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OTHER ACTS' ANALYSES (Martin & Carlsson / Backstreet Boys)
Backstreet Boys have always been a magical group of five (well, now four) fantastic musicians (they've all composed and each one plays well at least one instrument). Some of their best features are the different styles of each one as lead singer, their marvellous two-part harmonies and the beautiful way to perform mid-tempo ballads. I Want It That Way embodies all those trademarks, thus becoming their signature song and their most successful track to date. They're a very successful group in the UK. Off their 18 single releases until 2005, only two failed to hit the top 10. I Want It That Way entered directly into #1 on 15th May 1999. Quite a good month for boy-bands since the previous #1 had been a track recorded by Westlife and one week later IWITW would be overthrown by You Needed Me (Boyzone). It was co-written by Max Martin, who's been widely criticised as repeating himself so much, both melodically and lyrically. Well, he knows how to make a great pop-song anyway... he's co-written a large number of classics including It's Gotta Be You for Michael Jackson's nephews (3T), most of Five's debut album, many N'SYNC songs, Celine's That's The Way It Is, Bon Jovi's It's My Life, a couple of Westlife tracks, Def Leppard's Unbelievable, Kelly Clarkson's Since U Been Gone, most of Marion Raven's debut solo album including the hits Break You and Here I Am, several compositions for Nick Carter and the Britney Spears marathon of gems: Baby One More Time, You Drive Me Crazy, Oops I Did It Again, Stronger, Lucky, Overprotected, I'm Not A Girl Not Yet A Woman. He'd worked with the BSB before and had participated in four of their five top 3's to date: We've Got it Going On, Quit Playing Games With My Heart, Everybody (Backstreet's Back) and As Long As You Love Me. Music
& Lyrics by: Max Martin & Andreas Carlsson Produced
by: Max Martin & Kristian Lundin Recorded between: October 1998 - March 1999 Keys:
F#m, A, G#m, B
While the form is a simple one-bridge variant, there are some clever changes of arrangement in both instruments and who-sings-what. Let's see:
There's a nice balance between acoustic, electric and electronic instruments. Bass, drums and guitar are all "human", while piano, organ, strings, etc. come from a synth. There are two acoustic guitars: one nylon-stringed and one steel-stringed. In terms of who-sings-what, the arrangement is varied as well:
As it's usual in these pop songs, there are no completely instrumental sections: even the intro has some humming (see also NSYNC's Bye, Bye, Bye or Britney Spears' Oops! I Did It Again). Note how each one does different parts depending on the section: the blue colour, signalling lead vocal in the chart, shows that AJ and Brian dominated the song. I Want It That Way is the first in a hat-trick of BSB hits having AJ doing the tag, the others would be Shape of My Heart and Drowning. Unfortunately I've got no idea (until I can ask the right person) about how Max and Andreas choose the act for each composition. The rich arrangement favouring lead's and co-lead's as opposed to choir-like singing makes one think this one was written with Backstreet Boys in mind (neither N'SYNC nor 5ive have enough lead singers for it), but otoh the arrangement could have been decided after they gave the song to the jitties. So what came first, the phoenix or the flame? While N'SYNC had a much stronger choir than Backstreet Boys (check Drive Myself Crazy, for instance), the latter had more resources on brief-dueting. Since all five members are tenors (Kevin bordering the baritenor range and Howie bordering countertenor) as opposed to N'SYNC (who have a countertenor, two tenors, a baritone and a bass), they seem to work better on tighter harmonies. Listening to both bands a capella is a nice way to learn the gains and losses of each against the other. And indeed, running through the Backstreet Boys' discography you can find an eclectic set of combinations done when only two of them are singing, making a wonderful two-part harmony: - Howie + Nick: Incomplete (chorus), Drowning (middle-eight) - Howie + Brian: Shape of My Heart (1st lift), Spanish Eyes (last chorus), Everybody (lift, live post-Kevin) - Howie + AJ: I Still (2nd verse), Spanish Eyes (middle-eight), Larger Than Life (lift), Inconsolable (3rd verse) - Kevin + Nick: Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely (4th verse), Get Another Boyfriend (2nd verse, in octaves) - Kevin + Brian: As Long As You Love Me (3rd verse), Back to Your Heart (chorus) - Kevin + AJ: Drowning (middle-eight), I Still (middle-eight), Shape of My Heart (2nd lift) - Nick + Brian: As Long As You Love Me (2nd verse) - AJ + Brian: Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely ("endless love") Intro (AA):
Simply a nearly instrumental half-verse. The few vocals are hummed by AJ McLean, the 'bad boy'.
Simple AAAA' structure similar to another one of the hits by the Martin/BSB combination, Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely (which is in F#m and overall uses the same chords and same key-shift at the end). The strength of these pop songs is in the arrangement alterations.
AAAA' form remains. Interesting vocal arrangement having one lead singer being answered by a two-part harmony formed by the remaining four. Nick sings both "tell me why" and "I never wanna" being joined by the choir for "hear you say, I want it that way". Having the chorus or bridge beginning in the subdominant is common in rock and pop all around the world: As Long As You Love Me (BSB), When Your Heart Stops Beating (+44), Mayonesa (Chocolate), November Rain (Guns N' Roses), My Happy Ending (Avril Lavigne), White Queen (Queen), Hotel California (Eagles), Every Breath You Take (The Police)... another case is the intro of Wind of Change (Scorpions).
Similar arrangement to the first except that the "tell me why"s are uttered by AJ and the remaining solo parts by Brian. The ending changes with Brian doing a nice cluster with very passionate effect to introduce the middle-eight.
Interesting section where Martin's fingerprint is clearer than ever. Compare its functional harmony (in minor key) to other of his works: As Long As You Love Me's and Everybody (Backstreet's Back) middle-eights and Baby One More Time's verse/chorus progression.
The melody is very similar to another of the many Martin & Carlsson penned hits of the year: Celine Dion's That's The Way It Is. Just compare "now I can see that we're falling apart from the way that it used to be YEAH" with "I can read your mind, and I know your story, I see what you're going through YEAH", using the same patterns. This section's first phrase is sung by the old and serious "boy" (27 at the time) of the group, Kevin, while AJ joins for the second half doing a very nice high harmony.
While the chords aren't very different from the other choruses, the tempo changes several times to increase the dramatic feeling. I've labelled this break section a Chorus because of the backing harmony, but the melody and lyrics follow a first verse variation. Howie is the lead singer now, making IWITW the first single of the group in which all five of them have got solo parts: all of their previous releases had been sung by Brian plus either Nick or AJ or all the three of them, and the one preceding IWITW, All I Have To Give, had been sung by all of them except Kevin (safe for one line he shouts in the extended remix). At the end Howie, Brian, Kevin and AJ (in that order) form an ascending cascading harmony, foreshadowing what N'SYNC would do one year later in another Martin/Carlsson track under similar climatic circumstances. In the latter case, the cascade would be five-part and done, in order of entrance, by Lance, Joey, Justin, JC and Chris. Lyrics in IWITW are "you are - you are - you are - you are", while in It's Gonna Be Me are "it's gonna - gonna - gonna - gonna - gonna".
They follow the same chord progressions as in the first only that they're now shifted two semitones up. The differences are in lyrics and arrangements (especially who-sings-what). 4th's got Nick as the lead singer introducing the section with a very emotional "don't wanna hear you say" and then repeating the same line in a more tranquil form. The other four sing the chorus lines with altered lyrics. Fifth chorus has got Nick doing the same soft "don't wanna hear you say" near the end but during the rest Brian is the lead singer uttering both "tell me why" lines and doing a nice melodic variation at the end.
Brian continues being the lead singer sustaining a long "tell me why" while the others continue doing the same chorus lines as in fifth. AJ takes the lead role onwards and then at the end repeats the last two bars as a tag. One year later the boys would release Shape Of My Heart, another mid-tempo written by Max Martin recycling many features including the fact that AJ ends solo the song with a tag of the chorus, which is repeated four times in a row during the end, shifted up two semitones and with Brian, AJ and Nick alternating lead parts. Pop is predictable but that's why we love it, or, more to the point, that's the way it is :) |
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