If you do enjoy that, be sure to check out Patricia Taxxon's video on the subject, which is a very worthwhile analysis of that idea. It might be my favorite youtube video in the music theory genre.
[1]: (PDF) https://countrymusichalloffame.org/content/uploads/2019/05/W...
Well yes the Axis of Awesome thesis is a bit disingenuous and the critique at the beginning of Patricia Taxxon's video is justified; just because the chords are the same doesn't mean the songs are the same! And the analogy is quite true that in visual arts all colors can be formed from the three primary colors.
Actually, I'm currently trying to make songs based on this simple 1465 progression, in that order; here are my first two attempts (the titles are a hint ;-)
Alp 1465 https://open.spotify.com/track/5TxVfIf9JUAhCEL3O5cWXT?si=86c...
Bet 1465 https://open.spotify.com/track/2ghJN1EtQwXAZZj91B5yqs?si=f16...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXnUa6SNJFQ (Video showing the chords more clearly) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPIaw-MgNzM (Original song)
So much of it is conditioning, maybe all of it. There's conditioning around chords, progressions, dissonance, harmony, repetition, subjective ideas of what constitutes music, and so much more.
The only way to prove it isn't mere conditioning is to remove the conditioning and then evaluate.
What would be an example of if it's their own or not, and would it actually make a difference?
So I did it by choosing to abandon all judgment and then reframing perspectives I heard using the words "like" and "dislike." The reframing always had in it "I can learn to enjoy everything."
However uncomfortable the Steely Dan song might be, it has a nice consistent construction to it, and, once you get into the groove, it becomes straightforward. Almost all music I listen to that I'd call complex, from classical to prog metal to jazz, can be described like that too.
The Mendes song, however, sounds disjointed to me. It sounds built out of all sorts of fairly standard bits and pieces, but thrown around completely haphazardly.
To me, the jazzy changes in the Steely Dan song are very in-your-face -- the song is built around them. It’s pleasant enough but feels very random and meandering to me.
The Mendes song, as you say, is “built out of standard bits” -- it feels like a “proper” soul ballad. For me the unusual changes work because they’re used a bit more sparingly, and each one comes as a little jolt, either to elevate the emotion (in the conventional “go up one key at the end of the song” way) or alternatively to ease off the pedal a bit for a change in lyrical tone. It’s like the whole song consists of final choruses and bridges, which are often the best bits of a good song. :)
I found a similar feeling in Shostakovich: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDeJeBvln6E But I enjoy this challenge. It's a beautiful yet strange and twisted music.
I think it also depends on what jazz is actually being discussed -- it applies well to most jazz standards, but a lot of modern jazz and jazz-adjacent (or perhaps just what I'm familiar with) seems to gravitate heavily towards nonfunctional harmony.
The original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s13sASS5F4
I think the trick is that it’s bossa nova, which tends to have a lot of those semitone shifts that Rick highlights. The Girl from Ipanema is the classic example.
I love that they seem so complex when you look at the individual chord movements, and yet the melody flows very naturally (to my ears, anyway!)
The effect in Never Gonna Let You Go feels a bit like the dramatic key change you often get right at the end of those 80s ballads, but smoothly integrated throughout the whole song. I can well imagine some hate that, but I love it!
And they do! The Dionne Warwick and Stevie Woods versions have the same chords (and nearly the same arrangement); so it comes from the original songwriters (Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann), although it’s a perfect fit for Mendes’ style.
That reassures me that the chord structure is really integral to the song (as I’d like to believe) and not just tacked on afterwards to make it sound cooler.
When I was learning the guitar, I frequently would skip passing chords and simplify voicings I didn’t know how to play. As a result, my covers were pretty boring and lacking the impact of the originals. That’s fine for beginners, but a pro musician is going to take pride in either faithfully recreating a cover or intentionally putting their own stylistic spin on it, not just skipping over stuff that’s hard.
Rick Beato interviews (acoustic guitarist) Tommy Emmanuel - https://youtu.be/PLIZZ9lIlwg
When I think of complexity I think of unreconcilable elements that force the transposer to make tough decisions ("intentionally putting their own stylistic spin on it").
- Rhythmic patterns and variation
- Interplay between instruments
- Instrumentation and arrangement
- Structure
- Vocal style
- Lyrics
- Recording and mixing
By these metrics (and the ears of 99% of its listeners) it's a more or less generic 80s adult contemporary song. Yes it has a weird chord progression. Would it be more complex if it couldn't be boiled down to a series of chords?
That’s what the word “pop” is being used for in “the most complex pop song ever”. Rick Beato is giving an example of a literally popular song, one that somebody suggested they perform an impromptu concert because it was in the charts at the time, and which sounds totally mainstream, and yet has a very unusual chord progression.
And I think “music theory” in this context is basically jazz theory, where a song is boiled down to what you’d see in the Real Book - melody line, chords, and a description of the tempo and groove. Unless you’re doing big band, instrumentation is one of the standard small combos, or just whatever musicians you have to hand. Which again is reasonable in the context of “here’s a song we tried to busk in a scratch group, and it turned out to be crazily complicated”.
He’s not claiming it’s Schoenberg or anything!
There was a long period where jazz influences were very big in popular music -- jazz itself was actually popular! -- so there were a lot of very harmonically interesting pop songs. I agree with him that that seems generally less true nowadays (thinking of big mainstream singer-songwriters like Adele and Ed Sheeran). But I'd be interested to hear of good counterexamples.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I
Rick Beato has kind of the opposite video about "the most complex song ever":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnRxTW8GxT8
The song in question is Never Gonna Let You Go by Sergio Mendes; plenty of videos exist of it; here's one live:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOPh3bTglak