It's from 2019 but still only has 200k views, which is criminal, it should be millions.
The verse and chorus transition seamlessly into the drop in a similar way to what Avicii would do. The track all comes together as one tightly interwoven whole, greater than the sum of its parts.
I decided to nerd out and try to see what kinds of music theory things I could find in it.
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The first thing I noticed was how each of the three drops is just slightly different to the last, yet from those slight changes, comes a huge difference in impact.
The first drop (0:55-1:15) is ahead of the beat compared to what would normally happen in an EDM track, resulting in a drop that feels like it 'hits the ground running', the momentum from the first build up doesn't get fully resolved and instead gets repackaged towards the second drop.
The second drop (2:20-2:35) feels 'behind' relative to the first, making it feel like a bigger drop, a more complete release... And yet it does still feels like some of that forward momentum from before the drop is still kept. There are two reasons why: 1. because the lead vocal melody includes a run of fast notes that run right up to the moment the drop starts, which makes it feel like there's still some tension being carried forward 2. the G major chord in the drop is replaced by a G maj7 chord - the major 7th is a leading tone that makes G, which should be the stable tonic chord, sound slightly unstable
So, all that means that going into the third drop (3:15-3:35), all of the tension built up from the entire song so far is just boiling under the lid, foaming over the edges, waiting to explode... And this time, the drop again feels 'behind' relative to the first, but also, there's a pause in the vocals instead of a fast burst of notes, and, the G chord is regular major again. The combination of those three things creates the feeling of a complete and total stop, like a parachute kicking in after a free fall, followed by one decisive drop where all of that built-up tension releases in one spectacular moment, like the last big burst of fireworks on New Year's Eve.
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I also looked at the chord progression of the build-ups versus the drops... I noticed two things:
· The 'harmonic rhythm' - that is, the timing of chord changes - gets faster and faster throughout the build-up, then suddenly gets much slower once the drop starts (i.e. during the drop each chord lasts longer compared to the build-up), which helps to create a sense of release.
· Throughout the entire build-up and the entire first-half of the drop, every single chord change oscillates on the circle of fifths. What I mean by that is you get a clockwise chord change on the circle of fifths, then anticlockwise, then clockwise, then anti, never breaking that pendulum-like pattern. Until at the mid-point of the drop, you go from Em to G, which stays in the same place on the circle of fifths, breaking the pattern.
The combination of these two harmonic features makes it feel like during the build up, we're revving up this back and forth movement, like pushing a swing further and faster every time - then when the drop hits, we let go, and the swing gradually settles back down to rest again, before we push it again.
