A Graphical and Historical Analysis (Justification?) of why I like "Over It" by Katharine McPhee

UPDATE: Linked!

I heard "Over It" for the first time in the gym yesterday. I had no idea what it was, but my ears perked up and I felt pangs of wonder. I looked up the song and found it was the first song by American Idol-er Katharine McPhee. My co-worker told me I had McPheever. I was very sad.

Embarrassed and also very embarrassed, I set about trying to figure out why I was liking this song so much. My first defense: a bit of history! The song was written by a dude who's written at least 20 or 30 all-time guilty pleasure songs, including Eternal Flame. Possibly the biggest guilty pleasure pop song ever.

My second and more scientific defense: Melodic analysis and graphs!

First of all, I must stress that my interest in "Over It" is restricted entirely to the chorus. Like many other pop songs, all the songwriting energy seems focused on giving the chorus an enormous hook, and not much is left over for the sucky, bland verses. I've heard the song 3 times now and I can remember all of the chorus and none of the verses.

What made this song's chorus reach out and stab my ears in a good way was intervals. It is common practice in nearly all compositional styles, from pop to Western Classical to traditional Indian Raga, to have scalar motion in a melody. The best example I can think of off the top of my head is "It's Gonna Be Me" by *NSYNC. Here's a non-musical illustration of that melody (pardon my complete lacking of drawing ability, even on a computer):



See? Scalar motion. The melody of that chorus goes right down the scale. If you were playing the melody on a piano, you'd be pressing consecutive keys on a keyboard.

When the movement between notes in a melody isn't strictly scalar, the intervals between notes are often small, and the size of the intervals themselves often remains consistent to create a familiar hook. "My Love" by Justin Timberlake is a great example:



That's some very simple, repetitive intervallic motion there. It's like you're going down the scale on the keyboard again, but you're playing a little hopscotch - first you use pinky finger, then skip to the middle finger, up to the ring finger, skip down to the pointer finger. 5-3-4-2 (for the first line in the graph). Very simple, nice intervals.

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Now that we've established 2 common types of melodic tools, take a look at the graph for "Over It."



WHOA! What's going on here? It's jumping all over the place! 5 notes down! 3 notes up! 8 notes down! 5 notes up! Its motion cannot be predicted!

It's very, very uncommon to hear those kinds of intervals as a main melody in a song. Especially a top-40-aimed pop song, but really any song at all. Songwriters take chances in a lot of different ways, but this part of songwriting isn't often toyed with. It's maybe the literary equivalent of a non-linear narrative. As soon as I heard this, I wanted to hear it again, just because it surprised me so much the first time I heard it. Kinda like the first time you see Memento or Run Lola Run or one of them things. Kudos to you, pop songsmiths! You got me!


...I'm still a little embarrassed.


P.S. Oh, if you want to hear this crazy chorus, hit up McPhee Central.

P.P.S. There's a fair chance I'll be making the ringtone for this song.