{"id":738,"date":"2025-03-13T11:31:38","date_gmt":"2025-03-13T15:31:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jarednewman.com\/blog\/?p=738"},"modified":"2025-03-13T11:39:19","modified_gmt":"2025-03-13T15:39:19","slug":"this-is-not-the-song-i-wrote-is-really-clever-musically","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jarednewman.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/13\/this-is-not-the-song-i-wrote-is-really-clever-musically\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;This Is Not The Song I Wrote&#8221; is really clever musically"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>In <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=7Nf-cQj_SLE\">this new tune by Vulfpeck<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The lyrics and performance are hilarious in that oddly specific Vulfpeck kind of way, but on repeated listening I&#8217;ve noticed some pretty clever ideas in the musical composition:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>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).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The bassline in both the verse and the chorus follow nearly the same rhythmic pattern. Listen to Joe Dart&#8217;s playing and you will hear it.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>There&#8217;s a little rhythmic pattern (two eighth notes starting on the downbeat, followed by two sixteenth notes) that repeats in both Joey&#8217;s pre-chorus and Jacob&#8217;s chorus. You can hear it when Joey sings &#8220;going viral&#8221; or &#8220;his attorney,&#8221; and when Jacob sings &#8220;everybody&#8221; or &#8220;move that body.&#8221;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Combined, the bass and vocal patterns form a pretty consistent overall rhythm that links Joey&#8217;s and Jacob&#8217;s segments, even though the switch from minor to relative major makes them sound quite different.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>At the end of the last bridge when Joey sings &#8220;endless chains of emails&#8221; and &#8220;we worked out the details,&#8221; he&#8217;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.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>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&#8217;s a reality that Joey embraces both musically and lyrically by the final chorus. (&#8220;It&#8217;s an incredible hook, man.&#8221;)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(I also posted a version of this <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/Vulfpeck\/comments\/1jaev7r\/this_is_not_the_song_i_wrote_is_really_clever\/\">on Reddit<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","iawp_total_views":222,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[23],"class_list":["post-738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-tunes","h-entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jarednewman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jarednewman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jarednewman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jarednewman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jarednewman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=738"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jarednewman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":742,"href":"https:\/\/jarednewman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738\/revisions\/742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jarednewman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jarednewman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jarednewman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}