![]() If it's all telling, you run the risk of sounding like a children's book. If it's all showing, you end up with deep-but-obtuse results that polarize audiences, like 2001: a Space Odyssey or The Sound and the Fury. And they actually pay him for the chance.Īs with most things, a balance of showing and telling allows a work to have nuance but still be accessible. Mark Twain could have simply said, "Tom Sawyer was a very bright kid, able to convince other kids to do anything, whether it was good for them or not." Instead, Mark Twain showed us by creating a whole scene where Tom Sawyer has to paint a fence as punishment but manipulates the other neighborhood kids to do the chore for him. Part 2 is about awareness/seeing things for what they are/moving on.Ī major consideration for writers is how much they show versus how much they tell. Part 1 is an emotional journey that you feel. The prominence and dominance of those two phrases (and their fragmentations) on "Igor's Theme" serves, then, as a microcosm of the album as a whole. Contextually, this follows the previous track's decisive twist: Tyler has come to his senses, realizes the relationship is bad for him, and so decides he must move on. The second phrase doesn't appear until the final line of the last verse of track 9, "What's Good." Tyler raps, And I got my eyes open, now I see the light. Instead of declaring someone will feel something, Tyler describes what he feels: a love is shaking him up, making his heart break. But the second part of the original idea, t hey gon' feel this one, is riffed upon. Ridin' round town is used nearly verbatim. The first is immediately relevant, as the following song, "Earfquake," has a chorus of: Cause you make my earth quake, oh, you make my earth quake/ riding around, your love is shakin' me up and it's making my heart break. Ridin' round town, they gon' feel this one Rather than a song that's describing a specific emotion or event, it's a painter showing you the palette with all the smears of colors that'll be part of the painting.ĭespite the overall chaos of "Igor's Theme," two main phrases emerge: This helps explain why the lyrics here are fragmented and repetitious in a way that doesn't happen elsewhere. The implication, then, of "Igor's Theme" is this serves as an establishment of musical and lyrical concepts that the rest of IGOR will alter, add to, and riff on. Here's a description by Jeremy Denk, a famous pianist, in an interview with Classic FM: "It's an idea with a number of riffs on the idea -in all kinds of styles and moods.You take the theme, you take the original idea and you begin to alter it or add things to it." For example, a theme in Disney's Aladdin is "how wealthy you are doesn't define how good of a person you are." A theme in Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is the excess of celebrity: that celebrity involves too much power, monstrous indulgence, and appalling materialism.īut theme has a more nuanced application when it comes to music theory, usually in combination with the concept of variations. Themes are broader concepts created by repeated (and often contrasting) elements. ![]() Most of us are familiar with themes in narrative art-in movies, TV shows, books, albums. Exactly What You Run From You End Up ChasingĮxactly What You Run From You End Up Chasing.It really should earn Tyler a bunch of awards. I love when an album works well as a body of work rather than a collection of singles, and IGOR epitomises that approach to albums. Tyler produces the whole thing and he's done a fantastic job, it's a really nice album musically. Sonically the album draws heavily on synth and soul inspirations and there is really cohesive feel to the album. At the start of the album you have happy sounding songs such as Earfquake and I Think, but as the situation deteriorates the songs become less happy, and IGOR becomes more possessive and desperate, culminating in a break up on 'What's Good?', and the final song 'Are We Still Friends?' IGOR tells a story, from start to finish, of a love triangle between IGOR/Tyler, an unnamed boy, and the boys ex-girlfriend. Tyler asked his audience to listen to the album as a whole, and with good reason. The sound and the visuals were immediately captivating so listened to a few more tracks, and before long I was hooked. I was aware of a few of his earlier tracks, and knew he was a talented artist, but a lot of his older content wasn't really for me (although it certainly would have been for the teenage me!) I only listened to this album after stumbling across the video of A Boy Is A Gun* on YouTube. I'm what you might call a 'new Tyler fan'.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |