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"Repetition....... changes your perception based on prior expectations." Adam really just spent years setting that one up

I love how all these people were either like “I'd never noticed!” or “I CAN'T UNHEAR IT, IT STICKS OUT LIKE A SORE THUMB” meanwhile I've always heard it but just thought it sounded neat and made sense. It's a very nice tension. I wouldn't have been able to tell if it was in key or not unless I sat down with pen and paper.

"You're gonna wish you..." with the major 6th sounds fairly optimistic. Follow that up with the "...Never have met me" and the minor 6th crushes the optimism both lyrically and sonically. Works for me.

I really like that broken, sharp-edged sound of that little half step. I totally hear it, and I love it. She didn’t ruin something, or get it wrong. She invented something.

The "repetition legitimizes" has become so meta. I love it.

It makes sense to me. That wish is "quieter", almost like the voice wavering a bit when they sing "You're gonna wish you", but then gaining confidence at "never have met me". Thematically, I like it, it adds emotion. It's almost haunting

I remember noticing this while arranging the song for my acappella group and thinking it was weird, but kept it in. Now I’m glad to finally hear some rationale!

9:27 "music isn't really a universal language" - thank you for saying this. Even within Western music, I find genres I'm not well-versed in extremely hard to process. Just take anyone who's not used to listen to classical music or hip-hop to try to describe the nuances of what they just heard - since I don't usually listen to these genres, I am very well aware that most of the music just goes over my head, even though I'm a musician myself and I can dissect, say, progressive rock without any trouble.

she retconned the note in the 2nd-4th repetitions of it and musically gaslighted us

To me, the dissonance of the unexpected A on the word "wish" makes it feel like the word is a knife stabbing into me. It's like the little hint of hate that you feel in grief.

This is interesting to me 'cause I also never noticed it was "out of key", but I did notice the first line's note was higher and brighter than the second, which creates an interesting and narratively significant justification between "wish" and "met". I guess I was hearing it as a Bb?

The A natural actually makes me feel like Adele is taunting her ex lover when she sings "You're gonna wish you". It's adds a angry bite to the chorus that complements the main lyrics of the chorus. Anger is a stage of greif after all, and having that frictiveness on the first half of the sentence, and then resolving it with the next line makes sense. The other line of the backing vocals (with the two consecutive Ab's) are less angry, and could be more self-oriented. TLDR: The line that has the spicy note is fittingly spicy.

People complained about Adam spending 9 minutes talking about one chord, and he's doubled down by making multiple videos about one note.

i remember my high school choir teacher trying to get us to sing it correctly. he gave up at some point and just let us sing Ab because almost nobody could consistently do it 💀

4:08 Finally, a music theorist conceding that a pop songwriter might just have talented ears, and wasn't necessarily intentionally applying music theory principles (a bastion of academia) to their writing.

Adele has mentioned in interviews that she started working on this song after touring the USA for the first time, and spending much of her time listening to blues, and then she mentioned she tried to introduce blues elements in her music. So for me, this natural A, which sounds bluesy, was actually something she and her musicians did purposefully.

I've always heard the A natural. And for me it sounds like a danger. Or a warning. Like an ambulance actually. And it feels like that moment before the sorrow. Before acceptance. Like going to close to a cliffside. This is what I sing when I hear it. And it's what I like in that song. I'm a bit shocked that you and so many others couldn't hear it.

Adam: "Repetition..." Me: "Legitimizes! It legitimizes!" Adam: "changes your perception based on prior expectations."

Weird - I've always considered that note to be a super cool quirk of the song. It totally scans fine for me musically; surprised people are finding it so grating

I think there could be a bigger meaning for the 5-6-5 for the "you're gonna wish you". the song is a breakup song like you said and the lyrics are filled with grief, especially the chorus in which the 5-6-5 is found. Adele is singing with sorrow through this chorus but the words "you're gonna wish you never met me" contain a bit more anger and vengefulness. maybe the natural 6 represents a slightly uplifting feeling that the anger brings with it. i can imagine adele getting a sudden rush of anger while singing the A natural, but its short lived anger after she calms down and goes back to the flat 6. i dont know how to better explain what im thinking, but i do think that the natural 6 represents something emotionally for adele.

Never thought that one note would be this big a deal lol. I've always heard it as A natural, and it fit perfectly fine to me. But hearing all those covers change it to an A flat just makes it sound wrong... like, it's more depressing somehow. The A natural really brightens the mood of the chrorus' first stanza~

I write my electronic bass lines like this a lot. I like throwing in those accidental notes, or weird out of place stuff that shouldn't normally be there. Also, you can play wrong as often as you like, so long as you repeat it, because repetition legitimizes, or something like that

I’m surprised nobody mentioned the minor melodic scale in which in Cm, A and B are natural when ascending and flat when descending. It’s been used for centuries

two things: When you hear all the cover bands sing/perform the 'Aflat', it sounds wrong and I feel the A natural gives it a more "positive" feel to the word "wish", making the next three uses of the Aflat all that much more impactful

i've never consciously noticed it but i've definitely felt the resolution when the backing hits the Ab on the second line. Adds a nice lift and then settle into the chorus imo.

About this note. This is my mom's favorite song so I've heard it a ton. I love the sound this note brings to the song. It's a dark and minor tone'd song, and maybe it's just me but I hear this note as like EXTRA minor. Like the song goes from minor, "I'm sad," to minor "I will destroy your soul, I will poison your family, and I will drown you." it's so venomous, it's so cool!

I dunno. This note is one of the first things I noticed. I love how it rubs. And how it is not generic pop. What a song. What a singer.

The fact that the A natural is used for the word 'wish' may be a subconscious tonal 'lift' to reflect the meaning in the lyric. The A natural also anticipates the big Bb note coming up.

When you said, “for the last 10 years,” I died a little bit. It’s been 10 years since that song came out?!?!

This A♮ haunted me for 10 years - I assumed it was there to enhance the bitterness of the lyrics. Also, the A♮ creates a subconscious estate of alert on the entrance of the refrain - like you heard something wrong, so you are starting to pay attention to the music to capture the "wrong" note in the backing vocals. Still, it never comes until the next refrain.

My theory as to why it's an A natural and why it resolves down to Ab: Harmonic minor tension going up, melodic minor transition going down. Very classical music, and as such, gospel.

I can't say I've ever specifically noticed the note in a theory sense, but listening to the versions that remove it sounds notably more boring and flat to me. Part of it's probably just the fact that I'm used to the original track, but I genuinely think that it adds a really nice color and it's super satisfying to return to the expected pitch right after. I think it really works.

Great video Adam! For another grief-laden 5-b6-5 check out “Exit Music (For a film)” by Radiohead.

I had noticed the A nat, but it always seemed fitting. i feel like it accentuates the fact she got knocked down but still managed to stand up again. like, yes its a break up song, but not a song solely about being sad about a break up.

Another explanation for A: It's part of a chromatic descent in the motive. When Adele sings "It's rolling in the", the notes are G - Bb - G or 5 - b7 - 5 two times. This is a strong motive. Then the background singers change the motive to G - A - G (5 - 6 - 5) and then to G - Ab - G (5 - b6 - 5). So, the highest note of the motive goes down a half step each time (from Bb to A to Ab). And that is something, our ears are quite used to, so that it doesn't stick out that much when we hear the A.

Re: the “grief” section. Two things: 1. The lyrics are, just for a moment, triumphant, vengeful: “You're gonna *wish* you / never had met me.” By the time the second line lets you know that what she feels so strong about is a desire to see her former lover's suffering, everything is back on track with the pure sadness. Momentarily sliding into a note that would make the overall chord major in a jarring way creats that represents that fleeting energy of “righteous anger” over what is ultimately just a shitty situation. 2. It's actually a part of the human experience, and of grief in particular, to not be sure about what emotions you're experiencing, or to have counterintuitive emotional reactions. I think these two things combine to make that note as powerful as it is. You can't apply music theory to songwriting without a strong sense of poetics.

Adam, you're really A natural at explaining this kind of material ;)

The note changes the mood from sad and droopy to strong and bright. That is why we love the song. It recreates a person's emotional path from feeling down and out to gathering herself up, gaining her strength and announcing her point of view.

I’ve always struggled with reading music, and I believe I’m tone deaf because you’re giving examples of how this natural note sounds… and it all sounds the same, but how wonderful is it that there is a whole group of people that really understand sound.

Music is so intricate. We can learn so much from just 3 notes in a background vocal line.

The fact that he didn't say repetition legitimizes almost kills me I was sooo prepared to say it

This reminds me of the chorus of "Dangerous Woman" where some people hear her singing a B natural on the word "Dangerous" but she's actually singing a Bb which is the minor third. I've heard covers and seen transcriptions take either option. Kind of the opposite of this effect of "correcting" a note

I.. I thought that note was legit the REASON everyone loved it? It's so weird and cool. It was the FIRST thing I latched onto in that song. Other people didn't notice it?? This isn't a flex I'm just surprised

As a blues guy and a guitarist, it inherently sounds bluesy to me. I don't know if I ever would have noticed it without the video, but once I heard it, that's the connection I made. When you're playing the blues scale or the minor pentatonic in the usual "box" position, the major 6th falls naturally under your ring finger if you make a barre. So we actually hear this harmony quite a lot in lead guitar work across all sorts of genres.

That A natural is where they're showing how things can go from blues to gospel in a blink of the mind's eye. It's an uplifting but rarely noticed moment of redemption or clarity, is how I hear it. Everyone's got their theories.

It actually felt for me as if playing a bend note on a electric guitar, where you bend it more just above that 1/2 bend in a blues lick just to make it more “bluesy” 😅

I have no significant musical training, just what I've learned in passing through the years, but I grew up listening to very complex music and writing relatively complex music intuitively. I've had several well-trained musicians tell me I have a great ear for harmony and melody (bringing this up for a reason). I've always noticed and loved this particular note choice in the backing vocals, but it never struck me as highly "suspect", for a lack of a better term. I knew it was spicy, but It never occurred to me that it shouldn't work, or is at least "out of key" technically. These are the little moments that feed my feeling that music theory can often be a hammer looking for a nail. The older I get, the more I'm interested in learning music theory. But at the same time, I've watched it sterilize several peoples playing by avoiding things like this, even when they work. For example, there's a song my band did, where I sang a particularly tense note in passing during a phrase, which felt right and worked in the song. I can't recall the interval, but our guitar player, before he was trained, never took issue with it. But years later when we got back together and he had years of formal training under his belt, he insisted that the note shouldn't work and that I should sharpen that note a half step. He explained why and it made perfect sense on paper. But it completely sapped the energy from that phrase. Had the note been sustained, it might have been too dissonant, but it was a fraction of a second, and had emotive power behind it. Reason I brought up having an ear for melody is that this wasn't me making a mistake. I knew the note was dissonant, but it worked. Ironically, in the same song, there was a 4-count rest after a diminuendo, before the last bridge section where we always came in a bit late, which made our unison return feel very powerful. But after his training, our guitar player insisted that we play it perfectly on time, and it significantly affected the energy of that part for me. For me, it was an incredibly obvious loss of impact, but for him, it was a satisfying tidying up of our timing. TL/DR: Sometimes music theory says something shouldn't work, even when it does, and it can cause people to avoid doing things that are interesting for the sake of being "proper". Almost as if they're thinking "Oh boy, if my music professor heard this, he'd ridicule me. I better not do that". Music isn't a science. It's emotive and expressive. Sometimes that means doing things that a sterilized approach would deem "improper". So be it. If it works, it works, music theory textbooks be damned.

I actually played a version of this in high school marching band and, when we played it, the song had the A natural in the composition. I wish I had the sheet music, still. I distinctly remember this being a point of discussion in class.

When you played the multiple covers with Ab, I kept hearing a `i iv i` chord progression, like a pedal suspension(6/4). But with the A natural it feels like an extension of the `i` chord rather than a change

Knowing this makes the song so much more intense. It’s like she’s so angry that the expected musical “vocabulary” can’t express it.

From someone who knows very little about compositional music theory but was trained professionally as a vocalist years ago, to me it acts as a type of resolution, like they purposefully added the dissonance to have that clash that gets resolved in the second half as part of the storytelling of the song.

I've definitely never heard it before ... and I'm glad you pointed it out! The descent from A to Ab in the backing track is awesome. I'm glad I hear it now!

I’ve always loved that she has that dissonant note in the harmony.

I distinctly remember hearing that Major 6 in RITD for the first time, and have been loving it more and more since the initial confusion. Always happy with an Aretha Franklin appreciation as well ❤

I think it works because with no warning you don't notice the natural note that much (its almost noise), but it primes your brain just enough (puts your brain on notice) to help the flat note that follows in the next phrase pop just a bit more than it otherwise would. Plus the 2nd one (the one your brain is ready to notice) is what the brain wants to hear, so it's satisfying.

"You're gona wish you never met me" /should/ sound creepily unminor. "Far from the home i love" changes intervals up based on the line a lot as well.

This A♮ has been bugging me for years and years, but *never* did I expect Adam to make a video about it. I just chalked it up to "pitch as an expressive device," something Adam talks about a bit in his Q&A discussion of "Easy On Me". The conclusion Adam draws about this "musical Mandela effect" is still really insightful and, I think, an important message!

I can proudly say that I noticed the A natural note a decade before Adam Neely does

i think the moment of blues kind of gives her position a moment of defiance, the song isnt a typical grief song - shes mad, shes powerful, i think that little note is a moment engaging with that

Thanks, Adam. I appreciate that this video was more "accessible" to ordinary 2nd semester music students like me, given that numerous past uploads were quite "down the jazz rabbit hole" and much more complex to wrap one's head around! Keep up the great work ❤️ Greetings from Germany.

5:42 - "Repetition changes your perception based on prior expectations." That is such an amazing joke that I would never be able to explain fully to anyone who doesn't regularly watch the channel...

Ok here’s my theory: I think part of is that, particularly with pop songs, you remember the song by singing the parts back to yourself after you’ve heard it either out loud or in your head. Even though the note is funky and cool, it’s probably hard for the voice to find and easy to forget if you’re just going off memory, and so you reinforce the wrong note in your head when you’re singing/humming it back to yourself. Since it’s in the background vox, it’s easy to not pay attention to it when you’re listening and then reinforce the incorrect memory

It is a chromatic line that alternates with G . Melody sings Bb (alternates with G) in the anacrusis. The first bar backning vocals sings A (alternates with G) Next bar backning vocals sings Ab (alternates with G) which finaly resolves to G.

To me the A natural sounds defiant. It brings anger and denial to the musical line, rather than bargaining, depression or acceptance. I love the song even more for it - it has so much energy. Although I never noticed the inconsistency between phrases, I always heard that resistant vibe in the backing vocals.

this reminds me of how bob ross always said that once you start painting you see these things that you never even noticed before. and its similar with music. it’s soo important to keep an open ear to things being different from what you expected.

It's exactly the same as when you're reading a text and there's a typo or even a grammar mistake. You may not notice it, unless you know you have to look for mistakes, because your brain automatically corrects the mistake into the expected form.

i think maybe it's done because the actual words are less sad and more aggressive. "you're gonna wish" is inherently threatening

Why'd I wait a week to watch this?? Adam, your analysis in your videos is really interesting and thought provoking; I always walk away with some new knowledge, something to think about, and so on! Keep up the great work, and I can't wait to see more from you!

i always assumed it was meant to highlight “wish” as an important word to the theme of the song. they probably didnt consider that when it was added, but it definitely fits with the story adele tells in the song.

I think the A adds a bit of anger to the chorus. "You're gonna wish you..." it's kind of a phrase said in anger, a moment when you might lose your calmed tone, but you quickly find it back.

These are my faves of yours. Love the analysis supprising weirdness in charts songs. Love it

Love this one, thanks for the reminder of how priming and prior experiences color our interpretations of the world. Cool to see that highlighted in music especially.

This note is one thing my ears have always perked up on in this song… totally seems intentional to me, especially with this more major tonality hitting on the word "wish".

One of my earliest memories about music was trying to hum a melody to reference a song. People had no idea what I was humming. I hummed again and they played the real song right after that. I was completely off! Not just a few notes either. Even the big events in the melody were different. And yet, that was genuinely how I had perceived the melody, until I was forced to pay closer attention. I think we understand music, not as it is, but by comparing to familiar anchors. A child with no experience doesn't have enough anchors to stay faithful to the song.

I have no clue about music but I watched this whole thing absolutely fascinated! The detail and deep dive is super impressive, I’m so invested! Great content 🙌🏾

I recently played an arrangement of this song with a handbell choir, and the bells I was assigned to ring included G, A♭ and A♮6 and 7. This meant that on the choruses, I was ringing A6 and A7 together (two bells in one hand), setting them down, and picking up A♭6 and A♭7 in the same hand, while keeping G6 and G7 in my other hand. That A♮ drove me nuts, both because it was out of the scale and because of the physical and mental challenge of switching bells all the time.

I see it as interchanging Aeolian and Dorian modes, which I have done in my compositions, choosing to flat the sixth in the melody, or not, depending on which sounds better in the moment.

you're gonna wish you never had noticed that note

Amazing!! Really interesting! The references of repertoires and perception and history you brought were great!

I always noticed that there was something unique and special going on in the backing vocals, but I never transcribed it to find out. I just thought it was an intentionally UNNERVING part, and I liked it! It was like a musical magic trick that kept me guessing!

I played this tune a while back and when I learned it, I did notice that note...thought it was quirky and, not instinctual for my brain... but hey...it got us talking about it.

I think it also works really well lyrically. If the 5/b6/5 is “grief” (musically speaking) that we hear on “never had met me” then putting the 5/6/5 on “You’re gonna wish you” transfers the grief to You. It’s not just a breakup song full of grief, it’s a song about revenge. I don’t know if I’ve explained this idea well enough, it’s hard to put into writing.

This video was my introduction to your channel. You just got a new subscriber👏🏾👏🏾

Yes, that note has always bugged me. While you're at it, listen to the synth pads in Billy Joel's studio recording of "Just The Way You Are". At bar 3 of the bridge (about 2:13 in the song) there is a crashing dissonance as the pad fails to make the transition to the new chord at the downbeat. It was a huge hit and revived Billy's career. How that clam made it onto the airwaves is beyond me.

Worth noting too that the backing vocals drop out when the chorus gets reharmed with an Ab chord during the bridge.

The direction of the melody heading for C immediately after the phrase in question suggests to me that the harmony felt the tug of a melodic minor approach to the keynote even though the scale is not completed, as the B natural is not used in the ascent. Nevertheless C is the target and the A natural does make a logical sounding movement. I'm surprised you didn't reference this in your analysis. I don't really hear the use of the A as being particularly unexpected here.

I'm pretty old, even for youtube standards, but I can still remember a time when I was a very little kid, barely speaking I guess, and I didn't understand AT ALL what feelings were supposed to be associated with any particular music. I knew what sounded good or bad to me already, but there where no feelings involved in it: a sort of purely "aesthetic" evaluation was already possible for baby-me, not yet anything even remotely "cultural" was though. As a musically illiterate, I was wondering how many musicians still remember when they could hear music that way, as a very little kid with not even the smallest trace of a music-vocabulary in their mind. Thanks for your videos!

My explanation is that people simply don’t notice the backing vocals at all, it blends seamlessly with the accompaniment. It only happens on the first part which is a big impactful moment in the song. Could just be for effect, to brighten it up a bit and then darken again. It also adds more variation. If that a was in the lead melody everybody would’ve noticed it. If that a was repeated I think it would also be a lot more noticeable. It is a single short note in a background part that occurs on a moment when all attention is on Adele singing loudly, I am not surprised that people don’t hear it.

That's always been my favorite note in it! Mandela effect for real.

Ooh, "Rolling in the Deep" is still such a great song all this time later. Can’t wait to watch your analysis here! 😃‼️

Nice lineout, good work. Keep it up, mate!

I have covered this song often and always loved the dissonance that note created. It added to the ambience to me and really drove in the lyrics.

I've never heard "you're gonna wish you" as an A-flat, always A-natural... in fact, I'd always heard "tears are gonna fall" as having an A-flat-and-a-half (or G-half-sharp if you prefer), with the whole phrase following a pattern of "contracting" the motif each repetition and only rebounding back to A-flat on "rolling in the deep".

I think the rythm between Adele's line and the back vocals has an important role in all of this. Try playing both lines at the same time, one in your left and one in your right, if you go Cm G/C Cm in your left (as the back vocals are not singing it, it feels pretty usual and uniteresting) but if you go Cm Cm6 omitted 5th Cm not only does that sound great because of the 10th interval between A in your left and the leading C in your right but there is something about how it's all accented that makes it feel so darn good. I mean try any other rhythm (especially straight rhythms like clear 8th or 16th notes) over it with your left hand not only does it stop sounding like that song but it stops sounding nice as well. Just something crazy I discovered playing this.

The A lifts up the spirit. When it is done on the 1 chord it doesn't crash with anything. Don't hear what you are conditioned to hear, hear what is actually there.

This is something I've always loved in this song... and to hear you talk about it now..... beautiful

I listened to wild cherry’s “play that funky music” this morning and i was singing along to the main melody in the beginning and i was confused when i realized the song and my singing didn’t match up, i stopped and listened and once the first verse started, the riff was similar but different for the rest of the song. that’s one of the things i love about transcribing music too, is finding all the subtle details that you never noticed before

For what function the A natural serves, it might be more about using the backup singers to do a bit of a counterpoint line rather than filling in harmonic requirements. Having it move from an A natural in the first line to an A flat in the next line creates some downward trajectory for the backup vocal line. Maybe in that instance wanting that motion trumped having the "right" harmony.

Great video, the level of analysis is powerful. Cheers from Poland!!