A couple of nights ago, I was rolling around in bed, unable to fall asleep for a while. Around 2am, with no hope of getting a full night’s sleep, I opened the PC Music Reddit page and came across a post titled “AG’s Soulbreaker - original sample.”
This post was actually quite remarkable to me, because it made a connection between the opening of A. G. Cook’s epic odyssey Soulbreaker and a recording by Sufjan’s Stevens, “Christ the Lord is Born.” To see for yourself, watch the opening 15 seconds of the two tracks below:
It’s not a sample directly, but rather an interpolation, which I’ll discuss in more detail below. In brief, its a transcription of the same melody into MIDI and its assignment to a different instrument. In this case, from a piano to a synth. This reference caught me by surprise, not least because the A. G. Cook track doesn’t really cite that specific song as an influence.
But that’s not the end of the story. The Sufjan Stevens track is actually just a recent piano rendition of a much older piano composition, titled “Christ the Lord is Born” by Czech composer Leoš Janáček. Listen below:
Notice the similarity? But the rabbit hole goes even deeper. Janáček’s piano miniature itself is a reworking of a popular Czech Christmas Carol titled Narodil se Kristus Pán, which itself can be traced back as far back as a Hussite hymn from the first decades of the 15th century.
Through a series of references, A. G. Cook’s Soulbreaker can be traced back to a composition from the 15th century, which brings me to a larger point: popular music is an inherently intertextual art form, which makes studying it and talking about it such a satisfying thing, because it exposes culture as a web of references. It likens specific songs to hyperlinks in a web of music that is our shared cultural heritage.
Text
All of this preamble brings me to the fourth and final pillar of pop music, which I call “text.” There are two dimensions to text: first, there is the literal text of the song itself, which consists of the song title, and the lyrics, if applicable. That part is quite straightforward. Text conveys the meaning or message of the music, which, according to my friend Chris, makes a song just so much deeper.
The second dimension of text is entirely relational: reference. Or, if we want to use an academic term to describe the same thing, we might use the term “intertextuality,” which is to say that a text is shaped by and interconnected with other texts, influencing and reflecting upon each other. And this can be any piece of media, a song, a photograph, a movie, etc. But for the sake of simplicity we’ll stick songs here.
Since I have a tendency to make write newsletters that go on the lengthy side, I’m going to skip over the first dimension. Suffice it to say, the lyrics of a song convey what is going on in the song itself, and how the music is meant to be interpreted. The two most important topics in this regard are declamation (the way vocals are set to the underlying music) and text-painting (musical responses to something happening in the lyrics themselves.). I’ll cover these two topics in more detail some other time.
Intertext
The most exhilarating part of pop music to me is how each and every song is woven into a larger tapestry of songs. This works through the act of referencing, and pop songs can do this in any number of ways.
Lyrical References
The most obvious type of reference is when a song alludes to another song, album, or artist in its lyrics. For example, Olivia Rodrigo’s song “deja vu” (2021) references Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl” with the lyrics, “I bet that she knows Billy Joel / ‘Cause you played her ‘Uptown Girl’.” References to other artists abound in Kendrick Lamar’s song “King Kunta” from his album To Pimp a Butterfly. The line “Annie, are you OK?” is a quotation of Michael Jackson’s song "Smooth Criminal,” while the line “We want the funk” directly cites Parliament Funkadelic’s famous track “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker).” Such references abound in hip-hop of course which often pays homage to musical influences in the lyrics themselves.
Covers
Next, let’s talk about covers. A cover is a new rendition of a pre-existing song by someone other than the original artist, allowing artists to pay tribute to their influences or reintroduce classic tracks to a new generation of listeners. For example, A. G. Cook’s “Today” (2020) is a cover of the same-titled song by the Smashing Pumpkins (1993). The chief difference between them is their instrumentation: while the original is a guitar-based song, Cook’s song is a synth-based track. There also exist mini-covers, which are short musical quotations of another song.
Here are a couple of other examples of two excellent covers:
Purity Ring’s “Better Off Alone,” which covers the same-titled track by Alice Deejay from 1999. I highly recommend the cover, which I’ve played in DJ sets before.
Kelsey Lu’s “I’m Not In Love,” which covers the same-titled track by British rock band 10cc from 1975.
Atomic Kitten’s “Tide is High” covers a 1967 rocksteady song by John Holt and the Jamaican group the Paragons.
Mash-Ups
A mash-up throws two or more pre-existing songs into a blender, and literally, mashes them up to create a new song. Mash-ups often literally stack tracks on-top of one-another. Sometimes, the vocal track of one song is combined with the instrumental track of another, a technique that is becoming easier and easier with AI-based stem splitting technology. The only constraint being that the two songs will need to be in the same key and bpm.
I personally like mash-ups that juxtapose two tracks that are far apart from each other, culturally and geographically speaking. A surprisingly good example is the following track which mashes Nicki Minaj’s Starships with Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major, special thanks to Alex for sending me this mashup ages ago:
Sampling
Sampling involves taking an excerpt of a sound recording and reusing it in a different piece of music. This technique gained prominence in the 1980s with the advent of digital samplers like the Fairlight CMI (1979) and the E-mu SP-1200 (1987). Sampling is foundational to hip-hop, a sample-based music genre that emerged in the 1980s, and plunderphonics, where songs are built entirely from collages of pre-existing samples (e.g. The Avalanches and Fatboy Slim).
Dua Lipa’s tack “Love Again” makes use of a specific sample in its track: “My Woman” by Lew Stone & the Monseigneur Band feat. Al Bowlly, which itself is a cover of a song by Bing Crosby, “My Woman” (1932).
The sample is used prominently in the chorus, though it has been pitch- and tempo-shifted to match the bpm of the track. Dua Lipa’s “Love Again” is not the first track to use that specific sample, however. The song was also used in the “Your Woman” by White Town and in the song “All That Glitters” by Earl. In both cases the sample is used to evoke the glamor of art nouveau and the swing era.
Sampling has long been the focal point of legal issues surrounding copyright infringement. To give just one example: Baauer’s viral hit “Harlem Shake,” has been mired in controversy due to its unlicensed use of a sample from Plastic Little’s 2003 song “Miller Time.” There is an ongoing legal dispute between Baauer’s label, Mad Decent, and the lawyers representing Plastic Little, and Baauer has stated in an interview that he has yet to receive royalties for that track.
Sampling is a powerful use of reference, as it pays homage to another track by quoting it verbatim. Here are some recent examples of songs that utilize cleared samples:
Peggy Gou’s “(It Goes Like) Nanana” samples ATB’s “9AM (Till I Come).”
Kim Petras’ and Nicki Minaj’s “Alone” samples Alice Deejay’s “Better Off Alone.”
Jason Derulo’s “Watcha Say” samples the end of Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek”
Interpolation
Interpolation refers to re-recording a melody, chords, or a portion of a pre-existing song and incorporating it into a new track. Unlike sampling, which uses the actual audio from the original recording, interpolation involves creating a new recording of the original music, allowing for creative freedom such as changing the tempo, key, or pitch. A great example is A. G. Cook’s track “Without,” which features a guitar-based mini-cover of SOPHIE’s synth-heavy “BIPP.” Other recent examples include:
David Guetta & Bebe Rexha's “I’m Good (Blue),” interpolates Eiffel 65’s “Blue (Da Ba Dee).”
FIFTY FIFTY’s “Barbie Dreams” (feat. Kaliii) interpolates Janet Jackson’s “Together Again.”
Another example is Charli XCX’s “Speed Drive,” interpolates Robyn’s “Cobrastyle” and Toni Basil’s “Mickey.”
Lyrical references, covers, mash-ups, samples, and interpolation are some of the most common types of intertextuality you can find in popular music. The best thing about them is that they encourage musical discoveries from within a song itself. What better thing is there than discovering Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek” via Jason Derulo’s “Watcha Say”? I myself have been listening to Janáček’s piano miniature’s ever since discovering them through Soulbreaker, and that Reddit post.
This was the final instalment of my four-part framework for thinking about popular music, which covered time, pitch, timbre, and text. It was a bit of work to get through, for those of you who followed to the end — kudos! I hope you enjoyed and learnt a thing here or there in this crash course in popular music theory.
As I said, I envision this as the basis for a course on popular music theory I want to teach in the future, and this is an attempt to make this knowledge freely accessible to all of whom are interested.
The next few newsletters will be shorter, and more of a breeze to get through. For now, if you like leave a comment, question, like or whatever you feel like !