Such Great Differences
Background sounds and music play a crucial role in the perception of what they are accompanying. The weight this phenomenon can be experienced by muting the television during an epic battle scene, or during the climactic kiss of a romance movie. Without the music that guides our hearts through our ears, the intense potential for powerful emotions dies into uncertain monotony. Another example of how much music affects perception can be found in the original and cover version of the song “Such Great Heights” by The Postal Service and Iron & Wine respectively. Each group applies different music to the same poetic lyrics to create unique performances with different meanings.
The Postal Service’s original version of the song begins with an electronic intro, presumably played on a synthesizer. The timbre of each note is almost a plain sine wave, heavily panned either to the left or right, immediately grabbing the listener’s attention and creating somewhat of a futuristic pop sort of feel. While this synthesizer part reoccurs later in the song, it does not clearly define the chord structure of the song and ends as soon as the vocal part begins. When the singer belts out the opening lyrics (0:41), his strong and confident tone quality seem to reinforce the futuristic and youthful nature of the song.
In contrast to the energetic electronics of The Postal Service’s original introduction, the cover done by Iron & Wine begins with a finger picked guitar playing the same part and chord progression it will play for the duration of the song. When I first heard this song, the soothing guitar instantly reminded me of the soft lullabies my father used to play to me as a child. While my own specific personal experiences are no doubt unique, the cover introduction is unquestionably much more relaxed than the original. This lullaby feel is further enhanced by the singer’s mature voice that sings almost as soft as a whisper, but just loud enough to have a pitch.
There is a special emphasis in both versions of the song on a particular set of measures in each of the verses; the first example of which is heard on the lyrics “mirror images” (TPS-0:46, I&W-0:32). In The Postal Service’s original, the note doesn’t fit into the chord structure of the song and jumps out to the listener like a weed in an otherwise clean-cut yard. In the Iron & Wine cover version, the very same phrase is smoother, yet the singer not only uses a more chordal pitch but also employs melismas and other pleasing musical devices that aren’t heard anywhere else in the song. Both versions produce significance to the very same phrase, but the ways in which they go about doing so create a different kind of importance to each.
As mentioned above, The Postal Service makes much use of electronics and studio technology. In fact, the phrases of the verses overlap by a beat, forcing the singer to sound two pitches at once. For example, in the line “…when we kiss they're perfectly aligned/and I have to speculate…” (0:49) the word “aligned” happens on the same beat as the words “And I.” Therefore, these phrases could not realistically be sung by one person in a live setting. Iron & Wine changes the rhythm of these words slightly so that this is not a problem for a lone singer; however despite the seeming intention to stick to the bare acoustic basics it is clear that overdubbing was used because a breath is audible during the word “aligned” (0:39). A small detail, yet an easy recording studio fix. This inclusion was probably intentional, perhaps a foreshadowing of overdubbed harmonies yet to come.
Both versions of the song have staggered instrumental entrances, but the effect is more prevalent in The Postal Service’s version. The song begins with the synthesized blips, soon underscored by a bass line (0:21). The drums begin to fade in (0:25) – an uncommon entrance for any percussion – while the blips fade out, leading way to the vocal entrance (0:41). In the Iron & Wine cover, the vocal entrance (0:20) is the only obvious entrance of sorts, with the exception of the mandolin solo at the end. Closer listening will reveal vocal harmonies layered into the cover as the song progresses, the first of which enters on the second phrase of the first verse (1:01). It is interesting that Iron & Wine would choose to include these harmonies in their acoustic cover, because they are not present in the original. The harmonies are soft and gentle and seem to give the voice an almost dreamy, angelic quality; as if the listener is drifting off to sleep and the harmonies are part of a dream. This makes the lyrics seem to be about flying to “such great heights” in a dream world rather than a futuristic one. As the dream continues the harmonies become more and more involved until they become a whole new instrument (3:43) is embodied by the dream in the form of a mandolin.
Cues for how to interpret the songs can be found in the music videos that the bands produce. The Postal Service’s music video for “Such Great Heights” depicts moving robotic parts and a male and a female astronaut. Based on initial impressions, one might think that this is a word play on the title and nothing more. On closer inspection, many of the scenes seem to have a strong sexual connotation: various robotic insertions and pulsations (0:43, 1:21, 1:28, 2:17, 2:55), subtle crotch shots (1:02), and machine parts that oddly seem to resemble human breasts (0:45) are only a few of the sexual suggestions within the music video. By contrast, Iron & Wine does not have a music video available. This could be due to a lack of funding, but is not likely as the group Confide has a music video for their cover of the song, even though their version is much less popular than the other two. Perhaps Iron & Wine chose not to produce a music video in order to maintain the dreamy, imaginative quality that makes their version so unique. While the material in these videos cannot be experienced solely by listening to the song, it suggests what the artists might have had in mind when they wrote and recorded the songs.
Although both songs use the very same lyrics and almost the same melody, the musical accompaniment drastically changes the meaning of each song. The Postal Service’s original is a ballad of youthful euphoric love, while the stylistic differences in Iron & Wine’s cover turn the same song into a dreamy lullaby. This was achieved by a variations in methods including instrumentation, melody, and vocal qualities. Each artist took the same poetic lyrics and by changing only the musical qualities, created such great differences.
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