#*brumm (F)* *brm (G)* *brrr (C)* *brrrrrm (E)*

[jamestaylorswift]

NEED you to elaborate on the Thing please

Yes! The Thing!! If you have thoughts about The Thing, anon, I’d love to hear them.

I can’t for the life of me figure out what to properly call The Thing other than like…at times a cross between and at times just a drone and an ostinato and just background voicings? And mix in the functional opposite of pedaling? A more technical name, if it exists, is escaping me and a few google searches have not helped me figure out if such a term was ever in my brain. I will continue to call it The Thing until I figure it out.

The best way I can illustrate The Thing is *puts on my tiktoker voice* okay so you know the thing where a song is in (let’s say) the key of G and then there’s just this one synth that’s playing G constantly and oh look here it’s in another song too, just this one instrument playing the root, oh and in this song it’s doing a little boop boop boop but it’s still just a (let’s say) G major triad, oh and here we have it in THIS song too, you can hear the melody changing and the chords changing kind of around it but it’s jUst the ROOT rIGht There and it never stops and it never changes and oh my god watch out it’s even in this song because you see while these notes are being arpeggiated they’re just the notes of the first chord and the chord being arpeggiated doesn’t change even though there is a chord progression to different chords do you see what I’m saying??? guys I think this means something

Before I go on I should emphasize that Jack Antonoff is neither the only nor first artist to use The Thing or write songs that sound like This (“This,” of course, being the technical term for songs employing The Thing). I don’t think he or The Thing are “the problem” with (popular) music. It’s not like this is even a particularly new development in his music—I’d argue that it appeared at least 4-5 years ago if not earlier. And it’s hard for me to tell the extent to which The Thing is contributing to the rise in Jack Antonoff haterism of the past half decade. The reason I bring it up is that being cognizant of The Thing is different than being floored by its absolute overuse/oversaturation/overreliance (take your pick and then soften it a little) on the Bleachers self titled album. The latter I was last month. The Thing is not bad, it just is. That’s all.

Honestly one of the reasons I was so surprised when hearing Bleachers is that it really cemented how important understanding the context of The Thing is for identifying The Thing itself. I almost think it’s more obvious that Jack is using The Thing when the part that’s playing it is not as front-and-center. If said part is front-and-center then it’s given extreme musical importance. However, the Thing is important as an additive feature, and it’s rarely the main idea. Textural complexity is often subtle and so is The Thing. Similarly, The Thing is useful rhythmically when it’s repetitive and harmonically when it’s static. It’s the marriage of these three features that identify The Thing and that give The Thing value.

Here is an “annotated bibliography,” if you will, of examples of recent Jack Antonoff songs that employ The Thing. Note that this is a biased sample from songs I know/like/listen to enough to have them paged into my memory for constructing this argument. I did not do a comprehensive deep dive of Jack’s recent projects to come up with this list. Don’t take this as a timeline of The Thing’s existence. Also, this is highly subjective and there can be overlap between these categories. IMO they all kind of count as The Thing but I’m breaking it up for the purpose of illustration. You know how it is...

The “obvious use of The Thing” category:

“I Am Right On Time” (Bleachers) - good example of many The Thing and The Thing-adjacent parts! The gist of the song is a medium-high tempo song that steadily builds up. Part of the way Jack achieves this is by having a single electric guitar strum the same chord on 2 and 4 to create a backbeat. There’s also the ostinato (staccato synth rhythm on beats 2, 3, and 4) and single note (also just a single synth) that you can hear in the first and second verses and then continuing as the song builds to the end. All are very clearly establishing the key of the song and remaining at that center while the melody and chords change.

“Self Respect” (Bleachers) - in this category because of the large number of The Thing things. At very least, I’m counting the arpeggiated chord and the syncopated piano rhythm as appearances of The Thing. This song has the same ethos of “I Am Right On Time,” excitement built as the song becomes more musically busy. The Thing helps in that endeavor by contributing thickness, again mostly texturally and rhythmically, to the song.

“Me Before You” (Bleachers) - most notable instance of The Thing/its beginning in this song is that syncopated synth rhythm that starts at the beginning of the first verse and plays throughout the rest of the majority of the song. I put this song in this category, as opposed to the third, because I think this is a good example of the most basic/simple form of The Thing. At its core, The Thing is just playing around with how much of the root can be folded in to a song without crossing the threshold of making it sound “boring” or static or like something you’ve heard before. This part is just playing the same rhythm on one note. Because there’s not as much dynamic excitement/variation in this song, The Thing does less legwork than in other songs. But you can see how this could be the logical beginning for overreliance on The Thing.

“Isimo” (Bleachers) - Same explanation as above. The hemiola rhythm is just played over and over on the root. To me this part seems to be working pretty equally for rhythm, harmony, and texture.

The “eh, you could argue either way” category:

“Alma Mater” (Bleachers) - In the last minute or so there’s a lilting sax part that’s mostly there for textural/rhythmic purposes. Nonetheless, I think it’s a little ditty in the spirit of The Thing.

“Tiny Moves” (Bleachers) - This one is tricky and, in my opinion, easier to argue against. The main synth part (quarter notes of the 2-3 notes clustered around the root) is particularly salient as not clearly The Thing but clearly Thing-adjacent. The part is rhythmic, of course, but also plays a fairly important harmonic part in establishing the key center and keeping it relevant at all times. It has enough slight variation to make the song fun in a quirky way.

“The 1975” (The 1975) - Included because it’s very similar in spirit to “Tiny Moves.” Again, the quasi-randomness in this song makes it interesting and effective. Whether you like it or not, it is, at the very least, Thing-adjacent.

“91” (Bleachers) - The Point of this song is that repeated cello ostinato. Of course it doesn’t move. That’s The Point. That’s…The Thing, if you will.

“Question…?” (Taylor Swift) - Syn-co. Pa-ted. Synth-sound. Same-notes. The-Thing. Or-not. It-could. Just-be. The-synth. That-comps. The-chords. Your-choice.

The “The Thing, but more so its ontological beginning” category:

“Free” (Florence + The Machine) - all I can say is: B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B (break for the bridge and Florence’s ethereal vocals) B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B

“Looking For Somebody (To Love)” (The 1975) - all I can say is: A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A (break for the bridge - at this point I should acknowledge that it’s not like this the whole time and, yes, the bass very much matters and there is a “stronger/more obvious” chord progression in this song than “Free”) A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A

“Anti-Hero” (Taylor Swift) - all I can say is: E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E (okay you get the picture, also in this song there is a bit more variation from seminal The Thing because other synth parts are loudly playing other notes in the chord progression)

“The Archer” (Taylor Swift) - good song! Don’t you love how much C there is? Don’t you?! But that’s what helps make it work so well, in case that wasn’t clear. Oh there’s some variation too. But… C *hold for 3 minutes*

“mirrorball” (Taylor Swift) - another good example of the beginning of The Thing. The reason this song feels so “hazy” is that one of the guitars is just constantly playing the root chord, and any dissonance these chords’ individual notes’ dissonance have with other chords’ notes starts to melt away as you just get more entrenched in the first mode. (That is, it’s literally just vibes.) You can draw a very clear through-line between this sound and the next 3 years of Jack’s work.

IMO the reason The Thing is is not a vocally disliked part Jack Antonoff’s production style or music is that it’s hard to get your generic-enjoyer-of-western-pop-music to truly dislike songs that are so very drenched in “the ionian mode” or “the key” or whatever you want sum it up as. (Myself included—I hate neither Jack’s music nor The Thing.) If you’re playing a pop song only in the key of G then the more G you add, usually the better. The more D you add, often the better. The more B you add, yeah, sometimes-to-often the better. We—our ears and brains—have been trained to love and crave a certain amount that sameness, that root-iness, “the 1” (iykyk 🤪). Artists can, should, do evolve—and Jack has...and still, I don’t see people naming The Thing as what they hate about his music. Until twitter randos’ criticism becomes just slightly more targeted/technical I’m inclined to believe it is truly just nebulous haterism instead of, for example, constructive feedback about his style. I digress.

(If you’re wondering, my hypothesis for The Thing’s rise in prevalence over the last few years is to attribute it to the coincidental rise of whisper-y girl bedroom pop plus a subconscious sonic backlash to the pop music that dominated the late 2010s, specifically 2017-2018. In fairness, I don’t listen to a lot of either of those things so I don’t have good evidence off the top of my head for this theory. But, like, I’m sure Ed Sheeran has used The Thing too. Just a hypothesis, ya know.)

Here’s a far more fascinating line of inquiry that I’m trying to explore (still not sure what my answer is though): Can The Thing’s relevance, of course related to its artistic usefulness/ubiquity but also specifically Jack’s prominence in pop music, potentially be understood through the lens of an aesthetic?

To argue that The Thing has aesthetic value would be to argue that its virtues of textural, rhythmic, and harmonic complexity are more highly prized than the music produced avoiding/excluding that. Do we truly value the sensory experiences of being bathed in a singular note, a singular chord? Do we like that more than when we feel pulled in a strong current of a harmonic cadence? It’s clear we like The Thing because we’re nowhere close to, for instance, rioting at its very appearance like crowds did when they heard the dissonance of Shostakovich’s “The Rite of Spring.” But how much do we really love The Thing? Do we value it only because it’s highly available—Jack Antonoff still being a preeminent purveyor of pop music—and because we perceive few ways to escape his sonic influence? How much do we account for the fact that he did not invent The Thing? If we truly do love The Thing, when did this came about, originally and recently? Why would we truly love The Thing?

A final digression: I do think the shift towards use of The Thing this should be a credit to Jack. Over the last half decade, Jack has shown more restraint from a textural and dynamic point of view and been able to exercise that restraint to create warmer and more complex soundscapes. That kind of restraint helps “the softs seem softer and the louds seem louder.” It’s given us fan favorite songs like “august.” Whether this shift towards textural complexity more fully proxying for dynamic complexity is truly at the expense of, for example, more interesting harmonic complexity—well, maybe. The Thing need not imply such a zero sum game, though perhaps the data is skewed in favor of that conclusion right now. However, credit for artistic growth does not mean that growth should stop. It’s important to try out new ideas. Would the audience truly being sick of The Thing be a catalyst for another shift in Jack’s style? Only time will tell.

I’m not trying to turn this post into a referendum on whether Jack Antonoff’s music is good. The reason I point out The Thing as part of the current period of Jack’s style/work is that it is quite different than what he initially gained prominence for. Whether this shift means "good" or "bad" resulting music is purely opinion (mine is in favor of "good"). But above all I think we should value when artists change because they find something new exciting and fruitful.

If you asked someone, gun to their head, to describe Jack Antonoff’s “sound,” I’m not sure they would mention The Thing. He got famous for stuff like big drums, 80s synths, huge chord progressions for epic songs. He loves the 1-4-6-4 so much, is what I’d say if I had this gun to my head. His earlier work is very “I am going to make it obvious which chords you’re hearing, and when I pair that with some epic drums it’s going to sound cool.” Now, the chord changes are more “implied” (termed loosely). The tradeoffs he’s explored is that the more The Thing he uses, the more significant the choice of the degree to which to fill out the chord progression; the more the literal volume of the lowest bass notes matter; the more selective, sometimes, he has to be with adding percussion. Encountering and grappling with these tradeoffs is not bad. Jack Antonoff has made different music because he’s explored these tradeoffs. I, for one, find it funny that people say in the last decade he hasn’t grown or changed at all as an artist.