Single Ladies (Put A Riff On It)

[koganbot]

Something I posted on a comment thread here, about the Turnage-Beyoncé thing:

Just a point in regard to whether one "got" the reference to "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)" [not an issue for me, 'cause I discovered the Turnage piece through one of the mashups, and wouldn't bet on my having recognized the tune otherwise, though probably would have been saying to myself, "this reminds me of something; what the hell is it?"]: loads of melodies sound like other melodies, some deliberately, some from the songwriters' unconscious, some coincidentally, etc. I often miss the obvious references and then hear connections that aren't there, or when I do hear I have no idea what's intended and what isn't. And just to give an example, I've probably heard Hole's "Celebrity Skin" and Ashlee Simpson's "Surrender" over a hundred times each, and I know that Ashlee has covered "Celebrity Skin" in concert, and I saw the episode of Ashlee's reality show where she and her label president, Jordan Schur, are discussing "Surrender" and Schur says that it makes him think of Hole's "Celebrity Skin," my assumption being that he's correctly inferring from the sound that Courtney Love is a huge inspiration for Ashlee, yet I didn't realize, until just a few days ago when I ran into a YouTube mashup that showed it, that "Surrender" uses the riff from "Celebrity Skin." So... well it's not a contest, to see who gets it. No one gets it all.

[Worth clicking the link to see my comment on someone's odd assumptions concerning the authorship of "Single Ladies."]

[Also, though I love "Celebrity Skin," "Surrender" is one of my least favorite Ashlee tracks, Ashlee's most triumphant Hole-style song being "I Am Me."]

[EDIT: I'm speaking loosely when I say "uses the riff," since I don't mean "plays the riff" but "plays something similar to the riff that was almost certainly based on the riff," the rhythm and the style of power-chording being identical but the notes not. I talk a little more about this in the comment thread.]

Comments

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Glad you pointed out the implicit nastiness of "get the joke" and "seditious" -- esp. through the Fosse counter-example -- not that I imagine anyone writing such things will actually think twice about it.

My friend Ian has done some work like this -- he would never refer to his work as a "joke" (though he is specifically interested in how to use humor in a modern classical environment and *has* made a lot of jokes in his pieces) -- specifically with No Doubt's "Hella Good." It's called "Real Good," but I can't seem to find anywhere. But to assume that any connection between pop music and classical music is a "joke" is annoying.

[koganbot]

Well, it's possible that Turnage himself is known as a jokester and considers himself seditious (I have no idea), and not necessarily merely for using pop in classical; I get the feeling that Tim Rutherford-Johnson, the guy whose blog it is, is an uncontemptuous fellow, and he was using "get the joke" in response to someone else's somewhat more contemptuous post (possibly the other guy was contemptuous towards Turnage specifically but not necessarily towards any attempts to mix). I decided to treat Aaron's post as carelessness rather than as something uglier. But maybe my post will make Rutherford-Johnson more likely to challenge his commenters. The thread is a couple of weeks old so I doubt that anyone but Rutherford-Johnson will ever see my comment, though maybe some Googler might.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I'm sure the primary author will have seen it at least. I used "implicit nastiness" because no one's tone in the post or the thread was outright nasty, just building off some assumptions whose foundation is a bit of a sneer (potentially). My fave post was the description of the impetus for the project as told by Turnage's wife -- his son hummed the song around the house all the time! And my second fave was the classical music critic admitting he's never heard "Single Ladies." Both seemed to be reaching toward a more honest discussion of motivations and/or blind spots (or any number of things one might discuss with this piece as the impetus).

[koganbot]

(Btw, I was speaking loosely when I said the riff in "Surrender" was the same riff as in "Celebrity Skin"; it's the identical rhythm and the identical type of power-chord strumming, but played on similar but not identical chords. There's probably a relation between the chords on the "Celebrity" riff and the "Surrender" riff - if they were transposed into the same key - but my knowledge of theory isn't enough to say what it is. Maybe you can work it out for me. "Celebrity Skin" is A, D-Flat, G-Flat; "Surrender" is B-Flat, D, A.)