Preface

How To Listen

Characteristics Of The Average Hit Song

The 5 Elements Of An Arrangement

The Hit Song Secret

THE HITS
Beautiful (Christina Aguilera)

Born This Way (Lady Gaga)

Call Me Maybe (Carly Rae Jepsen)

Crazy In Love (Beyonce)

Crazy (Gnarls Barkley)

Drop It Like It’s Hot (Snoop Dogg)

Firework (Katy Perry)

Get the Party Started (P!nk)

Grenade (Bruno Mars)

I Gotta Feeling (The Black Eyed Peas)

In da Club (50 Cent) * Lights (Ellie Goulding)

Poker Face (Lady Gaga)

Sexy and I Know It (LMFAO)

SexyBack (Justin Timberlake)

Super Bass (Nicki Minaj)

Turn Me On (David Guetta)

Umbrella (Rihanna)

We Are Young (fun.)

Written in the Stars (Tinie Tempah)

Glossary

Bobby Owsinski Bibliography

Album: Do-Wops & Hooligans
Writers: Bruno Mars, Philip Lawrence, Ari Levine, Moe Faisal, Brody Brown, Claude Kelly, Andrew Wyatt
Producer: The Smeezingtons (Bruno Mars, Philip Lawrence, and Ari Levine)
Studio: Larrabee Recording Studios, Levcon Studios (Los Angeles)
Release Date: September 28, 2010
Length: 3:42
Sales: 7 million
Highest Chart Position: #1 US Pop and Billboard Hot 100, #1 in Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Israel, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom

“Grenade” was the breakout single from Bruno Mars from his debut album Do-Wops & Hooligans, which went on to become a huge worldwide hit. Not only did the song hit #1 in 15 countries, but it also charted Top 10 in eleven others while selling seven million units. The album also went on to sell over 4 million copies, going #1 in six countries and Top 10 in thirteen others. “Grenade” was nominated for Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and the Pop Solo Performance Grammys, losing all of them to British singer Adele.

The song took several months to write, then was recorded with a different, more guitar-based arrangement that was 15 bpm faster. After hearing Mars perform the song live at the slower speed, the record label asked for a recording of the slowed-down version, which became the hit we’re familiar with.

The Song
If you were going to write a straight down the middle pop song, this is the way to do it. The song is unusual in that it begins right with the verse with no intro, but other than that it’s formula all the way, not that there’s anything wrong with that if it works (it does here). Basically the song looks like this:

verse | chorus | 2 bar interlude | verse | chorus | bridge | 2 bar interlude | verse (outro)

The good thing about “Grenade” is that it has a great melody, which is something that’s sometimes sorely lacking in much of popular music. The lyrics are finely crafted and tell the age-old tale of unrequited love. They sing better than they read, but they’re still put together well.

The BPM of the song is 108.

The Arrangement
Just as the form of the song follows a formula, so does the arrangement. It develops from the sparse first verse to the big chorus, then drops to a less sparse second verse, and finally peaks at the bridge. The tension is released by the stripped-down last outro verse, which is very unusual since most outros retain the big sound, and the tension, to the end.

There’s an organ that plays just underneath everything that acts as the Pad and glues the track together, which is a pretty common use for the instrument. What’s interesting is that the arpeggiated electric piano line in the verse acts as the Rhythm element, but during the chorus the rhythm switches to the double time feel of the drums.

The song starts with a synth build and the goes right into a verse with the lead vocal in the center, arpeggiated electric piano sound on the right channel and the organ on the left. Half-way through the verse the three part background harmonies enter along with bass drum, plus a very low in the mix tom and percussion, which propels the track forward.

In the chorus the piano is lowered in the mix and a new synth pad enters, as the drums now play a tom figure, but no snare drum. The three part background vocals behind the lead vocal act as both a fill element in the beginning of the chorus and as an additional pad element in the second half.

In the second verse, the drums continue to play the tom feel but a snare also enters. There’s also a higher piano that plays effects fills, and percussion that plays fills as well. Three part harmony is added to the lead vocal to emphasize the lyrics.

In the bridge a new higher synth pad enters, then goes to the beginning of the intro without the vocal, which resolves to the V chord and back to the chorus. The outchorus has the lead vocal adding ad libs to add tension. The outro is similar to the intro, only with the verse drum feel and added percussion. The song then ends on a vocal ad lib with a repeated echo effect.

Arrangement Elements
The Foundation – Bass and drums.
The Pad – Organ
The Rhythm – Arpeggiated electric piano line in the verse, the double time feel of the drums in the chorus and outro, percussion
The Lead – Lead vocal
The Fills – Background vocals and the occasional percussion sound effect.

The Sound
This is a very well made record in that it’s not too compressed and the ambience is layered in a pleasing, ear-candy kind of way. The vocal has a medium-long reverb decay on it in the beginning, but then a timed and repeated quarter note delay is added during various times during the song. The other instruments have their own short ambiences that make them seem more in-your-face, except for the percussion effect that has a long reverb with a very long, timed pre-delay.

The Performance
Make no mistake about it, Bruno Mars is a star. He’s got the chops and his vocal shows considerable passion that effectively sells the song. That said, this is a very well produced song from a number of standpoints.

First of all the song has effective dynamics, breathing in the right spaces, from the less intense verses to the big sounding choruses, then the drums play a tom pattern to add motion to the song rather than the snare, although a small sounding snare (which actually fits the song perfectly) enters in the second verse. Using the drums in this way is not only unusual, but really interesting as well.

The add to all this the use of fills to keep the listener engaged on a subliminal level. You’ll find percussion, vocals, piano and synthesizers all sharing that duty. Finally, the background vocals, which are now becoming a Bruno Mars trademark, are also well-executed and add to both the motion and the tension of the song as well. This song was a huge international hit and the the production is a big reason why.

SONG FACTS
Album: All That You Can’t Leave Behind
Writers: U2
Producer: Daniel Lanois, Brain Eno, Steve Lillywhite
Studio: HQ (Dublin, Ireland)
Release Date: October 9, 2000
Length: 4:06
Sales: 500,000+ (single), 12+ million (album)
Highest Chart Position: #21 US Billboard Hot 100, #1 UK Singles chart

“Beautiful Day” was the lead single from U2’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind album released in 2000, and was a huge commercial success and one of their biggest hits ever. The song won a Grammy for Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, and hit #1 in many parts of the world despite only making it to #21 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart. Rolling Stone has rated the song as #345 of the 500 Greatest Songs Of All Time, while VH1 rates it at #15 of Greatest Songs of the 00’s.

“Beautiful Day” originated as a song called “Always” and was a standard rock tune, but after Bono wrote the lyrics the track took a different direction. The song had a long gestation period as the band argued over the direction of the guitar sounds that Edge was creating, since he wanted to use the vintage U2 sound of their earlier albums. The mixing also took longer than usual as the arrangement was tweaked, with Bono adding a guitar part, a keyboard part was changed to a guitar part, and the bass line was changed in the chorus.

The Song
“Beautiful Day is like many U2 songs in that they don’t follow what might be considered a standard song form. In this case, there are two bridges, and sometimes the chorus changes melody and arrangement-wise to almost seem like another section. The song form looks like this:

intro ➞ verse ➞ chorus ➞ verse ➞ chorus ➞ bridge 1 ➞ intro ➞ bridge 2 ➞ chorus ➞ bridge 1 ➞ chorus/solo ➞ intro

The lyrics to “Beautiful Day” seem pretty forced. There’s no specific instance of the dreaded “moon – June” rhyming scheme, but it’s pretty close. Their cadence is also forced, to the point where Bono sometimes has a mouth full of words that are difficult to sing in the course of the phrase. The melody in the chorus and bridge is pretty strong, as is the hook of the song, which makes you overlook the lyrics of the verse.

The Arrangement
This is one of the few songs that has all five arrangement elements (and sometimes even more) simultaneously playing. There are a lot of different sounds that sneak in and out of the verses, but the chorus and bridges are about as dense as can be

The song starts with a keyboard pad, electric piano and bass outlining the chords, and what sounds like a drum machine kick drum. When the vocal enters after 4 bars, so does a snare drum doubled with a tambourine. After 4 more bars, a guitar enters on the right channel and a keyboard pedal note on the left. On the last 2 bars of the verse, a heavily reverbed background vocal enters on the right.

For the chorus the band cranks up the vocal with the drums entering in full with a power chord guitar on the left and the same reverbed background vocal on right.

The second verse changes in that the bass is now playing 8th notes and driving the beat, with different guitar fills on the right and keyboard fills on the left drifting in and out of the mix. During the second chorus, a new background vocal enters on the right, this time lower in pitch and drier, so it’s more up front.

The same primary instrumentation continues during bridge 1, with only drummer Larry Mullen switching his snare pattern to the toms. The song then drops in intensity to another 4 bar intro, this time with a modulated guitar on left, and then it’s into bridge 2.

The first half of bridge 2 lowers in intensity with no drums, the bass playing whole notes, a keyboard pad, and the Edge playing a guitar arpeggio. The drums enter for the second half, building it up to a chorus, but it’s unusual in that it’s 4 bars of string and keyboard pads and background vocals.

Then we’re back to bridge 1 for a second time with exactly the same instrumentation as the first. It then goes back into a chorus, but only the first line is sung and a guitar solo enters on the right. The outro breaks down to only a tremolo guitar on the left and feedback that pans left to right.

Arrangement Elements
The Foundation: bass, drums, drum machine kick, tambourine doubling the snare
The Rhythm: Edge’s signature arpeggiated guitar
The Pad: various synthesizers
The Lead: lead vocal
The Fills: back ground vocals, various keyboards and guitars

The Sound
“Beautiful Day” is a very dense mix with many different synth and guitar sounds appearing for short periods of time then disappearing, some never to be heard again. There’s a lot of sonic layering both with reverbs and delays. Edge has always been the master of delays on his guitars, but this song features deep dense reverbs on some of the synths and background vocals.

One of the cooler things is the panning during the song. The keyboards lean left and most of the guitars lean right except for the power chord guitar in the choruses, the arpeggiated guitar in the second bridge, and the vibrato guitar at the very end, which are all panned left. The background vocals are always on the right side (most unusually), and while Edge’s high vocal is bathed in reverb, Bono’s low vocal is drier and up front.

The drums are very small and tinny sounding (especially the snare), but this might be because that was the only way to fit everything together in such a dense mix with so many elements. The snare also has the tambourine doubling it on the verses, which makes it sound a little thinner than it really is.

Bono’s vocals are dry so he stays in front of the mix and the other layers.

Even though there are times during the song when more than 5 elements play, it still works because of the mix. As new elements are introduced, the older ones are pulled back in level, allowing everything to live together.

Listen Up:

• To the background vocals that always appear on the right channel.

• To the second lower background vocal that appears on the second and subsequent choruses.

• To the feedback panning left to right and back at the very end.

• To various keyboard and guitar fills in the left channel during the verses.

The Production
“Beautiful Day” has all the hallmarks of a song where overdub after overdub was tried in an effort to come up with something that works, then they decided to keep pieces of everything when it came to mixing. That’s the production trick here, where so many different tracks are able to blend together in the end and not fight one another.

That said, one of the best things about this recording is the dynamics. While most records use different elements entering and exiting to build momentum and dynamic tension and release, “Beautiful Day” uses the plentiful dynamic skills of the band to go from a whisper to a roar. U2 has never been afraid to play quietly, and when you hear the transition from the first verse to the first chorus here, you understand how valuable an asset that is. Since it’s release, “Beautiful Day” has been one of the band’s concert staples, and it’s easy to see why.