Outdated Visuals
Background: There are some songs that are timeless, and they work because they deal with the human experience, and not a trend: A midnight train, something that cuts like a knife, or a mountain that won’t keep me from getting to you. But sometimes, we use outdated visuals to get our point across, and somehow the song still holds up. The focus of this blog will be songs that have been popular (if not “hits,” as defined by my Billboard rules), while still using those outdated visuals.
“Payphone” by Maroon 5
Lyrically: This song deals with putting all your energy into someone, while it’s becoming more and more clear that the relationship is over. This is all done to the backdrop of a payphone. The chorus begins with “I’m at a payphone, trying to call home, all of my change I spent on you. Where have the times gone? Baby, it’s all wrong, where are the plans we made for two?” In my blog on metaphors, I talked about the importance of not getting too bogged down with the visual in the title, and it’s really just the chorus that deals with the “Payphone.” Interestingly, the line about spending change on someone could be taken in two different ways: The physical change he spends to call her and the emotional changes he’s gone through to try to keep her. The bridge, in a first for Maroon 5, brought in rapper Wiz Khalifa to change things up. His rap goes in the direction of being just fine without her, getting all the money back that he wasted on her by becoming rich and famous. But then, it goes back into the chorus where he’s broke after spending all his change on her. Maroon 5 did this same thing in “Wakeup Call” where the end of the chorus says, “I don’t feel so bad” followed by the bridge, saying, “I’m so sorry, darlin’.” This song is what sent me down the path of outdated visuals, as I read a review saying, “A payphone is just unrealistic,” but to me, using the visual of a payphone shows a level of desperation that wouldn’t exist if he were calling you from a cell phone.
Melodically: This is a typical pop song with four chords IV, I, vi, and V, but with chord extensions. With the extensions the progression is IVadd9, I, vi7, and Vsus4. So the key of the song is in B major where a high fifth (F#) and octave note B are droned on the top of all the chords. In B major the chords ar Eadd9, B, G#m7, F#sus4. The add 9 on the four chord an F# with a B above (which is an interval of a perfect fifth). The F# and B high drones keep a sense of solitude or loneliness. The Choruses have the same essential chord progression with still maintains the high F# and B drone.
Structurally: This song follows a previous Maroon 5 pattern of building from the initial chorus. It starts out with a half chorus: “I’m at a payphone, trying to call home, all of my change I spent on you. Where have the times gone? Baby, it’s all wrong, where are the plans we made for two?” then goes into the verse, followed by a pre-chorus, and a chorus. In the second chorus (and the remaining choruses,) he adds, “If happy ever afters did exist, I would still be holding you like this. All those fairytales are full of sh*t. One more fuc*in’ love song, I’ll be sick. Now I’m at a payphone.”) Back to our discussion about rhyme scheme, the AABBA rhyme scheme, mixed with an AAAA rhyme scheme in the chorus (also the rhyme scheme throughout the pre-chorus), further proves this desperation, and the AABBA rhyme scheme in the verses shows the desperation as well, just mixing it up, so it’s not so in your face. The bridge is just rambling, and that works, because it’s showing off how much better off they are without the other person. Despite the change in genre, the tempo stays very similar throughout the rap section, but because the rap goes faster than the rest of the song, it may sound a little bit different to the listener.
“Payphone” is embedded below.
2. “KodaChrome” by Paul Simon
Lyrically: This song deals with the memories of adolescence through the lens (no pun intended) of a KodaChrome camera. It talks about “All the crap (he) learned in high school,” as well as “All the girls (he) knew when (he) was single” contrasted with the positive memories of green and sunny summers, and at the end demanding that they don’t take his KodaChrome away. Growing up, my uncle used to work for Kodak, and I have vivid memories of getting throwaway cameras from him for Christmas. My brother and I would immediately use up the film by taking random pictures of things like people’s hair, simply because we were fascinated by the idea of a camera. Of course pictures still exist, but the idea that you had to wait for the film to be developed adds to the visual of someone looking back on high school, presumably years later, and being able to take the good with the bad. As a teacher, it’s both cool and funny to see my former students get mad at behaviors of current high school students with zero hint of irony, while still longing for their high school days. The enduring power of this song is the human condition I just described, whether the pictures are instantaneous, or have to develop over a span of days.
Melodically: This song utilizes a walking pattern on piano and bass throughout the verses, as well as acoustic guitar. As I learned when I was touring the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, Simon was backed by the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section (better known as The Swampers,) and the drums in the recording, played by Roger Hawkins, were actually not drums at all, but rather a cardboard box. The Swampers were notorious for getting the songs down in just one or two takes, and when he couldn’t come up with the right sound for the drums, someone had the idea to try a cardboard box that was sitting in the studio.
Structurally: This song follows a verse, chorus, verse, chorus, ending format, with the ending repeating the phrase, “Mama, don’t take my Kodachrome away.” The rhyme scheme is rather irregular, in the sense that in the verses, the first and third lines do not rhyme, while the second and fourth lines do. The chorus follows a similar pattern, with the second and third lines rhyming, while the fifth and sixth lines also rhyme with each other. “America” by Simon and Garfunkel is noteworthy in that none of the lines in the song rhyme, further proving why Paul Simon is one of the greatest to ever write songs: He doesn’t put himself in a box, when it comes to rhyme schemes.
“Kodachrome” is embedded below.
3. “Digital Get Down” by NSYNC
When I initially envisioned this blog, I wanted to focus on hits, since Mr. Indignant Critic thought “Payphone” shouldn’t be a hit, due to the visual being unrealistic. But in trying to come up with non-phone-related visuals, this song, which I hadn’t thought of in years, popped into my head. So come with me, if you will, back to the year 2000, or as my students call it, “The Dark Ages.”
Lyrically: This song deals with online romance, and implicitly, freedom from parental control, thinking you’re being so sneaky with your relationship. The mode of communication is AOL Messenger. This is pre-MySpace, pre-Facebook, pre-Skype, pre-Zoom, and pre-FaceTime, so at the time, this level of independence was a massive deal. I will spare you the quoting of any actual lyrics in this song, because picturing 8 year old me singing along to these lyrics makes me cringe. But let me paint my own picture for you: Back in the year 2000, we connected to the internet via dial up. The Internet would connect at a snail’s pace, and to this day, I can still hear the EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAA sound the computer would make while it did. Before cell phones took off, you would have to call your friend’s landline, where their parents would probably answer, call them to the phone, and you would have to wait for your friend to come to the phone. AOL Instant messenger was revolutionary at the time. It allowed kids (NSYNC’s main demographic) a little bit of freedom from their parents (so long as they were able to use the family computer.) I have a distinct memory of one of my classmates (shoutout, Jessica Bright,) asking me randomly in class if I had heard the song. Although this song’s visual (AOL Instant Messenger,) does not hold up, it was clear at the time and remains clear today why this song was so relatable when it was released: These people were singing about our independence, and it was awesome to listen to and aspire to.
Melodically: The primary elements of this song are rhythm, lyrics, then melody and based on the hip hop genre. The rhythm is a straight up 4/4 beat pattern, but with four beats with the trap rhythm, and four beats without more or less throughout the song. There are ambient sounds throughout to support the lyrics. The lyrics are a secondary element, and the melody is ornamentation. But, tonally the song is in Am and has a descending bass line from A, to G#, G, to F# over the chords Am7, E7/G#, G, D7/F#.
Structurally: This song starts off with the chorus, then goes verse, pre-chorus, chorus, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, solo (paired with the classic 2000 message, “Your satellite feed has been interrupted,”) bridge, chorus, chorus, ending, format. The ending is the first line of the chorus, “Digital, digital get down, just you and me.”
“Digital Get Down” is embedded below.
4. “Big Blue Note” by Toby Keith
After the first song discussed in this blog, the other ones proved to be rather difficult. I wanted to discuss multiple different outdated visuals, but most of the ones I could think of initially were phone-related. Letter writing, at least in song, can be a very powerful visual, but it’s not necessarily outdated. If you have a song about a soldier writing to his family and/or significant other, that’s not a radical concept, even for today’s generations that no longer write letters themselves. I also wanted a song that was entirely about the letter received – So “Darling Nikki” by Prince was out, as was “Simple Twist of Fate,” by Bob Dylan and “Let Her Cry,” by Hootie and the Blowfish, which just mention notes in one verse.
Lyrically: “Big Blue Note” picks up after a breakup of the narrator and his ex-girlfriend. It chronicles the interaction between the narrator and a friend who comes over in the aftermath of the falling out, with the narrator insisting that his friend not throw the note away. The powerful thing about the visual of the note is that it’s something tangible. Yes, his phone (where he might receive a text) is tangible too, but a phone can be used for a lot of other things (though maybe not in 2005, when this song was released). The note’s singular purpose is to convey the message that it’s over, yet it’s the only thing he has left of her. Even when he talks to his therapist, and she tells him to tell her what he sees in the inkspots, all he can see is that big blue note. It’s just very powerful that everything comes back to that note. As hard as it is to believe, people still break up, so that’s not what’s outdated about this visual. But today, people tend to break up either over the phone, via text, or, God forbid, in person, which adds a level of poignancy to this song.
Melodically: This song uses the classic “50’s progression” of I, vi, IV, V. In this case the song is in the key of C major and the chords are C, Am, F, and G for the verses. The choruses start on the IV chord and go to the iii chord and back to the IV chord, V chord and the I (F, Em, F, G, C). The second half of the chorus the I ( C ) chord starts the next verse. This 50’s progression adds to the nostalgia of the song’s concept.
Structurally: This song uses a verse, chorus, verse, solo, chorus, verse format. The last verse (spoiler alert!) sees the narrator standing on a cliff, and your first thought as the listener (especially since he said, “The only thing that’s left to do for me,”) is that he’s going to jump off the cliff and end it. However, the song ends with him folding that big blue note into a paper airplane and tossing it over the cliff, thus ending him thinking about how she left him. When Rupert Holmes brought “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” to his producer, Jim Boyer, he was incredibly excited about the twist at the end, where it was revealed that the narrator’s wife was the one who put the personal ad in the paper (another outdated visual,) and they ended up rekindling their relationship because of that. “Big Blue Note” was written by Toby Keith and Scotty Emerick, and I hope they had a similar reaction when they came up with the third verse, because it’s also incredibly clever.
“Big Blue Note” is embedded below.
