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I've been on a bit of an '80s kick recently, but really, I'm just making up for lost time.
my childhood was the '90s, where the trends of popular music, especially rock, were a pretty
direct backlash against the excess of the '80s, and even though, by the early 2000s, we were right
back at it with nu metal, that reputation stuck. to this day, in rock circles, the '70s were
the golden age, the '90s were the big revival, and the '80s… well, the '80s just kinda happened
in between. that was when we lost our way, and beyond maybe Guns 'N Roses, we do
our best not to talk about it. which, sure, fine, but I have one small problem with
that narrative: '80s music rules. it's great. even the rock stuff. and to prove my point, I'd
like to look at one of the most quintessentially '80s rock songs ever written, Duran Duran's
Hungry Like The Wolf. let's take it apart. (tick, tick, tick, tick, tock) the song starts like this: (bang) with Andy
Taylor's iconic guitar riff. this consists of two alternating parts. in the first bar: (bang)
all we get is some quiet chugging, and a pair of staccato power chord stabs. these stabs remind
me of a rhythmic pattern called the Charlston, where you take evenly spaced beats, in this
case beats 1 and 3, and play the second one a little bit early, giving you this strong pulse
on the first beat and then a little syncopated bounce on the second. if he just played a normal
Charleston pattern, it'd sound like this: (bang) which, honestly, also sounds cool, but instead
of doing that he delays the entire thing by an 8th note, pushing the start to an off-beat for
more syncopation. this does push the second one back onto beat 3, but to my ears it still feels
syncopated, likely because it's being compared in part to this initial off-beat attack. if this
were beat 1, which it sounds like it wants to be, then this would be syncopated, so even though
this isn't beat 1, that impression carries over. the end result is a pair of stabs that feel
really disconnected from the underlying pulse, capturing the anxiety of the song's hunt.
they're like snapping twigs in the forest, and you're a wolf, always at attention, reacting
immediately to every sudden, unexpected noise. for the other half: (bang) he switches to
a single-note line. here, we again see an echo of that Charleston rhythm in the positions
of these two As, but this time it's starting on the downbeat and the space between is filled
by other notes, so it's less obvious. instead, I'd like to focus on the three notes in this
lick, because this is a really common melodic shape in guitar lines. I tend to think
of it as the Blister In The Sun shape, 'cause that's where I first heard it, but it's
kinda everywhere, and for good reason. it exists at a really powerful crossroads between the tonal
language of Western music and the physicality of the guitar as an instrument. let me explain. the
top and bottom notes are a perfect 4th apart. this means they can be played on the same fret
on two adjacent strings, in this case the 2nd fret of the D and G strings. the middle note is
a half-step, or a single fret, below the top one, in this case the 1st fret of the G string. as
such, you can play these three notes in any order, rhythm, and pattern you want using just
two frets, two strings, and two fingers, pivoting around that G# with your index while your
middle finger bounces back and forth between E and A. it's a comfortable, ergonomic movement that
fits very naturally under a guitarist's fingers. but it also fits very naturally into rock music's
tonal vocabulary, because these three notes are the root, the major 3rd, and the perfect 4th,
almost like a scale in microcosm. the root is our primary reference point, giving us something
to hear the other notes against. the 3rd is a primary consonance, reinforcing the tonality of
the key. and the 4th is a primary dissonance, creating instability by covering up
the 3rd. with just these three notes, a guitarist can explore almost infinite patterns
of rest, tension, and release. and that's what makes this shape so powerful: it's not a specific
lick. you're not bound to one pattern. the order you choose to put these notes in, and the
parts you choose to emphasize rhythmically, can fundamentally change the impact.
in Hungry Like The Wolf: (bang) he starts on the 4, emphasizing tension, then we get
a quick release as he falls through the 3rd and root before jumping back to 4 and hanging on
it, ramping that tension even further. other uses of this shape might have a more relaxed
sound, emphasizing the more stable notes, but here, he's leaning as hard as he can on the
dissonance portion of this musical triforce. together, these two bars create a really
interesting dynamic of shifting tension. in the first bar, the notes are static, but the rhythm
is sparse, jagged, and uneven. in the second, the rhythm gets denser and less complex,
but now the melody is moving into a more dissonant space. drawing on the hunting metaphor,
we seem to be alternating between lying in wait, tracking our prey, and bursts of energy
as we run them down. we're never at rest, but it's not always the same kind of action. the
situation changes, and the riff changes with it. but this is '80s music, and like I said at the
beginning, '80s music is all about excess and overwrought production. we can't just have a great
riff, we need a bunch more layers underneath it, so let's look at what everyone else is doing here,
starting with keyboardist Nick Rhodes. (bang) or, ok, Rhodes didn't actually play this: the part
is sequenced, and randomly sequenced at that. the notes are all drawn from an E major triad spread
out across roughly two octaves, but there's no pattern. it's a constant, unpredictable stream
of beeps and boops. according to interviews, the band achieved this by connecting a
Roland-808 drum machine and a sequencer to control a Jupiter-8 synth. but why? according
to those same interviews they were basically just messing around with technology to see what they
could do, but as for its purpose in the song, I think it's doing three things. first,
it's laying down a harmonic bed. it's not a super clear statement of the harmony,
but the chords don't change all that often, so you do have time to absorb all the
different notes in each one. the riff is already establishing a static E major harmony,
but this synth line helps to reinforce it. the second job is disorientation. there's a
new note on every 16th, but not all notes are created equal. some, like the high B and the
low E, stand out for their relatively extreme ranges. this gives the pattern a natural ebb
and flow, but because the notes are random, you never know when the next peak or valley
is gonna happen. they just jump out at you, regularly enough that you know they're coming
but irregularly enough that you can't predict when. and the third job is probably the simplest:
this constant stream of 16th notes is a constant stream of 16th notes. that's important because
if we listen to Roger Taylor's drums: (bang) there's no hi-hat. he's just playing quarter notes
on the kick and snare. we do eventually get hats in the chorus, but for now, it's not there. but
in rock music, the hi-hat has a very specific job: it subdivides the beat into smaller units,
explicitly defining the song's smallest rhythmic layer with a constant, unwavering pulse. here,
though, it's not around to do that, so, in a way, this barrage of random synth tones is the song's
hi-hat: it's too fast and too chaotic to provide much of a melody, so even though there are notes
happening, functionally, it feels like percussion. but let's stick with Roger's drums for a second,
because they're actually pretty interesting. they seem to be a combination of real and
synthetic drum sounds. the main pattern is played on a normal kit: (bang) which you can
tell because of the occasional crash cymbals. drum synthesizers at the time didn't sound all
that realistic, and early drum samplers didn't come with cymbals at all, because the long,
fading tail wouldn't fit in their relatively limited memory banks. however, if we skip ahead
a bit, we'll see that the tom fills: (bang) aren't using real toms. instead, these come from
a Simmons SDS-V, an analogue drum synthesizer that was playable like a real drum kit. in '80s pop
music, a lot of bands went all in on synth or sampled drum sounds, to give their music a sort of
hyper-polished, futuristic sheen, but Hungry Like The Wolf is a rock song, and the foundation of
rock is the pounding aggression of a real drummer. putting the basic groove on a physical kit creates
the small fluctuations in time and timbre that indicate the presence of an actual person, while
the over-the-top sound of those Simmons toms gives it the bombastic energy that defined the '80s.
by combining the two approaches, Roger gets to have the best of both worlds, playing a part
that's both clearly human and so much more. that leaves us with John Taylor's bass: (bang) and here's the thing… I notated that wrong.
don't worry, bassists, I know, I did it on purpose to prove a point. when I isolate the bass part
like this, it's almost impossible for me not to hear this first attack as beat 1. you've got this
clear charleston rhythm in the first bar (bang) strong hits on the downbeat of every
bar, and then this little turnaround run at the end of each phrase to set
up the start of the next one. (bang) to my mind, this is by far the most reasonable
analysis of this rhythm, but it's wrong. here, listen to it again and see if you can figure out
where that first attack actually belongs. (bang) any luck? maybe you guessed that this was the 8th
note after the downbeat? I mean, I mentioned the Charleston pattern, so it'd make sense if these
two attacks lined up with the guitar stabs. but they don't. no, this note right here is on
beat 2. which is wild. the Charleston is delayed even more than it was in the guitar, but whereas
Andy returned to the normal downbeat in the second bar of the riff, John keeps that delay going,
starting the second bar on beat 2 as well. (bang) honestly, even with the drums, my ears keep
drifting back to hearing this as the downbeat: the rhythmic cues are so strong in this
part that even the backbeat snare can't keep me grounded. it's only when I listen to
it in the context of the full song: (bang) that I can actually square this circle. so what's my point? am I just trying to show
off how bad I am at rhythm? eh, maybe. I dunno, maybe it sounded like beat 2 to you the whole
time, but I'd be willing to bet it didn't, which ties back to a recurring theme in this song:
disorientation. there are two entirely reasonable, predictable ways for this bass part to line up
with the music around it. it does neither of them. instead, it fills the gaps after the chord
stabs, which are themselves already off-kilter, and then does this little run that lines up with
nothing and makes sense with nothing. and yet it all fits. not in a clear, one-to-one sort of
way, but this lack of alignment plays into that same anxiety that so many other parts
are building. the arrangement here is layers upon layers of chaos, and John's bass part
just happens to be the most chaotic of all. that leads into the verse, which is over the
same riff, so all we have to talk about here is Simon Le Bon's vocals. (bang) he seems to be
roughly mimicking the guitar riff. this run of high Es starts and ends on those two chord stabs
before dropping down almost an octave: (bang) so even though the line keeps going, it's pretty
clearly following that same rhythm. in the second bar, he again copies the guitar rhythm, and
he kinda copies the notes too. at least, these first two are the same, going from A to
G#. if he was perfectly mimicking the riff, he'd sing this: (bang) but because he stops after
the fourth note, that'd leave him hanging on A, a dissonance. instead, after the G#, he turns
around and walks up to B: (bang) so he can end the line somewhere stable. it's kind of a compromise,
but by starting the line the same way, he's able to make it sound close enough that, unless you're
listening carefully, it all just sort of fits. I suppose I could argue that this is another one of
the song's disorientation effects, since the two melodic lines do end up a whole step apart, but
I dunno, it all blends pretty well to me. the two instruments aren't similar enough timbres to sound
like they're trying to harmonize. they're just two different takes on the same shape, molded to fit
their own rhythmic needs. and that's pretty cool. after a couple lines of that, we get
our first change in harmony. up to now, it's been mostly riff-driven, but
the overall implication has been a static E major triad. the tag
at the end of the verse: (bang) drops down to D, the bVII. I don't really have
a lot to say about this: the bVII is a fairly standard sound in rock harmony, different
enough from the I to provide some contrast, but still capable of providing a strong,
satisfying resolution back to it. if you're gonna break up a long run of static harmony with another
chord, the bVII is the right choice. so, yeah, no real insight here, but the existence of this
tag is gonna be really important once we get to the chorus, so I'm acknowledging it now so I can
reference it later. that's called foreshadowing. anyway, that brings us to the chorus: (bang)
and I have to say something about these chords, because I have been losing my mind here. when I'm
working on these videos, I always try to get my transcriptions as accurate as possible, to make
sure the things I'm analyzing are the things that actually happen in the song. but I'm not perfect,
so part of that process includes double-checking my work by looking up other transcriptions
to see if they agree with me. and this time, I went deep. I looked up chord charts, tabs,
I even watched a bunch of tutorial videos, and almost none of the sources I could find
included this Bb chord. according to the internet, this progression is a bar of C, a bar
of G, then two bars of F. but, like, I have the stems. you can hear the move to Bb,
both in the guitar: (bang) and the bass. (bang) so… what? were my stems wrong somehow? maybe
I'd accidentally found someone else's recording, and they'd just added in this extra chord
for some reason? but no, I went back to the original track: (bang) and there's a Bb
chord there too. it's not hard to hear. what is happening? how did so many talented
guitarists and transcribers get this wrong? well, I have a theory. I blame Nick Rhodes.
the chorus includes a new synth line: (bang) descending through chord tones to match the
changing harmony, and while Andy and John both play the Bb chord, this line doesn't. Rhodes
hangs on an A until it's time to start over, at which point he walks back up through
B natural. there's no indication in this synth part that we've changed chords. but why
not? I can think of a couple reasons. first, he's walking down in steps, and there's
no Bb chord tone a step below A. in fact, A is a Bb chord tone. it's the major
7th. admittedly, it's a pretty spicy one, especially when most of the harmony is
played as power chords, but it still counts, and it lets him keep the end of the line
fairly close in range to the beginning, so the loop feels smooth. I suppose he could've
stepped up a half-step to Bb for this chord, but that would change the melodic trajectory, and
he probably wants to save that move for later. but also, this line is pretty similar to Le
Bon's vocals. (bang) these start a little higher, but they're also moving down chord tones in
steps, and this phrase only covers the first three bars. he does sing over the Bb chord: (bang)
but that's clearly a pick-up into the next phrase, not a continuation of the last one. so if Rhodes
is harmonizing Le Bon, and Le Bon stops after the third bar, then it makes sense for Rhodes to stop
moving as well. either way, if you hear a fairly prominent A for two bars, and you know the first
bar is an F chord, it does make sense to assume the second one is too. and it's a hard mistake to
catch: again, the guitar's playing power chords, and F5 and Bb5 aren't all that different.
if you play one over the other, they're not gonna clash, so if you're not listening super
carefully, it's easy to miss that it's wrong. but it is. please play the Bb. it
sounds so much better with the Bb. alright, with that out of the way, let's
get back to the analysis. why does it sound better with the Bb? well, let's
consider the movement through the loop. we start on the root, go down a perfect 4th,
or, in guitar terms, down a string, then down a whole step, up a string, and up a whole step.
he's just moving around in a fun little circle. this leads to really smooth, ergonomic motion,
but it also creates strong harmonic motion, with each chord driving into the next one. now, we
could still get that without the Bb: F can resolve to C just fine. but stopping on the F chord for
two bars kills the momentum, and adding the Bb back in gives it a really satisfying, symmetrical
shape that makes the return to C feel way more satisfying. it's that same bVII-I thing we saw
in the tag, just in a new key… hold on. what? oh, yeah, did I not mention? we changed keys,
from E major in the verse to C major in the chorus. that's a pretty drastic shift: the
two keys only have 3 notes in common, they share zero chords, and it's not really prepared
in any traditional way. this should be jarring. but it's not. why not? well, for starters, we've
been playing kinda fast and loose with the idea of a key. I said the verse was in E major, but
it's really just on that one chord. there's not a lot of strong cadences or anything to clearly
establish the rest of the key. the only other chord we get is D, which isn't even in E major.
we could say this means we were actually in E mixolydian, or we can say this chord is borrowed
from E minor. I don't really care either way, I don't think it matters. what does matter is that
most of the tonality is left undefined, and this D gets us used to the idea of hearing a bVII, so
when the chorus starts on C, it seems reasonable enough to hear it as a bVI. the G could also fit
as a bIII, so it's not until they hit the F chord that it becomes clear we haven't just switched
to E minor. couple that with the strong F-Bb-C resolution chain at the end, and our new key is
established, with no clear, awkward boundary. and they also reinforce it in the melody. while E
major and C major don't have many notes in common, one note they do share is E, so Le Bon
helps cover the transition by starting on that note. (bang) from here, he steps down
to D: (bang) which, again, we're already used to hearing in the old key. this is starting to
look a lot like the tag, where he started on E, then walked down the scale to B, the 5th: (bang)
but instead, this time, he settles comfortably on C: (bang) the new root. it's not a direct copy
of the tag line, but by taking some notes we're already used to, with clear melodic implications,
and restructuring them into a classic 3-2-1 walkdown, Le Bon eases us into the new key without
having to deal with all the potential clashes. that's the how, but what about the why?
why change keys here at all? and, look, I know I'm gonna sound like a broken record,
but the answer is disorientation. they cover their tracks well enough that it's
not immediately obvious what happened, but it's not like they don't want you to notice.
remember how I said the existence of the tag in the verse was gonna be important in the chorus?
this is why. I said the chord loop was this, and it is, but every second time, instead of
the Bb chord, they end with D major. (bang) and they really emphasize it, too: the guitar
switches from quietly strumming power chords to this big voicing of the full triad, the synth does
a big leap up to the D: (bang) and Le Bon joins him: (bang) with a clear lyrical accent as well.
this chord is a big deal. and that makes sense: we already heard it in tag, but there it was
the bVII, resolving cleanly back to I, whereas here it's… uh, yeah. I don't know. I mean, if I'd
seen this in my theory homework back in college, I'd probably call it a secondary dominant, but in
this context that feels like such a weak analysis that I'm not even gonna bother explaining what
it means. more than anything, this feels like the band pointing out the key change after the
fact, forcing the abrupt realization that you aren't where you thought you were. you're
suddenly lost in unfamiliar surroundings, and this thing that used to makes sense
has transformed into something alien. the entire key change sets up this moment,
and they're milking it for all it's worth. the only other thing we need to
talk about is the breakdown: (bang) but I think you can guess what I'm gonna
say here. it's all disorientation. Roger drops out the backbeat snare and
adds a 16th-note hi hat: (bang) removing the rhythmic compass and drowning you in
a sea of undifferentiated beats, punctuated with the occasional big, Simmons tom. Andy abandons
the rhythm, instead playing these long, wailing harmonic dives. (bang) that random synth part is
also missing, so the only harmonic information comes from John's bass: (bang) which is providing
a bit of an anchor by holding the same basic rhythm as the verses, but with occasional accents
on the notes above and below the root. sonically, it's a very dense section, with a lot of things
going on at once. it's hard to focus on any one piece. and at the center of it all is this thick,
ragged breathing: (bang) that tells us we're th e ones being hunted. and that's pretty much it.
the breakdown feeds back into the chorus, which they loop until it fades out. over that fade-out,
they fade in the sound of a woman moaning: (bang) because while '80s music is a lot of things,
subtle isn't one of them. and that's why I love this song. it knows what it's trying to be,
and it goes to completely unnecessary extremes in order to be exactly that thing. it's cute, it's
good songwriting, and it is unbelievably '80s. and hey, thanks for watching, thanks to our
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