Why 'When she loved me' makes me cry

i've been thinking a lot about this song lately it's now been over 20 years since it was released as part of toy story 2 and about that long since i heard it for the first time but despite how many times i've heard it whenever i play the opening two bars it always sends shivers down my spine i don't even need to hear the rest of the song to get this feeling it's like being full with emotion i'm saturated when she loved me was written by randy newman for pixar's third feature film it comes at a moment when woody is about to leave jesse behind but for jesse there is no home to return to in the next three minutes we see a montage of her time with emily and the song plays out underneath with no interruption musically it's built from very simple foundations repeating chords in the piano accompanied by soft strings and woodwind newman uses chord sequences that are not only found in many love songs but also in a lot of his other work it begins with four chords d minor a minor first inversion g dominant seventh with a b in the bass and then the minor four chord b-flat minor these four chords are charged with emotion that relationship between the minor iv chord and the tonic is so often found in music associated with love remember me from coco and the second movement from rachmaninoff's piano concerto number two are just two of many examples but that g dominant seventh in f major is also such a key component of love songs and also of randy newman's music in particular this is known as a secondary dominant as it's the v chord to the actual dominant c major this chord adds tenderness to the music it can feel melancholic in some contexts and bright and uplifting in others just listen to it in you've got a friend in me or almost there both by randy newman for when she loved me it serves both purposes and when combined with the minor iv chord as in the opening it provides not only harmonic complexity but also a depth of emotion that goes way beyond what you can achieve with simple diatonic chords okay so how does newman use these chords part of the genius of this song is not only which chord he employs but also how he moves between them after the first two bars we land on f major and we hear these descending parallel sixths in the middle parts adding movement and life to the harmony when we get to the first verse then the melody takes over this eighth note idea and the piano plays block chords f major g minor seven f major first inversion and so on it's really simple newman is sticking to clean harmony here all built on top of this stepwise bass line moving mostly in tones or semitones at a time there are two key harmonic moments though in this opening phrase first when the bass line moves to the b natural giving us the same secondary dominant that we heard in the opening and the other is when the b natural reverts to a b flat on the downbeat of the next bar from c major we hear this half diminished chord e minor seven flat five this is an unsettled chord and wants to be resolved and so newman does this by moving into d minor via a major allowing the music to return again into f major within the simple harmony of this opening verse we get these small pockets of complexity of tension and release and this is why it feels so emotional it's not clean it's not perfect it's just the right amount of imperfection so on top of this sits the melody the tune guided by sarah mclaughlin's beautiful performance of the song feels tied to the piano part together each grouping of chords is accompanied by a phrase in the melody feeling like a breath in and out and like the music is all one single living thing [Music] this definitely comes from newman's approach to writing the song which we can get an insight into from his demo version the melody for newman flows from the piano part giving it this really natural organic feel [Music] and the lyrics then sit mostly syllabically on top of the melody with the tune rarely straying away from the notes in the chords underneath [Music] in this respect the song is quite like a nursery rhyme not in that the tune or the lyrics are simple but that they evoke a childlike simplicity and innocence and after all that is what jesse is trying to recall a time when things were better when things were easier more innocent in the first two verses she speaks of the time she and emily shared together and the music similarly speaks of something simple and unclouded in the second verse we move into b-flat major the subdominant a newman continues the parallel thirds in between the melody and the accompaniment two lines like two people interconnected although we get like in verse one some dissonant more complex harmony it always resolves as it has done before very quickly back into f major it's only really when we get into verse 3 that the harmonic language of the song begins to radically change at the end of the second verse we get a sudden introduction of e and d-flats recalling the b-flat minor chord that we heard in the introduction this establishes a new tone in the song on top of a chromatically descending bass line we now get some much more adventurous harmony borrowed chords modal interchange and diminished harmony as jesse talks about emily drifting away the harmony also drifts away from f major the first half ends in d minor but this moves again via a chromatically descending bass line into an e flat minor tonality we then hear again the descending parallel sixth and it lands on a very dissonant chord a flat minor over a c natural which resolves via beautiful voice leading into c dominant seventh the music might have resolved here but the story hasn't in verse 4 we move back into the opening idea but now it feels completely different changed by the complex and disjointed language of the middle section now this simple music feels bittersweet and the more dissonant harmony even more pained we like jesse have been changed by the story changed by the musical journey that the song has taken us on music has a way of telling a story unlike anything else randy newman's choice of musical language says something that words never could it creates nuance allows a more complex tale to be told and gives us a chance to feel to really experience the emotion when she loved me might on the surface be about the relationship between a toy and her child but for me and for so many people it's about much more it's about the connection two people can share between friends between mother and son between husband and wife between anyone and the grief caused by losing the person you love we've all been through a period where we've had time time to think to reflect and to consider what is really important in our lives and to consider our relationship with time and what we do with it i think the answer to this conundrum of why music really does matter lies in the strange rapport music makes between time and love if you are lucky enough to be a parent or to fall in love then your experience of time changes it's not that time stands still far from it nor that you lose track of it in a world of excitement rather time thickens and you become aware of its granularity as if it were under a microscope you cherish every moment and i think what most people would conclude after all of this is that it's not work or things or money but other people that you cherish you cherish them because you're human [Music] this music makes me think about all the people in my life and how much they mean to me and for that i'll always be grateful thank you for watching

Channel: Listening In

Views: 76,089

Keywords: Why 'When she loved me' makes me cry, When she loved me randy newman, randy newman, when she loved me analysis, when she loved me piano, toy story 2, toy story 2 when she loved me, when she loved me cover, toy story 2 song, pixar music, pixar music cry

Id: 0dNe7Q8bayI

Length: 10min 13sec (613 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 17 2021