“This Is Not The Song I Wrote” is really clever musically

In this new tune by Vulfpeck, Joey Dosik sings his best impression of a Michael McDonald type whose music gets ripped off by a young Instagram star. Verse and chorus alternate between obvious yacht rock and a cheery turn-of-century pop anthem hook sung by an intentionally-obnoxious Jacob Jeffries.

The lyrics and performance are hilarious in that oddly specific Vulfpeck kind of way, but on repeated listening I’ve noticed some pretty clever ideas in the musical composition:

Both the verse/pre-chorus and chorus follow a 1-6-4-5 chord progression, but in G# minor for the verse (i-VI-iv-v) and in the relative major of B for the chorus (I-vi-IV-V).

The bassline in both the verse and the chorus follow nearly the same rhythmic pattern. Listen to Joe Dart’s playing and you will hear it.

There’s a little rhythmic pattern (two eighth notes starting on the downbeat, followed by two sixteenth notes) that repeats in both Joey’s pre-chorus and Jacob’s chorus. You can hear it when Joey sings “going viral” or “his attorney,” and when Jacob sings “everybody” or “move that body.”

Combined, the bass and vocal patterns form a pretty consistent overall rhythm that links Joey’s and Jacob’s segments, even though the switch from minor to relative major makes them sound quite different.

At the end of the last bridge when Joey sings “endless chains of emails” and “we worked out the details,” he’s using the same melody from the pre-chorus, but the G# minor chord progression has been replaced with the B major sequence from the chorus.

All this reinforces the idea that Joey and Jacob are two sides of the same musical coin, just writing the best songs they can to pay the bills. It’s a reality that Joey embraces both musically and lyrically by the final chorus. (“It’s an incredible hook, man.”)

(I also posted a version of this on Reddit.)