Sunday, January 14, 2018

"Shut Down"

I was recently thinking about "Shut Down," and I realized something about the melody.  The end of the line "But the 413's really diggin' in" is sung to a descending melody, so there's a musical representation of that "diggin' in."  It's sung to the musical phrase Db C Ab, and since Ab is the lowest note in the lead vocal melody, there's a sense of reaching the lowest depth.  I'm pretty sure the song is in Ab major, so there's even a sense of Ab's being the musical foundation, the lowest one can reach in the metaphorical bedrock.