Musical Talk Episode 345: Backbiting the Backbeat

Comedy Thos and Sage Tim of MusicalTalk are back beating about the backbeat bush. Plenty of chew-worthy fodder here on why musical songs have mostly disappeared from the pop charts.

Also an honourable mention made of your humble blogger. For the curious, the post cited in the podcast is available here.

Nine Things About Nine

1. Nine is the 2009 film musical of the 1982 Broadway show which was based on the 1963 Frederico Fellini film 81/2 which is about a film maker making a film.

2. I caught the film last night.

3. Here are some thoughts.

4. Stylistically the film is best described as an extended lingerie advert.

5. Judi Dench has apparently mastered the technique of shout-sing. She'd make a decent Al Jolson if ever given the opportunity.

6. Actors not stars. Daniel Day-Lewis is inch-perfect as the egotistical director Guido Contini. However something felt missing: he is credible but not charismatic. I could believe that this man was adored by women; I just didn't care. To be fair, there's not much to care about. The character is rich, handsome, successful, bags a series of glamour pusses and whose only problem seems to be a touch of writer's block. Not one for bleeding hearts.

Charisma is really his only redeeming feature and I suspect (and it is merely suspicion - I've never seen the stage show) that this is partly a problem of moving from stage to screen. It's much easier to get caught up in the sheer charisma of an actor on stage. If they're good, a musical performer can sing and dance their way into the audience's appreciation whatever the character. Screen charisma is something else, not always determined by talent. Daniel Day-Lewis is one of the finest screen actors. My feeling is that this part doesn't require an actor; it needs a star.

7. Stars not dancers. Where's the dancing? OK, there's quite a bit. But there's nothing that really strikes you with its physicality (with the possible exception of Marion Cottilard's "Take It All"). There's no routine which makes you say, "Wow! I didn't know the human body could do that". As I recall, I didn't care greatly for Chicago but at least there were some stunning dancers (mostly in the chorus) who were given the chance to shine. As much as I enjoyed Kate Hudson wiggling I can't help feeling that some of the chorines would have made a better fist of it. A film musical needs dancers even more than it needs stars.

8. Augmented theatre. With the exception of Guido's final song, all the numbers are set in his memory or imagination. So whenever the music cues, we generally cut from the story to a number set in the film's sound stage. The cut isn't really the problem (although I suspect, again, this is something that works more effectively on stage). The real problem is the sound stage, which is essentially a cavernous theatrical stage. So instead of eight dancers draping their legs over bits of furniture, we get eighty. Instead of a two-tiered stage, we get multi-storey scaffolding. Instead of the romantic lighting effect of a few dozen candles, we get a few thousand.

Sometimes these are good effects. But Guido's character is an obsessive film director. He eats, sleeps, drinks, thinks, dreams in film. The musical numbers, above all, should be filmic. Setting them in a big space with spotlights and half-finished sets and lots of well-spaced dancers doesn't really make this an imagination on film. Rather it is theatre augmented.

9. Redemption through Art. What does Guido want? Ostensibly it is to finish the film. What he really wants is a kind of redemption or, at least, the forgiveness of his wife, Luisa, whom he has wronged. At the end of the story, with his creative forces exhausted and unable to complete his film, he becomes a recluse, grows a beard and watches the world go by. A couple of years later his friend and long-term costume designer, Lilli, tracks him down. She reminds him of all the people he has touched through his films and encourages him to return to his film making. The final scene shows him in the studio making a film about a man trying to win back his wife. Meanwhile Luisa sneeks onto the set unseen. She sees Guido at work and smiles.

This is bunk. Artists tend to have a very high regard for Art and I think it catches them out sometimes. Guido is a monster. The story here is trying to redeem him merely by the fact that he's a great artist. Any amount of cruel and narcissistic behaviour is apparently forgivable as long as you can make a great movie. 

Well, I'm not buying it. It doesn't happen in any other profession. We don't forgive plumbers their infedility on account of their copper pipework. We don't give a moral carte blanche to accountants who never misplace a decimal point. What makes the artist so special?

Ultimately I suspect that's why the film, despite the extensive lingerie and a galaxy of star names, never really became the hit in the way that Chicago was. For the non-artist, there's limited appeal. Nine is basically Sunday in the Park with George in frilly knickers.

Yes! We Have a Big Monkey

Monkey musical King Kong arrives in Melbourne.

Tucked away at the end of this report by Alison Croggon in the Guardian is something about the score, which apparently is an eclectic mix of old and new songs:

“We want to create a show for a new generation of theatregoers,” says director Daniel Kramer. “And we want to create a piece of music theatre that pushes the art form forward.”

If by "art form" he means musical theatre, that might be difficult with a bunch of old songs. If, on the other hand, he means simian spectaculars I think he's onto something. I only hope the eclecticism of the score stretches to "Yes! We Have No Bananas":

Burning and Yearning for Ivor

Speaking as I was of Ivor Novello, I've been listening to a few of his songs. To be honest his kind of romantic sentiment is a bit too flowery for my bread basket.

I think the problem is in the lyrics. They are mostly rearrangements what seems to be fairly standard operetta imagery:

Fire
Desire
Heart
Part
Moon
Dreams
Light
Night
Clouds

This kind of thing hasn't aged too well and is, I suspect, the reason why we don't hear much from Ivor's catalogue these days. No doubt this was once popularly accepted as part and parcel of the operetta genre and audiences accepted the generic lyrics in return for the draw of the music and spectacle.

But one song does stick out:

"Keep the Home Fires Burning
While your hearts are yearning
Though your lads are far away
They dream of home" 

Nowadays the lads are even further away and most of us have central heating. But as a war song it still packs an emotional punch. Why? Well, the generic imagery has been given a more specific context - a soldier's family - which makes it more potent. We are not just dealing with the general emotions of loss/worry/heartache. Now these emotions are embedded in people and a situation.

Another reason is that the music and words in this song are working well together. (Old song sheet available Duke University library. It's amazing what you can find.) In particular, the "burning" and the "yearning".

On the two syllables of "bur-ning" the melody is two notes, A to G. This is played over a C7 chord. Now the second note G belongs to the C7 chord (i.e. it's one of the notes that makes up that chord). But the note A doesn't belong to a C7 chord. So what we have when the melody moves from A to G is a suspension. The melody wants to resolve onto a G but by placing the A before it, the composer effectively suspends the resolution of the melody. That's why we feel the extra tension on the first syllable of "bur-ning".

For "year-ning" the composer ups the ante. The melodic phrase is repeated but this time "year-ning" is an F to an E over an A7 chord. This is another suspension but whereas the first one (A to G) was a whole tone, this one is a semitone (F to E). This makes that first syllable of "year-ning" even more tense. You can literally hear the yearning in the singer's voice.

As well as the suspensions in the melody, the music also mirrors the "home" bit as well. The song starts in the home key of F major, modulates into D minor and only really comes back to the home key with the final bar when we get to the word "home". The effect is to make us feel that we've gone on a journey and have now made it home. For the soldiers and their families it is not only a literal return to home but also a return to hope:

"There's a silver lining
Through the dark clouds shining
Turn the dark cloud inside out
'Til the boys come home"

With the right music, even these cloudy old operetta images can still shine through.

Is Calvin Harris the New Ivor Novello?

Apparently so. Mr. Harris has picked up the Ivor Novello award for Songwriter of the Year. The award was presented by Radio 1 DJ Pete Tong who said:

"Dance music and DJs never believed they belonged in this room before. Now we have a role model."

Now when someone mentions "dance music" I generally think of the Charleston and the Lindy Hop, so I'm probably not the best person to comment. Fortunately music critic Neil McCormack is a bit more up to date:

"But is Harris actually a songwriter at all? He has been one of the most successful hit-makers of recent times, building techno-electro club pop tracks that smash it in the charts and the on the dancefloor. But if you strip his hits back to melody and lyrics, you’re not left with very much."

And strip back he does:

"If you take We Found Love back to its basic musical structure what you are left with is the same four-chord sequence repeated ad infinitum (D sharp minor / B / F sharp and C sharp), over which floats a sweet verse melody which shifts to the single repeated chorus phrase, with some vague impressionistic verses about “yellow diamonds in the light” and feeling “the heartbeat in my mind”. There is no bridge, no middle eight, nothing but rhythm, verse, chorus, sound and that incessant two-note keyboard hook. It doesn’t take anything away from its effectiveness as a sonic experience. But as songs go, it’s about as basic as they come."

The charge here is that there is a distinction to be made between the song and the production. Producers are essentially knob-twiddlers with an ear for hooks, backing tracks, instrumentations, textures, balance and so on. But the song material itself is the basic building blocks: melody and lyrics. By law:

"The legal definition of a song (as tested in many plagiarism suits) is melody and lyric. Everything else is track, or production."

I hadn't appreciated the legal issue before although if I were ever hauled before the courts I'd be tempted to argue that the harmony (or chord structure) was an integral part of the song as well.

So how do we tell a good song from a merely well-produced one? Composer/songwriter David Arnold has the answer:

"A lot of the time the litmus test of a song’s worth is how it plays when being performed just at a piano. It's not the only test but it's a very good one.”

This is interesting and certainly true for musical theatre songs. The only downside is that you can end up with very "pianistic" songs, i.e. songs which sound good on a piano. That's fine as far as it goes but it's also limiting and can be a big problem if you're trying to make new musical songs that sound different from the old musical songs.

Mr McCormack continues:

"Is there a higher plane of songwriting? A place where melodic complexity and lyrical depth combine to create an emotional or philosophically transcendent experience? I would like to think so. It’s the corner of a record collection where you will find Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Elvis Costello, Kate Bush and many, many more, the kind of musicians who approach songwriting as an art, not a craft."

Alas, here I suspect that we must part company. If the art of songwriting is reaching up for some transcendent beauty or truth, then the craft is the step ladder that helps you get there. In other words, it's not either/or. From a craft point of view, Calvin Harris may be no Bob Dylan; but then Bob Dylan is no Cole Porter.

Or even an Ivor Novello.

Carry On Sweden

Ah, Eurovision.

As ever the best entertainment was saved for the interval act which was a veritable "Swedish Smorgasbord" of delightfully daft musical comedy. It's as if Mel Brooks had been employed to pep up their national anthem.

And who knew we Brits had so many national stereotypes in common with the Swedes? Queuing, ignoring other people on the train, not being able to assemble Ikea products and singing daft songs in English.

Cultural exchange at its finest, I'd say.

Why Musical Writers Should Watch Nashville

Mainly because it's better than 99% of the stuff that makes it onto the telly.

If that's not a good enough reason for musical writers, then they should at least watch it for the songs which are not only very well written but also dramatically interesting.

This is, of course, the American TV show Nashville currently airing on More4. It is unsurprisingly set in Nashville and centred around the country music industry. Now my knowledge of country music is about as extensive as The Man in Black's wardrobe. So I can't tell you if the show's depiction of either the music or the industry is particularly authentic but it certainly makes for a good drama. 'Tis all I know.

The series was created by Callie Khouri who said some interesting things in an interview for Salon. Here's the interesting bit for musical writers:

I’ve been really impressed with how much Juliette’s songs sound like Taylor Swift songs. Well, more than going, “Okay, we need a song that does this,” we find these great songs and go, “Oh my God this could be so perfect for so and so, and this would have to happen for her to write that song.” Because it’s just not that easy to get somebody to write a perfect song, that says everything you need it to say. Sometimes everyone will do their pass on the script and it will be, “It would be great if we could get a song that said something like this.” And I’m just like, “Yeah it would, but we’re not going to get that.”
So you have music way ahead of having scripts?We start looking for the music way ahead, yeah. Because we have to record it all. And we want to be the first one to get our crack at the great song, so we’re listening all the time.
Does that mean you hear the songs, and you start to imagine how they would work in the script before the script exists? Even though you haven’t written it yet, the songs must give you some sense of where the story is going to go.Yes, exactly. You hear the song and it just evokes something, and you just start kind of writing toward that.

The age-old question for songwriters is which comes first, music or lyrics. The conventional answer for musical theatre writers is the story. In other words the songs are written in response to the drama. What Ms. Khouri is saying is that, at least in part, they were writing drama in response to songs.

This isn't entirely new. This is essentially what all those jukebox musicals - Mamma Mia and We Will Rock You - have been doing for a while. But these shows write a story around an already established back catalogue of songs. The big difference with Nashville is that the songs are generally not well-known and, in some cases, first heard on the TV show itself.

This doesn't make Nashville a musical. I'm sure that many of the characters and plot lines were in pace long before the songs. But clearly, at times, the songs inspired the story. And it's undoubtedly a good story rather some hodge-podge of nonsense simply there to string a few tunes together.

So this offers a different approach for musical theatre writers. There's no reason why the songs shouldn't come first. Especially when they sound as good as this: