Stars
Tracy Howse
Fun
is an
indie pop band who released their album Some Nights on February 21, 2012. This album features ten songs,
the most popular being Some Nights, We are Young, and Carry On. Stars is track
ten on this album.
Stars
starts with what sounds to be a recording of a concert. There are voices
cheering and singing in the background of this track at that point. The song
playing during this introduction is Some Nights. This
introduction ends and the vocalist starts singing; the background consists of
synth sounds that have a swelling affect, primal drums, and clapping. After
this section, there is a horn-like interlude and the singer, bass, and clapping
come back in. At 1:20, there is a
combination of all of the parts of the song thus far. This continues until 2:01, where the feeling of the song switches
dramatically into a more relaxed or groovy sound. During this section there are
vocals, heavy bass, drums, strings, and the synth is scattered about. This
section is highly repetitive and, as these sections repeat, the vocals become
more and more mechanically affected and the layers increase. At 5:12 the altering of the voices peaks through
a section where multiple voices are being altered as they repeat “no.” The fact
that the voices are singing one word again and again makes it even easier to
just listen to the pitch modulation. The song ends by the voices decay, slow
down, and get lower in pitch.
The lyrics
in this song are pertaining to family relationships, lovers, fans, and a
relationship with oneself. The first section where the music is more upbeat
discusses specifically the relationship that the lead vocal has with certain
people. During this section, he narrows down all the relationships to specifically
one person whom the second section is about. He discusses that this person
holds onto stars because “no one is gonna save us.” This section is bringing up
the robot esthetic of paranoia; the singer is making a general statement that
they (him, the girl, or anyone else) are not going to be saved. This also
brings up the esthetic of contrast because this very human concern is being
communicated through an unnatural sounding song.
Another esthetic is the important sound of things falling apart. One example of this is at 5:12 in the song where the voices are singing “no” repeatedly. During this section, the “no”s start to speed up and fall out of strict time. This makes the music sound as if it is breaking or glitching and gives the listener a feeling of tension during this time. Another very prevalent example of this is the very ending. The voices that are singing “you’re always holding on to stars” are fading out, even past the point when the instrumentals have completely faded out. This is the sound of things falling apart because it creates a feeling as if the machine that is singing this is shutting down or dying. An example of this is the Deactivation of Hal 9000 (the core of which is imaged below) from the science fiction film Space Odyssey. At the end of this movie when Dave, the last surviving character, is trying to deactivate the super computer
Hal, the computer offers to sing him a song. Hal sings “Daisy,” which was the
first song to be sung by a computer, to Dave while he is shutting down, and
thus the song decays and gets lower, just as the end of Stars does.
This song
displays contrast through a combination of the various and opposing aspects.
The most obvious example of contrast is the fact that there are three different
sections in which different moods are created. The first section seems to be a
concert setting, the second section is an upbeat section, and the third is a
slower and groovy section. The next contrast is in the second section; there is
stark contrast between the metallic sounds and the primal sounds. In the
background, there are metallic and unnatural sounding synth parts at the same
time as very heavy drums that eventually become drums and clapping. These
percussive sounds are very natural where as the swells of the synth give it the
feeling of another world. This idea of natural versus unnatural is also evident
in the vocals, because the singer begins to sound less natural as the song
continues. This idea of contrast is mimicking the contrast of the human person.
The vocalist is discussing his relation with another person, and yet in the
same way he says he has “faded in the dark.” This is the idea of connectedness
verses isolation is a very human reaction to something and thus the band is
using these contrasts of mechanical and natural sounds to show this contrast
one feels in the struggle of human relationships. David Byrne wrote an article,
Machines of Joy: I Have Seen the Future and It Is Squiggly, about Northern
European electronic and technological music and explains this idea of using
technology to represent the human. “They have learned to think like machines
and reflexively have developed machines that mimic the seemingly quirky
randomness of the human mind” (Byrne 7). Byrne is saying that people can make
machines that mimic themselves, which is how this contrast in the singer’s mind
can be represented by the contrast in the music. Tompkins also comments on the
very human aspects of Auto-Tune technology specifically. “Auto-Tune is better
known for its imperfection, a quality more human than robotic… It’s not
robotic. It is fickle and aflutter and it seems to be happening all at once”
(Tompkins 303). He is saying that the technology we are using to perfect
ourselves as humans is just as human as we are.
Further Readings:
References
Tompkins, Dave. How to Wreck a Nice Beach: The Vocoder from World War II to Hip-hop : The Machine Speaks. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2010. Print.
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