hey, welcome to 12tone! being a teenager is hard. I mean, ok, I'm in my 30s now,
so it's been a little while, but I'm pretty sure it hasn't gotten all that much easier since then.
your teenage years are a time of huge changes: your body is changing, your relationships are
changing, and your environment is changing too. you're going to new places, meeting new people,
taking on new responsibilities, and learning new things about the world around you. you're
leaving behind the comfort of childhood, but without many of the freedoms that come with
being an adult. you're just sorta stuck in the middle. being a teenager means wrestling with all
kinds of new anxieties, and there's always been music that speaks to those anxieties. for me,
and for many people my age, that music was pop punk. some of these songs, like American Idiot,
gave us an outlet to engage with political situations we were too old to ignore but
too young to feel like we could do anything about. others, like All The Small Things,
were guides to the daunting world of romance that we were just starting to learn how to navigate.
but The Middle was different. The Middle dared to tackle teenagehood itself, speaking directly
to that weird in-between space where you're not a child anymore, but you're still not an adult yet
either. it's one of those songs that'll always stick with me, and even though it's been a long
time since I was a teenager, I'm not sure I'll ever really outgrow it. let's take it apart.
(tick, tick, tick, tick, tock)
the song starts like this: (bang)
with Jim Adkins playing an insistent intro melody on lead guitar. but it's not just any melody:
if you know the song, you'll probably recognize it as the melody from the chorus. it's like a little
preview, putting the idea of the chorus melody in your head but in a less obvious way, so that by
the time you hear the real thing, it already feels familiar. you're already comfortable with it, so
instead of a big, dramatic event, the chorus feels like a return home. but more than that, this intro
also presents a sort of pre-emptive analysis of the chorus, so you know how to experience it best:
by removing the lyrics and the phrasing, and playing everything on these constant 8th notes,
Adkins clearly draws your attention to the rhythmic structure of the melody. specifically,
it sounds like he's highlighting the quarter note syncopation. now, some of you may argue that
quarter notes don't really count as syncopation, and yeah, technically, you're probably right,
but at this tempo I'm not sure what else to call it. they're playing at around 160 beats
per minute, and he's only changing notes at most once per bar. the most obvious approach,
then, would be to change on beat 3: (bang) but for the first two lines,
he changes a full quarter note early, outlining a motif of a descending 3rd each time. (bang)
this sudden drop draws your attention to the higher, more prominent note on the first beat,
which is also where the chord changes. that marriage of harmonic and melodic rhythms is
the first thing you hear in this song, and by introducing it with this simplified version of
the melody, Adkins is able to make absolutely certain you understand its significance.
and speaking of chord changes, let's talk about the chord changes. most of the song is built
on the same basic loop: there's two bars of D major, then two bars each of A major, G major,
then back to D major. harmonically, this is pretty straightforward. we start on the I chord,
then go V-IV-I, a pretty classic blues cadence that shows up all the time in blues-influenced
styles, which punk rock definitely is. but even if the chords aren't that noteworthy, the positions
are. typically, if you have a four-chord loop and you want to play the I chord twice, you'll just
put them both at the beginning: (bang) with all the motion happening at the end, so the resolution
back to I lines up with the start of the next loop. approaching the first chord through strong
harmonic motion keeps the momentum going, but here they've moved all the motion to, uh… well,
they've moved it to the middle. feel free to read into that if you want. point is, they resolve
everything before they repeat, so the actual transition is static. it's D major on both sides.
there's no motion whatsoever. this gives the song a sense of closure: instead of one phrase leading
into the next, each one becomes its own complete thought, with its own complete resolution.
it's calm and comforting, with each line wrapping itself up neatly before the next one begins.
but while this chord progression is basically always there,
how it's expressed keeps changing throughout the song. in the intro,
no one's actually playing full chords. Adkins has his melody,
and rhythm guitarist Tom Linton is also playing a single-note line, sticking to the roots of
the chords and muting the strings a bit with his palm to give it a more percussive sound. (bang)
this provides just enough harmonic information to put Adkins' part into context, without being so
full that it becomes distracting. from there, we enter into the main body of the song,
and they adopt a repeating pattern of three distinct dynamic layers.
under the first phrase, both guitars play that same palm-muted root line,
again staying out of the way of the melody as much as possible while still being clearly present.
this is also where the drums and bass come in, but we'll talk about those later.
for the second phrase, Linton continues his palm-muted roots while Adkins switches to a
higher, more decorative pattern. (bang) it sounds to me like what he's doing is
leaving the D string open, giving us this constant, droning D underneath every attack,
and then he's also playing a moving line on the G string above it. interestingly,
this line doesn't seem to line up all that well with the harmony. he starts with octave
Ds over the D chord, which, sure, makes sense, but then he keeps playing D over the A chord,
drops down to A over the G chord, then back to D for the final D chord. I suppose if we really
wanted to we could call this A sus 4 and G sus 2, to incorporate the extra notes, but eh, that seems
like more work than it's worth. there's so little harmonic information here that this only really
seems like a violation when we write it down on paper. listening to it, it feels totally normal.
or, ok, the A over the G chord stands out a little bit, but I don't think that's because
of the harmony. it's more a change in texture: up to now, he's mostly been playing octaves,
but here there's two distinct notes. they're pretty consonant notes, sure,
but there's still two of them, and with all the overdrive on this guitar, that causes problems for
the sound wave. when you run any two frequencies through any kind of distortion together, then
unless they're perfectly, 100% in tune, you wind up getting what's called intermodulation,
where the distortion effect adds a bunch of extra bonus frequencies that weren't already there.
it results in a much more complex tone, and the less consonant the two intervals are,
the more complex it gets. with just low and high Ds: (bang) the intermodulation is almost
completely unnoticeable. moving to a perfect 5th: (bang) it gets a little more obvious,
but if you really want to hear what intermodulation can do, check out the
parts where he goes to C#. (bang) that's still just two notes, but they're a major 7th apart,
and the intermodulation is running wild. there's a reason he never stays here very long.
and finally, there's the chorus. here, both guitars switch to playing full chords,
complete with major 3rds, and oh boy is there some intermodulation going on. (bang)
this is, in a sense, the clearest statement of the harmony: after all, it's the only part
of the song where the harmonic instruments are playing all three notes. but it's also really
noisy. all those extra frequencies from the distortion are filling every crack in the mix,
so the tone takes on this over the top, maximalist quality that audibly conveys the
fullness and relief promised by the lyrics. and the drums also get in on the action. in the verse,
Zach Lind is play a pretty stripped-down groove, mostly just sticking to quarter notes: (bang)
but in the chorus that opens up, with a much more active kick pattern,
a move to the cymbals, and a bunch of extra tom fills. (bang)
much like the guitars are filling more space in the mix, Lind is filling more space in the meter,
presenting some compelling rhythmic support for the claim that everything will be alright.
and then there's Rick Burch's bass. this comes in right after the intro. it sounds like this: (bang)
and we have to talk about that bass tone. it's so thick, so full, so resonant… and in case you
think that's just because it's an isolated track, here's what it sounds like in context: (bang)
yeah, still goes way harder than it needs to. it's even in drop D, 'cause hey, why not,
gotta get that ridiculously low root in your pop song about feeling better about yourself.
honestly, listening to it on its own, it reminds me of a metal bass, so I'd expect
it to convey a sense of anger and brutality, but when I listen to it with the rest of the band,
it really doesn't. it has some weight to it, sure, but the brightness of everything around
it makes it feel less threatening. it's like a weighted blanket: heavy, but in a comforting way.
I'd also like to talk about how that bass tone changes throughout
the song. here it is in the verse: (bang) and here's the chorus. (bang)
so… yeah. besides that pause in the first bar, it sounds exactly the same. which is weird,
right? the guitars went on this whole dynamic journey, moving from palm-muted single notes all
the way to screaming full chords, but underneath it all, Burch stays the same. in the verse,
he's front and center while everyone else is quiet, but as the rest of the band gets louder,
he stays put and slowly fades into the background. it makes me think of, like, the roar of an engine,
or perhaps more thematically appropriate, the rumble of a rollercoaster in motion. it's always
there, but it feels different as you're rising up the first slope than it does when you're mid-drop.
moving on, the melody in the verse is based primarily on a rhythmic motif of three quarter
notes, which Adkins sings three times in each phrase. (bang) but those motifs aren't distributed
evenly. instead, he positions these three statements to create an increasing sense of metric
complexity and a decreasing sense of space. for the first one, he sets it up with a short run of
8th notes, ending the line right on the downbeat, as the chord changes. (bang) the second time,
he does the same thing, starting at the same point in the bar, but he sings more of the 8th notes,
which pushes the actual motif back. (bang) instead of ending on the downbeat, now it's starting there
and then trailing off into the rest of the bar. right after that, he turns around and immediately
sings the third statement, but this time there's only a single 8th note: (bang) pushing the phrase
onto the offbeats and ending right before the final chord transition. and finally,
he sets up the next phrase by doing that again, but he starts a little later and only manages
to get out two of the quarter notes. (bang) by constantly displacing it into different metric
positions and filling more and more of the metric space as the phrase develops, Adkins manages
to take one of the simplest possible rhythmic motifs and keep it feeling fresh and exciting.
in terms of notes, there's not a whole lot to say. he's mostly sticking to chord tones:
D over the D chord, C# over the A chord, and so on. but there is one moment that stands out to me,
when he sings this: (bang) and again, we have an A over a G chord. or, again,
not really much of a G chord, just an implied G root, but still. it feels like the obvious
choice would've been to sing a G there: (bang) but instead we get this. why? well, this is
an example of what some theorists might call a harmonic-melodic divorce. this is the idea that,
in pop music, the logic that guides the melody isn't really based on the harmony, at least not
always. that means this A isn't some avant-garde note choice to add complexity over a chord,
it's just not really paying attention to the chord at all. personally, I'm kind of ambivalent about
this idea: I think it's great to acknowledge that pop melodies don't necessarily work the
way our classical- and jazz-informed theories say they're supposed to, because they're not classical
or jazz melodies. but I'm not sure the idea of harmonic-melodic divorce does a very good job of
that. it sometimes feels like a way of ignoring the discrepancies instead of explaining them.
but ok, let's roll with it, because at least in this case it does seem like there's some much
better explanations to be found if we look outside the chord progression. for starters,
again, there's very little harmonic information here at all. there's no
B for this A to rub against, so it doesn't really register as a violation of harmonic
norms. but just because they can get away with it doesn't explain why they should. for that,
we're gonna have to step back a bit and consider that three-note motif again.
specifically, we need to compare this statement: (bang) to the one directly after it. (bang)
they're pretty similar, both starting on D and ending on A. the only difference is in the middle:
the first one approaches the A from the B above it, stepping down into the final note, while the
second drops down to it from C#, and the longer distance creates a more emphatic sense of landing.
but why does that matter? well, let's step back even further and look at the verse as
a whole. it's 16 bars long, split into two nearly identical 8-bar phrases. the melody of the second
phrase mirrors the first one almost exactly, except for the very last note. this makes it
a great example of what's called a period, where you sing the same basic melody twice,
but the first time you end on an unstable point, typically the 5th of the key:
(bang) while the second time you instead end on a stable point, typically the root. (bang) in
classical music, you can support these different endings by playing around with the harmony,
but here we're locked into the same chord loop both times, so we need to make sure the notes can
do their jobs on their own. and that's why singing a G would create a problem. G is the 4th, an even
less stable note in the key, so hearing it right before the A would make it feel like a resolution,
not a hanging dissonance. (bang) it doesn't feel like it needs to go anywhere,
but in order for the period structure to work, it has to. repeating the A instead emphasizes
its need to resolve, which means that when it eventually does, it feels satisfying.
that leads into the chorus melody, and this part kinda blew my mind. here's the thing:
the chorus melody is also based on the same rhythmic motif of three quarter
notes. but unlike the verse, where the statements are scattered asymmetrically
throughout the phrase, here, he sticks to the same pattern every time. (bang)
and if we go back and look at the three options from the verse,
which were arranged in order of increasing complexity, he chooses the one… in the middle.
but it's more than that. if we look at what the guitars are playing underneath it: (bang)
there's a clear accent on beat 2. if we combine that with the vocals: (bang)
we see that, of the three notes in the motif, these guitar stabs are accenting the note… in the
middle. now, am I reading too much in to this? absolutely, yes, but who's gonna stop me? you?
there's nothing you can do about it, the video's already published. point is, even if this level
of overt symbolism wasn't actually intentional, these decisions create a metric pattern that's
stable but not completely at rest. the accent is a bit skewed, and the melody's always about
to pick up into the next line. it's a musical encapsulation of the ride you're in the middle of,
and while it's not going anywhere particularly scary, it's also not about to stop moving.
looking at melody, I'm also struck by the range. this whole song has a vocal range of a major 6th,
from A to F#. most people should be able to sing along with that comfortably in one
octave or another. and just in case it happens to hit an awkward break for you, each individual
section only has a range of a perfect 4th. or, ok, technically the verse is a perfect 5th,
thanks to this one stray E: (bang) but it's not a very important note. point is, if you're willing
to shift octaves, the song is incredibly easy for most amateurs to sing along with. and that,
I think, speaks to the song's purpose: The Middle is an anthem. not in a nationalistic,
self-aggrandizing sort of way, but as a unifying, uplifting song that's brings listeners and
participants together with its message of love, hope, and support. the small range, simple
rhythms, exciting tempo, and easy-to-remember lyrics make it a perfect song for audience
participation, and once you know how it goes it's hard not to sing along. in fact, remember how
the intro riff is a preview of the chorus melody? that helps too, allowing new listeners to pick up
the chorus before the song is even over. it's an earworm, and a pretty durable one at that: find a
group of people in their early 30s, sing the first line, and we'll take care of the rest. but it's
not just fun to sing along with: the song is about having faith that things will get better, so being
accessible and memorable makes it easier to call it up in times where you might need that reminder.
anyway, next we go through the verse and chorus again, with a couple new elements to keep things
interesting. the most noteworthy of these is probably the call-and-response vocals
in the second verse: (bang) which repeat the second statement of the motif, inviting more
audience participation and relieving a bit of the metric tension by resolving it onto a downbeat.
eventually, we wind up in a solo, which is the only part of the song where the chords change.
in fact, this section doesn't even start on the I chord, which makes sense. structurally,
it's filling the role of a bridge, and bridges usually start with a more exciting chord,
to differentiate themselves from the rest of the song and create the sense that we're going
somewhere. in this case, they go V, I, V, I, then, as soon as the pattern is established, the go IV,
I instead, before hanging on V to build tension that'll be released in the next section. this
is all pretty straightforward punk rock harmony, so I won't dwell too long on the specifics, but
since it's literally the only break from the main loop, I thought it was worth at least mentioning.
as for the solo itself, the key word here is fast.
the first half is built out of these massive 16th-note runs down the scale: (bang)
with the first one continuing all the way down to a low D: (bang) while the second turns around and
walks back up, using these rapidly-picked tremolos to keep up the energy. (bang)
after that, as the harmony moves to the G chord, we get a bit of a respite, with the next four bars
sticking to just 8th-note phrases that clearly emphasize beats 1 and 3. it's also a bit of a
rest melodically: while the other phrases have had clear directions to them, this one starts by
sitting basically still: (bang) before starting to build energy again by walking up the scale: (bang)
eventually releasing into the final line, starting with a huge leap up to by far the highest note
we've heard all solo before walking back down, first with more of those tremolos: (bang)
and then finally some helds notes in an accelerating rhythmic pattern: (bang)
building up a ton of rhythmic tension that's ready to be released on the next downbeat.
but… it isn't. here's that transition. (bang)
right when the rhythmic figure, the walkdown, and the V chord are all supposed to resolve, the band
drops out instead, coming back in two bars later. this doesn't really kill the momentum, though:
honestly, I think it preserves it. if everything had just resolved,
the song would feel pretty complete. but they want to run through it one more time,
so this sudden, unexpected rhythm drop where the resolution was supposed to be
lets them carry the energy of the solo into the rest of the song without interruption.
and that's pretty much it. they do one more verse and chorus,
and then the song just ends abruptly. (bang)
and I think that's fitting. an outro would have let them put a little more distance between the
listener and the message, but that's not what The Middle is about. ending on a final assurance that
everything will, in fact, be alright makes that point harder to deny. it says the song's over,
but the ride's not. you're still in the middle, and it's only gonna get better from here. and I
think that's worth believing. things don't always get better on their own, sometimes they need a
push in the right direction, but that doesn't mean you have to give up. believing things can
get better is the first step toward making them better, and for a generation of kids like me,
a little bit of that inspiration will always come from Jimmy Eat World.
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