Radiohead is my prime meridian… everything is measured relative to them

@@DavidBennettPiano This is the way. Never stray from your path.

​@@DavidBennettPianooh lol...I thought the Beatles were 😮

Come on, even the video is an homage to Just

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

I feel like there's a property to music where playing something simple and making it sound difficult is appreciated just as much as taking something difficult in making it sound simple. And what's crazy is a lot of times many of us can't tell which is which.

7/4 seems to be the most common "odd" signature.

Well said!

All things being equal, it adds up to a nice, interesting sound.

Yes! That is really inspirational - but still, a lot of the "math equation" music is really nice as well

beautiful pun! (I hope it was intended!)

The time signature is gone, the song is over, thought I’d something more to say…

@@PBVideo1962 😂😂

Willow didn't want to be Outshined by Pink Floyd

@@DavidBennettPiano Yes, thanks. After posting hundreds of KZfaq comments, eventually I might get a half-decent one!

It might be the relentless eighth note rhythm that the vocal sings in the 4/4 chorus that makes it sound that way to you

@@DavidBennettPiano That and the off-kilter sounding hi-hat (?) accents are probably what do it. But I really like how despite being in 7, the verses really aren't at all wonky feeling to me.

Might have to do something with the syncopation?

I also think in the 7/4 section her vocals are floating around in a more relaxed and free way, with a very spacey production sound behind her - mostly loose jazzy drums and light piano and pads - then when it shifts to 4/4, everything becomes really tight and syncopated with an almost mechanical sounding vocal melody (the way she sings primarily one note gives it an almost robotic feel which I find interesting), like a harsh and relentless ticking clock, with jarring/unexpected accents. It feels like a march here. I don't believe David pointed this out specifically but the 4/4 section also appears to be using only open5th chords, meaning chords without the 3rd, which I think lends this section a more stark, cold, and powerful feel as well. I think the contrast is pretty cool, and for me, I oddly find the 7/4 section to have a greater sense of "release" and the 4/4 feels more tense for all these reasons.

Yeah - with the very off-beat accents, especially the way those accents halt the song for half a beat, the "4/4" chorus feels like it's in a weirder time signature than the 7/4 verse. You *can* count a steady "1 2 3 4" under the chorus, but you've gotta concentrate to do it, which is kind of the opposite of comfortable.

We are, I’m composing a few things as we speak :)

You need to give ariana grande and beyonce a listen, they are virtuosos of harmonies. If you would like to hear a new/upcoming girlgroup, FLO blends & harmonizes beautifully

i mean, there are many artist making dense complex music these days, its just not pop, willows song just blew up because its willow

Pop doesn't equal bad. Listen to Carly Rae Jepsen's stuff, like Emotion Side B. Adults deserve simple, fun, happy music too.

Pop is what is popular. This music has always been around. In every generation. Just not always at the forefront of consumerism. Several artists, especially black female artists, have kept this alive

😊

Check out Look at Me Now by Caroline Polachek! She even sticks to 7/4 for the entire song and still makes it sound natural, which is quite the achievement in my opinion.

@@patrickobrien8185 I’ll check it out!

Money by Pink Floyd?

merigold by periphery

Exactly 💯

Agreed but what about Julian Casablancas

@@rafisqiadhaputra6136what about him? The video isn’t about him nor is the original comment. And you sure didn’t add anything yourself so you’re right, what about him???

@@OGseoulite im so sorry,i have rough day when i made that comment,my grandma was bedridden sick and my pet hamster is missing,but its just not justyfiying me being so rude online.so again im terribly sorry if my comment sounds so ignorant

@@OGseoulite Why so aggressive..? The purpose of the comment, a response to another comment that talks briefly about "NEPO BABIES", was firstly to *agree*, and then to suggest another nepo baby supposedly equally deserving of hype. It wasn't to overshadow Willow. Calm down, my days.

I have to agree, this is an excellent piece of contemporary pop jazz music. Of course, there are plenty of others out there who'll do stuff like this, Tori Amos comes to mind, even Bjork, possibly they are influences. And certainly Joni Mitchell would add some of these chord elements. Very nice work.

Joni Mitchell was the first thing I thought of when I heard this. Great song.

Willow has always been an exceptional talent. If she grew up normally imagine what kind of projects she would have created

@@tink6225 She is the musician she is as a result of her full background. Parts of why may be connected to what it means to be black in america or not. There's a reason why Willow stands out. There's no other artist like her. Most are bogged down by fame and the trappings. She had the best education money can buy and her parents have enough money to relieve the pressures of raising children whom, relatively speaking, you want them to feel free or unencumbered. The worry of what others may think can be easily shaken off in their environment. There's also genetics. She wouldn't be as talented or be able to be in the right rooms if her parents weren't talented and in those rooms before her. Think whatever you may of her parents but as a mother myself, children do not become the people they are by accident. I adore both her parents for the phenomenal job that they did raising both Willow and Jaden.

@@angelicaterry3367 very well said

Sorry to go against the consensus, but I found the song uninspiring.

@@br6803 Okay. 🤷‍♀️

😂😂 sames😂😂😭😭😭

Its about the journey to find the pattern, the rhythm of life........ A language that speaks to a deeper part of us......WTF? Time for you meds ;)

@@KarlKarsnark don't shame poetry

@@marlonknockaert3233 Ok, show me some poetry......LOL! Dysgenic Nepo-Baby, She's driving me crazy. Thinks she can "sang", but the auto-tune proves she's lazy ;)

My body doesn't know shit! 😢

@@KarlKarsnark you are not there, and thats also fine! 👍🏾 You have your own journey.

😂😂😂😂 underrated comment

😂😂😂😂

She probably had limited input into the creation of this track, whether as writer, arranger, or producer, but I'm happy to be corrected if she actually IS an artist.

@@christopher9152 I was wondering this as well. Who actually wrote the song? Was she the primary writer, or were there 6 other composers involved? If she wrote this, then she should absolutely be given the credit for being innovative.

@@illegal_space_alienI agree. I can't say I love the song, but there is more going on in it than in many other modern pop songs, and I can see why people like it.

Surely she just sings what she's told, and the radio play what they're paid to play. Although I'm glad Murder on the Dancefloor is replacing that bad cover of Fast Car for pay to play.

There's no chance she wrote any of the music.

She also makes other great music. Check out "alone", "transparent soul", and "Wait a minute"

Don't forget time machine and waves of nature!!​@@pigeonmanner3296

check out her self titled album

Amen❤

What are some other examples of pop UFOs?

Radiohead's whole discography after Pablo Honey is the first thing that Codes to my mindestens. Especially OK Computer, Kid A and In Rainbows. And many songs/artists that David makes videos about. Maybe Björk or Kate Bush, too

@@jupiterskallisto7302one could argue these bands are not really Mainstream pop, but you’re right

@@devinbeggs4104 sting's albums mercury falling and ten summoners tales and jamie cullum's catching tales are 3 of my favorite "advanced" pop albums. :)

which kate bush songs do u recommend?

Haha I also got anime music but from the first verse and pre chorus, made me this of the opening song for Tokyo ghoul S2

@@jaidaimani4844 Wuthering Heights, especially if you know of the novel, and of course running down that Hill, probably heard that 10 times over by now!😅

​@@ombra711nah, of course youve gone for the most popular and mainstream songs of hers... Try Cloudbusting. The harmony and vocals are mesmerising

@@jaidaimani4844 Sat in your lap, it switches between 3/4 4/4 and 2/4

Yesssss... Modern as not the beatles !!!!

Thanks!

​@@joelcaron8291Yes...modern, as in doesn't hold a candle to the Beatles music 😆

"artist" lol

@@nuberifficshe is an artist lmfao. I don’t see you releasing music

lol right? let 'em know.

True! I recently noticed more of her songs popping up in my playlists and I'm like damn I should've given her more credit all along.

I’m one of these “y’all” 😢

You’re right lol

and her new song "big feelings" is complicated just like this one, I love the direction she's going

Is Will her father?

Yes ​@@tbird81

Exactly What I thought when I heard it!

With Snarky Puppy playing

She's literally never made a bad song and I STAND on that.

@@kimberleywilliams7802 right?! "WHIP MY HAIR" was an actual hit, wdym.

@@Swameh I'M SAYING!

+++

I really enjoyed the “Meet Me At Our Spot” song, and her album from 2022 is good too! Quite rock-focused. But this new song seems to signal a different direction which I’m excited about 😀

I have a much younger friend who has pretty solid taste in music and she's been obsessed with Willow for as long as I can remember. So I knew there had to be something special about her.

@@DavidBennettPiano really it feels like she’s taking what she did in that earlier “Meet Me At Our Spot” era, and what she did in her recent rock stuff, and that’s she’s applying both of those but twisting in some jazz stuff as well. It’s pop/R&B meets alt rock meets prog/jazz and it’s just so good and also so undeniably HER. Like she’s really building an identity of her own

WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT? did you listen to her first album? It’s a masterpiece.

@@DavidBennettPiano I got really into her a few months after , and her song Alone back in november got me really excited for where she's taking her sound. This one got me even more and now i cant wait for the album!

A similar example is 2+2=5 by Radiohead which starts in 7/4 but then later goes to 4/4 😊

​@@DavidBennettPianoWould you say that 4/4 is the default resolution for 7/4 when it needs to change?

@@2255223388 it’s perhaps the most obvious yeah, although you could go to 3/4 which would be cool!

The major difference, in my opinion, is that in Peter Gabriel’s Solsbury Hill the strangeness of 7/4 time is almost “unnoticed” by most people, whereas in Willow’s song, it feels to me deliberately made to draw attention to the various layers of strangeness, as David Bennett analyzed so eloquently. Perhaps the tremendous chart/financial success of Solsbury Hill stems from this “unnoticed” strangeness ?

​@@gideonk123 I'd been listening to Solsbury Hill for 40 years before I even realised it was in an 'unusual' time signature.

Literally.

but then they'd fall under boring again because they would all sound the same

You should check out some of Kendrick Lamar's stuff (Specifically from the albums To Pimp A Butterfly and Untitled Unmastered)

Listen to The Alphabet of Me by Haken. And their whole discog after that

Taylor Swift’s “tolerate it” is actually in 10/8. The chord voicings are pretty standard but as a pop song it’s still interesting

Great!!

wow you are missing out on so much great stuff!

Willows music is outstanding to me

same

Excellent!

seconding this!

Excellent 😀😀😀

HELL YEAH I LOVE HAKEN I LOVE GUITARS WITH TOO MANY STRINGS I LOVE ODD TIME RAAAAAAAHH

​@@thepotatotaxi2430 haken mentioned 💙

@@og666 Haken should ALWAYS be mentioned, it is my mission

Prog never went away but apart from albums in the 70s it's rarely made any impact on popular music

@@keithparker1346 Thats what I mean. Hopefully prog gets a new popularity phase.

Thanks!!

I think what makes it kinder to the ear is the fact she is actually singing a 2 bar motif during the verses, in which the second bar is much calmer than the first, and thus leaves the music time to breathe before starting the motif again. This way, the vocals put much less accent on that "missing beat" (which sounds (IMHO) particularly jarring with vocals) because when it comes she's just holding the last note of the motif. That kind of constrast between the drums (which are unashamedly marking the 7/4) and the voice (which is more "freely floating") is really what I like about those verses.

Beato is a whining old man but knows his audience is largely conservative rock music fans so can diss top 10s but it's silly as the vast amount of music available to anyone nowadays at a click makes it silly to concentrate on a tiny aspect of music

@@thereturnofthemac a single visit to Discogs or Wikipedia will tell you you are WRONG. Willow is not a big budget pop star, she writes ALL OF HER SONGS SINCE SHE WAS 13. her first album has 15 songs of which 10 were all written and produced solely by her. she is not Rihanna, nor Ariana, nor Beyoncé, nor Britney, she's on a completely different lane and pathway.

@@thereturnofthemac first of all, Spotify does not respect name order when it comes to metadata ingesting, at least it never did for me (I'm an independent musician), so I'll not take that into consideration. 2nd, let me tell you why the 4 names as writers: Greatti on bass/production, Bank on drums and Oberhofen on keys. it's very obvious to me that Willow wrote the song and then the 4 of them made the music together. and most of the album's credits show me exactly that situation with almost all of the tracks. my opposition to your comment is because you are trying to undervalue the work and artistry of a 23-year-old black woman because GOD FORBID she wrote a track with 3 more people. do you have the same opinion about when white male artists are in the same situation, when their songs have 3 producers and 7 songwriters? it's absolutely no demerit to anyone how many writers and producers are credited on a song. truly great music can be done alone in a sublet bedroom with almost 0 dollars and by a team of 35 people on an expensive studio, and in every situation inbetween and beyond. Willow's talent and artistry is undeniable and you trying to undervalue her based on what you're posing as an argument just comes across as racist and sexist. and that's all I'm gonna say about it. toodles!

*they

Big agree..I haven't been able to stop listening

Thank you 😊

Baby Shark

That’s a cool idea!

Weren't major and minor chords relative modern contributions to music and back in the classical days those chords were considered novel...certainly for Arabic or Asian music they would probably be rarely used

You should check out her whole discography! Shes been so experimental since she was 15 years old and that fact blows my mind every time 😅

Sufjan uses lots of odd meters, in fact, and has been doing so since his first couple of albums. He frequently uses 5/4 and 7/4 which is really nice to hear from a more pop oriented artist, especially compared to how oversimplified a lot of pop music is, lol.

@@luke5100 She hired them they worked for her, of course she had anything to do with the song. She wouldn't have signed off on things she didn't like. Why are you so touchy when you hear the truth? It's VERY common for all big artists to have their songs mostly written by other people. Didn't you know that? It's not even a secret. Except among some fans who want to believe in a fantasy of artists doing every thing on their own.

Brad's.

​@@lesliespeaker668You're so dense, ijbol. Willow and Chris Greatti have been working together for a while, and he's always so vocal about how creative she is, he has many posts talking about how they create everything from scratch *together*. She didn't co-produce this one, but she's the main writer and producer of all of the other tracks, and she also helped with the guitar work. Maybe you should do a little research instead of discrediting an artist's work because of sheer ignorance.

It lends credence to the cool things that people can do if we were all free to create instead of feeding the machine and competing against the other crabs in the barrel. A lot of people would relax and create more if not for economic anxiety. Which seems like a solvable problem.

"Jazzed up version" is doing a lot of heavy lifting with the comparison because i can't hear anything close harmonically between symptom of life and walking in memphis. To me it's obvious she's listened to plenty of radiohead though kzfaq.info-VkPvOqeSXo?si=PmsB8soep7X9d6Nn

Thank you 😊

Thanks!

You’re welcome ☺️

"Written by Willow, Chris Greatti & Brad Oberhofer" No indication of who wrote what.

​@@luke5100She's enough of a super rich nepo-baby to get producers to make her into whatever she wants to be this month.

I don’t really understand the hate around “Whip my hair” - it is such an odd song that hits you with horror chords in the middle of the chorus when you expect it to be just a regular pop song. It’s bold and different, and sure, the vocals are annoying but it creates a trance-like wall of sound that sounds cinematically horrifying. I feel like that aspect of the song is underrated because it isn’t as conventionally “pretty” as most pop songs - instead, it belongs in a horror movie.

@@suomar-art I have no idea where did you get any "hate" from my comment. I don't "hate" IWNH, I just consider it to be a nothing song which was poorly written and even more badly executed. There is nothing "hateful" about having an opinion.

Sorry for the confusion: I didn’t say your comment was being hateful, my comment wasn’t really directed at yours as much as it was to the video itself since he made a comparison between the two songs as well. On popular videos like this I find it preferable to leave replies to top comments rather than leave a separate comment that’s inevitably going to disappear immediately if I’m hoping to see if anyone has anything substantial to add to the topic. The “whip my hair” song is widely hated overall and I assume for the audience of this video it would be an understandable reference (I’m also hoping someone someday would make a video about how unusual and kind of cool song it is lol)

I know right!

🤔