Changes

I've been meaning to post this for a while and now seems like as good a time as any considering the date. Maybe it's just the fact that I try to write songs myself, but I've always been fascinated by transitions. Most of the time in popular music, verse leads to chorus and back again (by way of a bridge or two) and we're generally unperturbed. Even if the songs and artists aren't to our personal taste, everything seems like it's how it ought to be. When it works, we're so engrossed in the track we forget the mechanics behind the thing and just enjoy it for what it is. The wires are hidden in plain "sight."

But not always. Every so often, there comes a song with a part which simply doesn't work. Take Dinosaur Jr.'s cover of The Cure's "Just Like Heaven." For the first minute + or so, it's a slice of fuzzy indie pop. Then, the awkward faux-metal screaming chorus comes in and knocks the song off-kilter. I'm sure this was deliberate but it's a damaging move. The tempo shift stifles the perfect momentum that was building until that point. Crucially, it feels like it belongs in a different, bad song (and a gratuitous attempt to differentiate it from other versions.) The jump back to the verse keeps it from being totally ruined, however, even this can't save the damage done by the offending chorus.

Have you ever found yourself bugged by a botched segway? Why?

I'm probably not as familiar with them as some folks here, but I definitely think that cover is the best example of a bad change I've ever heard from them. The offending chorus is made all the worse because everything that surrounds it is comparatively very good. Come to think of it, it's probably the best example of this kind of thing I can think of for any artist right now.

I never really got into them, but this gels better with me than I remember a lot of their music doing. Someone once cited an Iron Maiden song as an example of this to me, but I can't remember which track it was.

And a synonym for segue according to the good folks at Oxford.

Segue/segway. Potato/po-tah-to.

Derail derailed.

Any other picks?

Happy New Year!