I Love It!: Icona Pop’s Feminine Endings

Icona Pop’s “I Love It” is definitely going to be one of the big songs of 2013. It’s a great little pop song that’s all over charts and in several advertisements. Some people are writing about the sociological and cultural…

Scream: On Kelis, Human Capital, & Music

Scream: On Kelis, Human Capital, & Music

Recently, there have been a few EDM-pop songs about screaming: Usher’s “Scream,” will.i.am & Britney’s “Scream & Shout,” and Kelis’s “Scream” (which is older than these former two, but only by a year or two). I’ve written about “Scream &…

Schenker and “The Soar”: Modifying tonal conventions for not-really-tonal music

Schenker and “The Soar”: Modifying tonal conventions for not-really-tonal music

“Rhythm” and “Harmony” are often offered as contrasting, if not opposed, ways of organizing pieces of music. As the famous diagram attests, Western music uses harmony (chords) as its way of organizing pieces of music: all you need to start…