Begin the Begin over and over/Begin the Begin over and over

On over-exposure when listening to music and The National's Not in Kansas

Apr 29, 2021

image from "i am easy to find" — a film by mike mills / an album by the national

Let’s start by defining exposure. Here, I don’t feel as if exposure is including cultural exposure, i.e. a celebrity or artist being in the public eye too frequently that you start to get sick of them. I am using exposure to describe the process of experiencing a song or album, just pure exposure to a song.

Exposure adds and takes away value from songs. A song that is easily accessible and uncomplicated on the first listen might, after 10 plays, start to sound tired or too simple, too predictable. On the other hand, a song that felt inaccessible, too complicated or fussy the first time you listened might reveal itself to you slower— allowing for a longer lifespan.

Then there’s the very rare case of your perfect song. I won’t say the perfect song because that implies objectivity and this is not a discussion of objectively perfect songs which are few and far between. I wouldn’t even say your perfect song is necessarily your favourite song. Your perfect song is the song that clicks instantly on first listen and every time after that while your favourite song may have added value that relies on outside influence— people or experiences that are intrinsically linked with your enjoyment of the song.

In his book, You May Also Like, Tom Vanderbilt describes our relationship with complexity in music as a U shape. We dislike things that are too simple or too complex, and the sweet spot is somewhere in the middle. Songs should be complex enough that we can find new things but simple enough that we don’t have to struggle while listening. Your perfect song fits that sweet spot like a lost puzzle piece.

I remember the first time I listened to The National’s I Am Easy to Find (The National being a band notorious for their albums existing as ‘growers’ that reveal more and more on every listen) in May of 2019. It was the first time I had heard any music by the band but I knew of their connection to artists like Phoebe Bridgers and the director Mike Mills, and I knew (to quote the last newsletter) that they were One of Those Artists That People Like, so, on seeing that they had a new album on Apple Music I pressed play, not knowing what the music would sound like.

If you haven’t heard the album, you may be unaware that the first song—“You Had Your Soul with You”—begins with a glitchy, repeating guitar riff before Matt Berninger begins to sing. Berninger’s voice, along with the many women who are featured throughout the album, felt instantly accessible to me but the production- dense layers of instruments and electronics— made me feel as if I was being held at arm’s length, unable to grasp or really hear the words they were singing.

It wasn’t until the 10th song on the 15 track album that something changed. “Not in Kansas” is set against another repetitive guitar riff but, unlike “You Had Your Soul with You”, for the first few minutes there is little else going on in the track besides the simple electric guitar and Berninger’s lyrics.

If this song hadn’t been on the album I doubt I would have gone back to it. The sparseness of the production gave way to the lyrics. As someone who has always gravitated to evocative writing, this was what I needed to understand that there was more to this music than the clouds of sound that were enveloping all the other songs.

As I relistened to the album, the other songs began to reveal themselves to me. Some were quick—“Oblivions”, “Quiet Light”, “Rylan”—some took longer—“So Far So Fast”, “Hairpin Turns”—but “Not in Kansas” stayed at the top of my rankings.

I have listened to “Not in Kansas” over 100 times. Over 11 hours of that song (!), but every time I hear it it still feels like the first time. It can still cut me right to the core hearing the way Berninger sings “I always wake up way before the weather”.

This should not be the case. Even I, notorious for re-watching, reading, and listening, get sick of things. I haven’t listened to the Oh Wonder album Ultralife really since it was one of my most played in 2017, even Julien Baker’s newest album doesn’t feel as inviting as it did a few weeks ago. I don’t dislike either of these albums (I’m sure Little Oblivions will still be one of my favourites of 2021) but it’s almost as if they have reached their best-before date. Honestly, some of the songs bore me now. I’ve gotten all I could get out of most of the songs on these albums but “Not in Kansas” has yet to bore me and I think I know why.

In Why We Love Music by John Powell, he writes that one of the “baseline pleasures” of a song is its repetitiveness— we like to know where the song is going, that the verses will have the same melody, that the chorus will repeat, that the artist will sound like what they’ve always sounded like, etcetera, etcetera. But this is all to a point. We need that repetitiveness to be punctuated by surprise— a bridge is often the catalyst for this in the classic ABABCB song structure. According to Powell, a surprise change in tune often turns on the brain’s danger signals — something different is here! Something bad! But, when we realise that the something different is merely a different melody, not a total shift in song, the negative-to-positive reaction heightens the brain’s pleasure signals.

Now, I’ve made you aware that “Not in Kansas” is repetitive in its musical backbone— a guitar line that is accompanied by very few other instruments. When the guitar is replaced by a violin for a short stint, it is still the same melodic pattern. The song also repeats the four-line chorus four times with very little change in the vocal performance. The verses, however, are long and sprawling. There is still repetition in some lines— the title of this essay is an obvious (and slightly meta) example but another example is the call back to the third verse’s couplet “Now I’m reading whatever you give me/It’s half your fault so half forgive me” in the fourth verse, where Berninger slightly alters the lyrics and sings “I read whatever it is you give me/It’s half your fault so half forgive me”.

The vocal performance also stays quite consistent in its melody throughout, right up until you reach the biggest surprise of the song, two minutes in when a chorus of women (Gail Ann Dorsey, Lisa Hannigan, and Kate Stables) sing the first verse from a song released in 1994 called Noble Experiment by the band Thinking Fellers Union Local 282. At this moment, the guitar drops out and the vocalists are accompanied by a piano. Many disgruntled (male) members of The National’s fanbase would say that this interlude and the return of the choir-like vocals at the end of the song should be replaced by two more rambling Berninger-led verses but that would, ultimately, ruin the listening experience and the song itself.

There would still be the quiet surprises in the lyrics, like “I’m binging hard on Annette Bening” and “I’m leaving home and I’m scared that I won’t/Have the balls to punch a nazi” but the shift in melody and eradication of Matt Berninger’s voice means that when he returns, lamenting his “shadow getting shorter” we appreciate both the interlude and the verses more than if Noble Experiment only existed in its 1994 form.

I am aware that I have some obsessive tendencies regarding content (an alternate description of this newsletter) but I can still feel as if I have been over-exposed to a song or album if that song or album doesn’t provide me with an interesting listening experience when I go back to it. Every time I listen to Not in Kansas the song still feels fresh. It still evokes the feeling of knowing I could discover a new favourite album or artist like it did when I first heard it two years ago. Over-exposure exists, sure it does, but when you know you’ve found your perfect song, you’ll find the reasons why it could never feel old or boring; the reasons it could never be ruined by pressing play for the hundredth time.

The Vibes

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The Vibes

Begin the Begin over and over/Begin the Begin over and over

On over-exposure when listening to music and The National's Not in Kansas

Hi and welcome to the first essay of The Vibes. If you haven’t read The First Ten Vibes go do that! Now, enjoy my analysis of over-exposure in music and why Not in Kansas by The National is my perfect song.

Discussion about this post