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What's In The
Groove?
"Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This"
by Wayne Wadhams
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There is no way to say for sure what specific elements, sounds
or aspects of a record make it a HIT. Yet every hit has a
few key things that grab our attention and make it memorable.
Reviewing a long list of hits, we find that many of the same
or analogous elements work over and over, in their separate
contexts, to create their charisma. Some of these have to
do with the song itself, others with the way it is arranged,
performed, or with the recording and production process.
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Finally, some factors may work from the outside, i.e., current
events, trends in society, marketing, etc.
Heres how a song recorded in a dingy, warehouse attic on an
8-track became one of the biggest hits of the 1980's:
Eurythmics, "Sweet Dreams Are Made of This"
Lead vocal: Annie Lennox
From the album: Sweet Dreams, originally released 1983.
CD issued 1987: RCA CD# RCD 25447
Music and lyrics by Annie Lennox, David Stewart
Produced by David Stewart
Recorded by D. Stewart, A. Williams, and R. Crash in a London warehouse
Key: C minor
Tempo: 126 bpm
Time signature: 4/4
Key elements: Riff, mood, vocal, chorus, artists look, recording
Signature: Mechanistic, dehumanized, synthetic tracks; Lennox's
haunting, doleful, sometimes soulful voice; grim lyrics focusing
on the risks, danger, and pitfalls of life and love; the Look!
"Sweet Dreams" begins with its signature two-bar progression,
a hypnotic loop of 1flat-65. No chords: just pulsating
eighth-note arpeggios sound on a reedy synthesizer patch, prowling
ominously left and right. A constant quarter-note kick drum beats
time, while the downbeat of each two-measure phrase is marked by
a heavy, ringing floor tom or similar-sounding Brazilian sordu.
Altogether, the feel is grim, mildly horrific, and definitely threatening.
Lennox's rich, soulful voice enters, dry and sibilant. In eight
terse lines, she surveys mankind's dark, perverted motives. Like
Martha in Edward Albee's play, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf,"
or Philip Marlowe, the protagonist of Joseph Conrad's novella, "The
Heart of Darkness," Lennox pronounces that we are all jungle
creatures, terrified by the eyes staring at us from the void.
The dual choruses are totally dry, stark, and devoid of emotion.
In contrast, each release paints a pitiful, highly stylized picture
of mankind's lot. A whiplike snare drum drives the beat while the
synths prowl over a variant of the original progression.
Two soulful voices harmonize plaintive "ooh's" in deep
reverb on the left, while a catlike lead vocal writhes and shouts
from the depths of hell on the right. Chills creep up my spine as
images of subterranean torture and abuse flash across my mind.
The bridge, announced by a momentary swish of preverb, is suddenly
charged with energy. A constant sixteenth-note hi-hat spins a brittle
web of tension on the left as the kick and whip-snare continue,
stepping up to double-time in the final bars.
Synth chords rise through inversions of 1-minor and 4-minor chords,
thicker and more harsh in each subsequent phrase. A bright, compressed
piano enters on the right as a metallic, bell-like percussion jars
our nerves, clanging on the left.
Over all this, two pairs of voices harmonize desperate advice from
right and left. Lennox wails "Hold your head up" in breathy
two-part soprano, then answers each repeat with a gravelly, baritone
reading of "moving on." The track grows denser and more
threatening, depicting the confusion and adversity of the world.
Meanwhile the combined vocals offer their grimly positive message:
persevere!
After this, the somber, mildly bluesy synth solo on the original
progression seems almost cheerful by comparison. The arrangement
repeats both choruses, adding a third vocal harmony, then one more
bridge, with ever-thickening clouds of synths. In the final chorus,
Lennox superimposes her doleful wailing as the record solemnly fades
out.
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Lennox and Steward revealed all sorts of personal and studio
tidbits to interviewer Connor Freff Cochran for the November
1983 issue of Musician magazine. Their "studio"
was a dingy, v-shaped warehouse attic. No acoustical tiles,
no drum booth, no double-sealed glass window.
They played and sang in the same room with their tape deck
and mixing board, which were a TEAC half-inch 8-track [an
upscale semi-pro format] and a cheap, used Soundcraft, respectively.
They had two mics that they used to record everything, and
for outboard processing, a handful of old effects boxes, a
space echo, and one spring reverb.
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"Dave and I almost split up the day we wrote 'Sweet Dreams,'"
says Lennox, remembering a particularly bitter point during their
between-contracts period. "I'm very negative and he's very
positive. But we were having a terrible time and I couldn't take
it anymore, and I said so. And he said, 'Okay, fine. You don't mind
if I go ahead and program the drum computer then, do you?' I was
lying on the floor, curled up in a fetal position or something,
and he programmed this rhythm. It sounded so good, in the end I
couldn't resist it. I sat down behind the synthesizer and fam!,
the riff came. I got that and said, 'Oh, that's good,' and we put
it down." And then she improvised the lyric. Into the microphone.
With the tape running. What you hear when you put your stylus down
in the groove is Annie's first and only take (except for the part
about "hold your head up" in the chorus; that came later).
(Editors note: This tale was excerpted from the book "Inside
The Hits" by Wayne Wadhams, available at the Berklee
Press web site.)
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