in Chapter 11, she creates contradictory personae by exploiting an ancient feature of Western music: counterpoint, which lets an audience hear two independent melodies at the same time. Though the two melodies make beautiful music together, neither represents the “real” melody—just as audiences could never know the “real” Britney Spears.

Sometimes the Truth Don’t Rhyme

How does Drake manage to be the most successful pop artist of the twenty-first century when most of his choruses do not even use perfect rhymes? The answer, as discussed in Chapter 8, is that in modern pop the melody and rhythm of a lyrical line are often more important than the song’s poetry. As Chance the Rapper has said, “Sometimes the truth don’t rhyme.” “God’s Plan” is a perfect example of this maxim, because its success is not predicated on lyrical accuracy but on Drake’s ability to repeat musical motifs again and again until they imprint on listeners’ minds; with just enough variation so that they never get boring. Drake shows that in contemporary pop, a variety of rhymes is more important than strict adherence to a single scheme.

Painting a Musical Masterpiece

Chapter 6 discusses “What Goes Around . . . Comes Around,” Justin Timberlake and Timbaland’s magnum opus, a seven-minute-plus track spinning a saga of love and karma through creative instrumentation, pointed lyrics, and an effect called text painting. Text painting sets a lyric to music that mirrors its meaning—such as a melody moving in a circle to illustrate the idea of “coming back around.” It’s as if Timberlake starts his paintbrush in the center of the canvas, on the home pitch of A, descends down as he repeats “goes around,” then makes a sudden upward brushstroke, before falling back to the starting note on the final “comes back around” right in the center of his canvas. Text painting dates back to the Middle Ages, making Timberlake a kind of latter-day troubadour and “What Goes Around” a modern ballad of courtly love.

Is Collage a Crime?

Chapter 12 looks at sampling, the technique of incorporating other sound recordings into a new composition. It is one of the most ubiquitous and most controversial practices in modern pop, offering unbridled creativity to musicians but also exposing them to claims of unoriginality and copyright infringement. Sampling entered popular music through hip hop, when instrumental breaks were repeated and recorded on a loop, forming the beat against which an MC could rap. The appearance of digital samplers in the 1980s enabled a proliferation of sample-based music but heralded continuing legal battles to curtail the practice of sampling. “Paper Planes” is a collage of musical and lyrical referents that creates an indelible sonic texture while also indexing the themes of immigration and criminality that M.I.A. satirizes in her hit track.

Music Takes You Higher

Chapter 10 discusses Beyoncé’s “Love on Top.” The track is one of the most uplifting songs of the twenty-first century, its success is built on a retro, 1990s musical aesthetic: chord progressions and instruments borrowed from the new jack swing of New Edition; vocal runs in homage to Whitney Houston; and the old-school musical technique of modulation in which Beyoncé and her producers raise the entire key of the song, literally “lifting up” every pitch and harmony. “Love on Top” does not just have one modulation, but five, an acrobatic feat giving Beyoncé a strong claim to being the hardest-working artist in modern pop.

Drunk on Rhythm

Chapter 9 analyzes Kendrick Lamar’s “Swimming Pools (Drank),” a cautionary tale of alcohol abuse that musicalizes its topic through the dissociative effect of syncopation. Lamar and producer T-Minus accomplish the feat with two techniques borrowed from trap music: a triplet-rhythm rap flow popularized by artists like Migos, and super-syncopated, “rattling” hi-hats that seem to break loose from organized time altogether. The sensuality of “Swimming Pools” is so alluring that it serves both as a critique of addiction and as a testament to how compelling escape from sobriety can be. By expressing this duality through syncopation and temporal dissociation, Lamar creates sensual pleasures for listeners akin to a high.

A Star’s Melodic Signature

Taylor Swift changes her musical style from album to album, something that has earned her criticism for appearing “inauthentic.” Even as her sounds changes, though, one element remains intact—a three-note melodic motif present throughout her oeuvre dubbed the “T Drop,” discussed in this chapter. The T Drop may serve as Swift’s sonic signature, but the inherent plasticity of melody means that the motif signifies differently depending on small variations in its construction, as well as the overall context in which appears; small changes to the motif can make it resonate quite differently. Tracing this melody through Swift’s repertoire shows how artists can maintain their songcraft in the face of commercial demands.

The Past, Present, and Future of Silly Little Love Songs

Paul McCartney is a legend of popular music who shows no interest in resting on his laurels. He has made forays into disco, opera, classical, and techno—but he always returns to the silly little love songs of pop. His 2019 release “Get Enough,” discussed in the Conclusion, references his classic hits with the Beatles while making use of modern musical devices and co-composers such as OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder. The unexpected effect of Auto-Tune places the song in a liminal space between the singer’s past and the song’s present. The classic timbres in the bridge are the “tried and traditional” sounds McCartney fans expect, but on the final refrain the past merges with the present as Auto-Tuned harmonies recur over his raw voice. “Get Enough” expresses at once the newness and the timelessness of pop. By song’s end, it feels like McCartney’s object of affection is pop itself, the sound of which he “can’t get enough.”

What Makes Pop So Catchy

Chapter 7 examines Ariana Grande’s “Break Free,” a platonic pop song designed to grab listeners’ ears and never let go. It works its infectious magic through a constellation of hooks, some of the more derided elements of modern pop music. Hooks may be engineered for mass appeal, but no two are created alike. “Break Free” is an ideal site for analyzing how hooks work because it utilizes a number of different types: motif hooks, section hooks, and conceptual hooks. Producers Zedd and Max Martin don’t just create catchy melodies, riffs, and choruses, they connect them through an over-arching theme of “breaking free.” Together, they make Grande’s hit impossible to resist.

A Voice without a Face

Chapter 5 discusses “Chandelier,” a song with a dizzying rush that comes largely from Sia’s masterful control of vocal timbre. “Timbre” refers to the quality of a given sound, a still-fuzzy category of music analysis. There are tools to describe melody and rhythm with precision, but not timbre. In describing timbre, people often resort to vague adjectives like “rough” or “smooth.” Sia’s ability to coax maximum emotion out of every pitch and word is not just a testament to her skill at songwriting but also to her uncanny understanding of timbral manipulation. Listening closely to “Chandelier” reveals Sia’s vocal brilliance and also shines light on the mysterious nature of timbre.