I Listened To One Song On Repeat For A Month

I live in an endless void of my own creation.

This was a... surprising experience. I'm always looking for ways to become a more engaged music listener, and one of the best ones I've found is listening games. I do these fairly often in my personal life, picking some restriction and making myself do it for a while to see what happens, but now that it's become a part of my musical practice I wanted to talk about it in a video, and to do that I had to pick something really ambitious, and long story short I wound up listening to a single song, over and over, every day for a month to see how that repeated exposure changed my experience of it. I did a lot of active listening exercises along the way, approaching it from every angle I could think of, and in one of my longest videos ever, I want to talk about what that was like and, more importantly, all the things I learned.

And thanks as well to Henry Reich, Jon Hancock, Eugene Bulkin, Adam Neely, Dave Mayer, OrionWolfie, CodenaCrow, Arnas, Caroline Simpson, Michael Alan Dorman, Blake Boyd, Charles Gaskell, Tom Evans, David Conrad, Ducky, Nikolay Semyonov, h2g2guy, Andrew Engel, Peter Brinkmann, naomio, Alex Mole, Betsy, Tonya Custis, Graeme Lewis, Jake Sand, Scott Albertine, Conor Stuart Roe, ZagOnEm, רועי סיני, Brian Miller, Thomas Morgan, Serena Crocker, Adam Ziegenhals, Mark, Amelia Lewis, Justin St John-Brooks, DialMForManning, Andrew Wyld, JD White, Graham Orndorff, gunnito, Kyle Kinkaid, Foreign Man in a Foreign Land, Tom, Andy Maurer, Don Jennings, Cormag81, Derek H., Bryan, Mikeyxote, Dan Whitmer, FAD3 Chaos, Michael Morris, Bill Owens, Martin Romano, George Burgyan, Flavor Dave, Marc Testart, DraconicDon, Megan Oberfield, morolin, An Oni Moose, Ken Birdwell, Blue 5alamander, Cliff Hudson, Ethan Savaglio, Robert Bailey, Donald Murray, juneau, Sina Bahram, Ira Kroll, Patrick Minton, Justin Katz, Roahn Wynar, Bob D'Errico, Robert Shaw, David Shlapak, JD, Rennie Allen, Travis Briggs, Greyson Erickson, Strife, Brian Covey, Jay Harris, Sean Murphy, JasperJackal, Tommy Transplant, Wolfgang Giersche, Olaf, Billy Abbott, Gil, d0d63, Jon Purdy, Ken Brown, Colin Kennedy, The Mauses, christopher porto, William Wallace, Karel P Kerezman, Ted Trainor, Antarct, mightstill, Nick Loh, Randy Thomson, Mikaela, Erika Lee, Aenne Brielmann, Emma Finch, Klaus, Fefe Magalhaes, Andrew F. Silverman, Gordon Horner, Tommy Dahlman, David Chudzicki, Eric Katz, Brian Glaze, Michael Stakem, Molly Stuart, MrThere, Rosemarie Bongers, and Jesse Sullivan! Your support helps make 12tone even better!

Also, thanks to Jareth Arnold!

[tone]

Some additional thoughts/corrections:

1) Again, the full journal is on Patreon, there was a lot of stuff I couldn't fit!

2) I can't stress enough how much I recommend adding listening games to your musical experience. This one is maybe not the easiest one to start with, but it might be a good template if you're looking for one. Otherwise, my best advice is trying to identify how you tend to approach music and try to find something that will force you to do the opposite. Really, anything you can do to make your music-listening artificial works as long as you're intentional about it and paying attention to the results.

3) Apparently, while I was working on this, everyone got mad at Chappell Roan for saying some stuff about not wanting kids: I obviously chose this song before that happened, so I was unaware, but having looked up her comments, I want to state unequivocally for the record, in the clearest terms possible: I don't care.

4) So, about the bridge synth line. It's actually… well, it's complicated, but the point is that I had it walking back to F# when it usually drops to a low C#. I say "usually" because, for some reason, it doesn't do that on the first bar. It does the thing I notated there, and then flips into a one-bar loop with the low C#, and I guess I'd internalized it as a one-bar loop and so, after transcribing the first bar, didn't think to check if the second was different: I remember being a little confused when I transcribed it as going to F#, but it was clearly what I was hearing so I went with it. I'm glad it was a weird thing 'cause I was trying to figure out how I'd missed a two-bar looping structure. It's actually a really interesting choice and I'd love to know why they did it that way, but yeah, I got got. Apologies to the synth line.

[BensBrickDesigns]

The fact that this wasn't the Thundercats theme song made me a little sad.

[MylaMinoki]

When you talked about dancing with the chorus, I think you got the point on accident, but just don't get the reason: it's based on a cheer cadence, from cheerleading, the idea you have to lead you body, hitting curtain parts using the cadence. H O TT O TO Foot, foot, back slide, arm, across. All the cheerleaders just did it to the cadence. I see you.

[Mewse]

This reminds me of that episode of How I Met Your Mother when they're driving listening to "I would walk 500 miles" over and over and over again on repeat. At first, the song would be awesome, and they'd sing along to it. Then they get really sick of it, and then they'd be back to being really into it and so on and so forth

[PointLobo]

I kept waiting for you to say, “and then I learned the dance, and I finally understood the song!” I remember the first time it clicked for me why this song was so special—I was playing a wedding gig last summer and when this song came on, the entire wedding party and half the crowd spontaneously burst into the choreography. This happened several more times at different weddings! I felt like I was witnessing a cultural phenomenon, and each time the collective joy and energy was truly something else. I don’t think the cultural importance of this song can be divorced from the dance (esp how it all interacts with her back story as a struggling artist, a queer person from a small town, and the social connotations of cheerleading). As others in the comments have pointed out, learning it would have also helped illuminate just why the rhythm of the chorus works the way it does.

[ScaredCrow]

To understand the music video I think you need to go to "Pink Pony Club" -- it's the queer experience of escaping an environment, a culture that is hostile and suffocating you, finding yourself away from it, learning to celebrate yourself away from it, and being able to finally get over the pain and negativity in order to find the parts about your roots that you really love, and giving yourself the space to love that. You say it's a contradiction and it is, one that queer people need to overcome in order to become their fullest selves. It's the hero's journey -- you get the Call to Adventure, you go, you change, but then you need to take the long road home.

[wofiief]

I appreciated your approach to talking about the music video. I want to add that I read the music video as being a fun way of merging a very queer dance track with the Midwest environment the artist came from. Usually queerness (and their associated dance scenes) are juxtaposed against small towns. I think filming it there without her looking or feeling out-of-place kind of makes the two feel harmonic. I think that sends a positive message to her audience (that’s made up of a lot of young queer people) that they don’t necessarily need to run screaming to the closest metropolitan area, and that you can bloom where you’re planted.

[owlbyovrprepared]

Re the music video: the "incompatible" use of a small town is a big chunk of why I like the music video for Hot To Go. That's what being gay in a small town is, what being home and adult and confident is. You're innocent and loving because it's home and family AND flamboyant in ways that express yourself and everyone else sees that, often before you do when you're young in your own home town.

It affects the way you interact with the whole world when you're the only one flamboyant or dramatic in that way, especially in a group that pretends they're not those things at all while holding so tightly to some eccentricities that they've normalized. So going back and confidently screaming about yourself and love and connecting with your home town enough to go back and do that, giving eccentric examples for everyone to feel safer with, is a big deal of not making a safe space but creating a space for others and an escape for those that need it is ART.
Geez this has turned into a novel. I'm stopping here.

[ServingKant]

I think that the main artistic vision of the video is teaching the dance to fans so they can do it at the concert. She's been open about the fact that she made the dance as a part of the writing process for the song. With such a clear vision for live show participation, it seems like that was the driving force behind it, and the real video is the crane/drone shots of her crowds. Cut them into the video (or imagine it) and see if it works better for you. The best one, for my money, is where her festival audience was so big that the performers on a different stage joined in with the crowd. That's such a massive work of art.

[imaginaryguide]

Damn, this is fun. I have a tendency to listen to one song over and over again, so this gives me some ideas for how I can get deeper into a process that I already enjoy.

[real_anxst]

I really like the music video. To me it summarizes that feeling of incongruity you feel when you turn 18, you leave for somewhere else, and years later you come back to visit where you grew up. It's all familiar, sometimes you're welcomed and sometimes you're not, but you're not the person who fits in that place anymore.

Maybe it's because that was how it was for me when I left home. Maybe I just think that because the few interviews I ever heard from Chappell before I saw the video were about where she came from and how she ended up leaving to go be the person she wanted to be. I don't know, but it worked for me.

[_mels_]

I can wholeheartedly recommend changing your environment when you're listening to a song! Not only does the change in your surroundings affect how you perceive the familiar music, but you might realise that you've sort of connected a song in your mind to some memories. I used to listen to the same album whenever I would go from my apartment to a metro station, the same route with songs coming roughly at the same time in the journey, and when I listened to the album at home to recommend it to my friend at the time, I realised that I can't think of a song without thinking of where I am in that journey (this is where I wait for that long light at the crossing, and it feels so good to run to the rhythm when I get there a bit early) and that also adds to the enjoyment of a song

[TheFamousYakTamer]

Aw man, was hyped to hear you did this with a Chappell song but honestly started dreading the worst when you said you picked Hot To Go. I understand why - this song was also pretty much the only thing I knew about her before I gave her album a go and I assumed it wasn't much more than that. But it's pretty much the song with the least amount of artistry and meaning and way more about having a fun live experience compared to the rest. Sadly it's the only Chappell song that tires me out from time to time, while the rest of that album is absolutely fantastic!

Really happy that you still ended up getting a positive experience out of it though! I just hope it doesn't color your view of the artist too much, like it did with me for a lil bit.

Great exercise and video!

[ChristyAbbey]

The music video is bringing over the top personality (Chappell Roan is her drag name, after all) into the sleepiness of small town. The mini-golf thing brought me back to a particular moment in my teens on a mini-golf course where I was so in my feelings dreaming about being astride the world like Alice or Bowie or Freddy. I managed some of that, but having to hide large parts of myself. She hides nothing. The first time hearing it was first time seeing the video. I cried. I'm crying now.

[Steveofthejungle]

Quick nitpick: Chappel Roan is from Springfield, MO, not IL

[pedroscoponi]

I had never heard of approaching any piece of media like this before, wow. That was fascinating. It's kinda unique to music since it's such a _dense_ artform - I have no idea how I would adapt it to, for example, a _video game_ - you'd likely have to make it an exercise for the whole year, depending on what title you pick.

[Jasper_the_Cat]

I don't know if many other musicians who can read music feel the same way, but I really enjoy reading the score along with a piece of music as I'm listening, especially for classical music.

[sammantixgm]

I once listened to Shut Up And Dance by Walk The Moon 28 times in a row. That was an experience. So I can totally imagine this.

I really enjoyed this video. I mean, I only listened because I don't have time to watch and I really enjoy listening to your videos when they come out while I'm driving.

But like. I haven't actually watched the H2G video, but I'd assume that the vibe is exactly what she wanted. She's a rural area queer woman, and the fact that we tend to think something has to be small town or big city is part of what sometimes divides us in sillier ways. The truth is, things are blurry. Idk.

I'm so glad you do what you do. It's really fun to listen to. Thanks.

[Jason-xcye]

Amazing video. I love the song and your analysis of it. Some ideas for future listening game days, so it doesn't get stale:

- Listen to as many covers as you can in wildly different styles and take note of what elements of the song are being adapted, or are being ignored. What's that say about the composition, or even about the audience's perspective?

- Go outside with the song to three different places, and sit and watch the world around you in different locations while listening on headphones to see if it sparks any new meaning. How would hearing HOTTOGO hit differently if you hear it on the subway versus hearing it at a high school football game, or at the beach?

- Try learning to play it. I find I often notice things in music that I've completely ignored before if I sit down and actually play it on an instrument.

- Listen to live performances. What changes does the artist make when doing it live, and why?

- Listen in context. I know the whole point of this was hearing something from an artist you're unfamiliar with, so try listening to the song with the songs that come before and after it from its album.

- Listen with friends. Especially with a song like this one, it's made to be danced to but it's also just made to have fun to. Get a group together and listen to it and party down as a group. It'll easily ramp up the enjoyment if nothing else.

- Talk about the production choices - why add things like dynamics, echo, synth, etc? What do they add to the song, or what gets lost if they get removed?

- What is the cultural importance of the song? If the artist represents a community in some way (like Chappel Roan and LGBT folks, drag performers, or even just Midwestern princesses), how does the song speak to those identities? I think for most artists you could easily identify 3 aspects of their identity to give the song a different vantage point.

- Finally, maybe on the last day begin engaging with others perspectives. What do other music theorists have to say about it? How about casual fans? Can you learn anything from those perspectives that you hadn't considered before?

I think others can probably come up with tons more ideas of ways to keep an exercise like this fresh and enjoyable. These comments would be a great way to solicit those ideas. I'm really looking forward to the next one of these videos!

[danielmbarragan]

a friend once did this with "Where's Your Head At?" by Basement Jaxx, but literally on repeat for the whole time.