Whatever It Takes - Imagine Dragons
A few weeks ago, a student requested learning "Whatever It Takes" by Imagine Dragons (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGlEZpOVjGo). The moment I heard it, I felt like there was speed and motion in this song.
Tonight, as I was listening to the song with a friend, she and I realized some of what makes this song have so much speed and motion to it. I'll be talking about this in a video essay soon (I hope) so I'll go over it briefly now.
The song runs at 135 beats per minute - 5-15 beats per minute (so just barely) faster than your average pop/rock song and 25 beats per minute (22.7%) faster than the average country song, so the song is inherently fast. On top of that, the verse are mostly 16th notes, making the song feel like it's moving at 540 beats per minute during that section.
But if it were just a song that moved quickly, we'd get used to that. We got used to the speed of Bach's songs that were filled with 16th notes that (at the time) were literally called "motor rhythms". They should have given the feeling of speed, but we get used to their speed just like we get used to the speed of any motored vehicle. And we get used to the speed of DragonForce's songs, even though their songs are are so much faster than this one that its genre is literally called "speed metal".
What makes this song feel fast is when it isn't fast. The last note of every fast line lasts about 4 times longer than we're used to, which gives our brains just enough time to get used to this new speed before launching back into the fast lines. Additionally, the pre-chorus is twice as slow as the verse (and the chorus is twice as slow as that), giving the audience a chance to really get used to a slower section of the song, so that when the fast section comes back in, we're not used to it.
Additionally, the song spends the majority of its time giving brief bursts of added tension. It does this by having the first verse's be entirely note 1 until each line ends on note 2 leaving us with just a little tension. It also accomplishes this goal really subtly during the pre-chorus. The repeated notes that are emphasized during the pre-chorus (which adds a completely different layer of "cool" to this song) all scoop up. They either scoop up to get into the note or scoop up off of the note. Either way, a slight amount of extra tension is added for the length of one note, and if it's scooping up off the note, it feels like a question is being asked, so we want something to resolve the tension of a question being asked. I'll discuss this more somewhere else.
Lastly, the song makes us feel like there are more lines in the song than there really are by emphasizing the rhymes at the end of lines with normal length and having multiple rhymes per line in the bridge. The rhymes in the bridge are so dense that they feel like a rapper wrote them. (With a tune that barely moves during the verses and with impressive rhymes in a dense rhyme scheme, it really does feel like a rapper wrote this song.) This trick is especially useful during the bridge, which has the least amount of energy in the song. But the low energy is compensated for by having the same melodic structure as the first verse to bring in tension: lines made up for note 1 that end on note 2. And it makes us think there are more lines than there really are by having a dense rhyme scheme. Both of these boost up the bridge to not be quite as unenergetic as it would be.
Tonight, as I was listening to the song with a friend, she and I realized some of what makes this song have so much speed and motion to it. I'll be talking about this in a video essay soon (I hope) so I'll go over it briefly now.
The song runs at 135 beats per minute - 5-15 beats per minute (so just barely) faster than your average pop/rock song and 25 beats per minute (22.7%) faster than the average country song, so the song is inherently fast. On top of that, the verse are mostly 16th notes, making the song feel like it's moving at 540 beats per minute during that section.
But if it were just a song that moved quickly, we'd get used to that. We got used to the speed of Bach's songs that were filled with 16th notes that (at the time) were literally called "motor rhythms". They should have given the feeling of speed, but we get used to their speed just like we get used to the speed of any motored vehicle. And we get used to the speed of DragonForce's songs, even though their songs are are so much faster than this one that its genre is literally called "speed metal".
What makes this song feel fast is when it isn't fast. The last note of every fast line lasts about 4 times longer than we're used to, which gives our brains just enough time to get used to this new speed before launching back into the fast lines. Additionally, the pre-chorus is twice as slow as the verse (and the chorus is twice as slow as that), giving the audience a chance to really get used to a slower section of the song, so that when the fast section comes back in, we're not used to it.
Additionally, the song spends the majority of its time giving brief bursts of added tension. It does this by having the first verse's be entirely note 1 until each line ends on note 2 leaving us with just a little tension. It also accomplishes this goal really subtly during the pre-chorus. The repeated notes that are emphasized during the pre-chorus (which adds a completely different layer of "cool" to this song) all scoop up. They either scoop up to get into the note or scoop up off of the note. Either way, a slight amount of extra tension is added for the length of one note, and if it's scooping up off the note, it feels like a question is being asked, so we want something to resolve the tension of a question being asked. I'll discuss this more somewhere else.
Lastly, the song makes us feel like there are more lines in the song than there really are by emphasizing the rhymes at the end of lines with normal length and having multiple rhymes per line in the bridge. The rhymes in the bridge are so dense that they feel like a rapper wrote them. (With a tune that barely moves during the verses and with impressive rhymes in a dense rhyme scheme, it really does feel like a rapper wrote this song.) This trick is especially useful during the bridge, which has the least amount of energy in the song. But the low energy is compensated for by having the same melodic structure as the first verse to bring in tension: lines made up for note 1 that end on note 2. And it makes us think there are more lines than there really are by having a dense rhyme scheme. Both of these boost up the bridge to not be quite as unenergetic as it would be.
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