Hi everybody! I'm Rick Beato! Today's episode of Everything Music is called What Makes This Song Great Episode 2. The song we'll be looking at today is from The Police's 1983 record Ghost In The Machine And it's called Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic. Let's get started. Okay. This song is really interesting on many levels The first thing is that it's not tuned to standard tuning, so anybody that's ever tried to figure this out realizes that it's in-between G and A-flat literally fifty-cents sharp. What I think they did is, that they sped the tape up to get the tempo a little bit faster. It probably didn't feel right at the tempo Sped the tape up and said - that sounds great! It also makes the tune have a really unique sound. Most people would not realize it, if they didn't have perfect pitch, but it does have a unique sound that you can't really identify. But that, I think, is because of this The other thing is that this is one of the only songs I can think of that has a Lydian bassline in the verse - either in the verse, or the chorus - I don't know any songs that really have a Lydian bassline that is this literal. So it begins on G or G, in-between G and A-flat, and it comes right up the scale: G, A B C-sharp - and that's the verse - okay? It literally walks up 1, 2, 3, sharp, 4 Let's take a listen to the intro... Okay, so the bass - here's Sting's bass... He's playing a very compressed fretless bass 1, 2, 3, sharp 4 Okay? They also have a little hi-hat thing that I really want to talk about, here at the beginning... What you notice when you hear this hi-hat is that there's a delay on the hi-hat There's actually delay on the drums in the verses. There's a delay in the hi-hat so you can hear it right here So by soloing the drums... You can hear that little echo on the drums Now, the guitars walk right up in the same way... It's guitar with an after-swell... Walks right up the Lydian scale... And then, my favorite part - the keyboard part... Okay, the keyboard part is really two different phrases. So it starts out... And then, the first time, it goes... Okay? The second time through the phrase it repeats the same thing, but the ending of the phrase is a little different Right here, so check it out... Let's talk about the melody now, so the range of the melody is basically from A, above middle-C, up to F-sharp, the range of a sixth, then it starts out here B...and...and I know this is a quarter-step, so it's kind of confusing here, but, ah...A, B to D and it goes D to C-sharp, C-sharp, D, F-sharp - in that range of a sixth - so from And it uses a G Lydian scale of the G Lydian mode, to go along with the chord progression You notice that the melody bounces around between the fifth and the sharp-four, right? Up to the major seventh of that Lydian mode, the G Lydian mode, but the first phrase: In my heart...ends on the A And it makes a nice sixth interval with that sharp-four there, which is why it's a great resting note And of course that ends up on the F-sharp which is a great note because it works with the chord progression that happens right here in the pre-chorus So this pre-chorus is really interesting because it really sets up the feel of the next section of the chorus. It... it goes from the slow-moving really moody ethereal Lydian sound of the verse and then it turns into a calypso tune, essentially D, G, A, D - listen to the bass part on it Listen over the keys... with the keys in the build-up...then... Okay, so let's talk about the chorus here. This is a classic technique, where you have a break and you allow the chorus to come in unaccompanied, okay, so you hit the...they hit the break here, the whole band... And on: 'thing' the whole band comes in. It really gives...when...when the beginning of the hook starts on a break and then you power into the chorus, when you are all hitting together on an important word of the chorus, it gives it a lot... So everytime, every...every downbeat there has an important word and the lyric lands right on the downbeat. Let's talk about what the guitar does in the chorus, so the guitar then goes to this reggae What we call a skank rhythm here Sounds like he has an auto-wah on it One, two, three, four - one, two, three, four - the skank happens in reggae on two and four Okay, as we just saw in the guitar part, the chorus is simply going from A to D or five to one - check it out... A, D, 4, 5, 1, 5, flat-6, B-flat This is one of the most unique chord changes here, this is what makes Sting a genius as a writer. So you're hearing this... and the last time to the flat-six. Once it goes to the flat-six, check out what the keyboard does... Okay, so the keyboard goes from B-flat major and then it drops down to F-major. I'm doing my F at 9 over A, but the bass is playing F, so it's playing the root of the chord, then it goes down to and then it walks back into the G Lydian part. This is really unusual, so flat six then...so you're going B-flat to F-major over A then you start the Lydian walk-up So there's a complete change of mode there...back in the verse... And that note - D... Is... works perfectly over all those chords. I mean, it's incredibly ingenious So let's listen, then we go into the second verse and listen how the keyboard does its little turnaround here... Really interesting - there's that little out-of-tune note that Sting sings on: 'met'. Here, listen... He drifts flat there, and it really gives it a unique sound I think Anybody that...ah...that knows the song notices that if you're a musician, but it's really... it's cool. Yeah, and if I solo the keyboards and the guitar, check it out... So the keyboards have gone into a high register... And the guitar is simply doing a pattern Like that - if you listen to the verse part, right? The guitar... And the delay goes through there, then back to the skank, so the bridge actually does something unusual again. It goes to the flat-six chord, like it does in the interlude between the first chorus and the second verse. The bass is going between B-flat, and F, but check this out... Listen to what the keyboard does here... It's going between G and A, so it's going between G and A with this pattern, so it goes... And then it's coming down this... A Aeolian or A-natural minor sound there, so it's going from... Check it out... Then it moves into a new pattern that goes between, ah...F, G, D, F, G, C, G - check it out... So the building - the last chorus - goes between B-flat and C - check out the guitar part... So it's going... Come between those two chords, right? And then it rises here... Then you have that filter sweep in the synthesizer and They go up into D, to set up the last chorus And then we have the: 'ee-ohs' Then the chorus goes back to B-flat at the end, but it changes again - check it out... Brings in this little... Square-wave synth D-major, B-flat, then G-minor It goes to the flat-six chord, B-flat, but check it out... F, G-minor, A-minor, B-flat and then F, C, D-major modulation, then B-flat, F G-minor, A-minor, B-flat F, C, D - you can hear the key change...G-minor, A-minor, B-flat, F, C, D then he goes to the 'ee-oho!' part here, with the harmony on it And we have that little...duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh... Sequencer keyboard...keyboard sequencer part...and then... The chorus ad-lib there, which is really powerful Walk up, then... goes to D there And then one of the most unusual things Then it gets back to the Lydian bassline This is one of the few instances that I can think of that radio stations when the tune came out would always play the tune to the end of the fade Because there's new melodic material coming in, even on the...at the very end of the fade, that beautiful recap of the verse melodies With a different melody That's right at the bottom of the fade, you hear that, and it's super-powerful I...I remember when I first heard it I would always turn up the car stereo when that happened, when it got to the end of that fade. Everybody would do that and nowadays you think of a radio station...would always...would talk over those things, but that was really just another part of the tune It's...it's a reiteration of the verse, with a completely new melody right at the bottom of the fade Really incredible thing. There's a few production elements I want to talk about in here One of them is the drum part - the space that Stewart Copeland leaves in his kick drum pattern in the chorus. He's got a very sparse kick drum pattern and it really opens up room for the bass to create this rhythmic movement. Check out the bass and drums in the chorus... Another thing that's really interesting, is there's a slight change in the bass part in the second chorus He changes the rhythm here - check this out... Right here! He infuses a...more of a reggae rhythm there I think it's the only time it happens in the song But it really grabs your ear and makes you wait for it. Arrangementally, another thing The Police were masters at are hooklines that happen instrumentally in the track There's this entire octave part that goes on at the end of the song, and it's...really, kind of takes over this part... That's really the... That's the main countermelody for the entire ending of the song. It's really effective This is one of the most complex pop songs that I've ever heard. I believe if it came out today it'd still be a massive hit That's all for now! Please subscribe here to my Everything Music YouTube channel And hit the notification button to let you know when a new video's coming out and when I'm going live. Thanks for watching!
