This presentation analyzes a link between chromaticism in popular music chord loops and marked lyrical, formal, and timbral features that appear concomitantly. Two recently theorized types of chromatic chord loops are investigated: the dual leading-tone loop (Osborn 2021) and the triple tonic loop (de Clercq 2021).
Just as dual leading-tone loops (DLTL) contain leading tones for two keys (major and relative minor), lyrics in DLTLs often concern being pulled in two opposing directions. This is exemplified in the opening seconds of Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream it’s Over.” The progression Eb–Cm–Ab–G contains leading tones for the keys of Eb major and C minor, and is used to animate the lyrics “there is freedom within/there is freedom without.”
A triple tonic loop (TTL) contains both major and relative minor tonics, and also draws chords from the parallel minor. Songs may reserve their darkest lyrical themes for chords drawn from the parallel minor. For example, early lyrics in Deafheaven’s song “Black Brick” describe beauty, and the harmonic vocabulary is limited to a DLTL on F major/D minor. But in the final, terminally climactic section (Osborn 2013), a comparatively dark lyric is screamed violently against a new, darker loop that borrows from the parallel key of F minor for the first time.
That such chromaticism is often reserved for sections that only emerge later in the song suggests a link with form. The terminal climax of Frank Ocean’s “Self Control” is marked not only chromatically (a new TTL on Ab/Fm/Abm), but also timbrally, through a choir of multi-tracked voices that thickens the texture relative to everything that precedes it. In Tool’s “H,” the final chorus is re-harmonized using a darker Phrygian mode, which is also timbrally marked by a thicker texture (triple-tracked guitar chords) and a new half-time feel in the drums.
While recent research on pop–rock harmony has done much to expand our monotonal view, this presentation highlights the ways in which artists use these expanded tonal palettes in combination with marked gestures in lyrics, form, and timbre.