8.20.12 Adam News and Information

Thank you for asking that, because I was thinking about that for a while now, not so much because I was trying to figure out what Adam's sound is, but more because I was trying to answer why I so strongly perceive NCOE to NOT be an Adam sound. With BTIKM and especially with WWFM I have felt that significantly less so. So, I tried to get to the bottom of this.

I agree that Adam's sound can be quite eclectic. He eludes genre and rhythmic patterns and also experiments with lots of topics and very different lyrical elements. So, how come NCOE does not fit?

Here is the list of reasons I came up with:

1) Adam's lyrics are always a bit more complex, usually can be read and understood on multiple levels / layers and are full of word plays and of rhymes and half-rhymes:

Here is the Wikipedia list for the different types of "general" rhymes and to me this list spells Adam-lyrics like it could have been written for him:

Rhymes in this general sense are classified according to the degree and manner of the phonetic similarity:

syllabic: a rhyme in which the last syllable of each word sounds the same but does not necessarily contain vowels. (cleaver, silver, or pitter, patter)
imperfect (or near): a rhyme between a stressed and an unstressed syllable. (wing, caring)
weak (or unaccented): a rhyme between two sets of one or more unstressed syllables. (hammer, carpenter)
semirhyme: a rhyme with an extra syllable on one word. (bend, ending)
forced (or oblique): a rhyme with an imperfect match in sound. (green, fiend; one, thumb)
assonance: matching vowels. (shake, hate) Assonance is sometimes used to refer to slant rhymes.
consonance: matching consonants. (rabies, robbers)
half rhyme (or slant rhyme): matching final consonants. (bent, ant)
pararhyme: all consonants match. (tell, tall)
alliteration (or head rhyme): matching initial consonants. (short, ship)

NCOE uses none of this.

2) NCOE is mentally and lyrically non-demanding, boring, Adam struggles in interviews to even explain what it is about beyond the obvious party theme. And you can sense his dissatisfaction with the fact that there is not more to it. Adam tries to explain more but he has to spin gold out of hay, there is not more there. And gold out of hay is pretty much what he delivered with the MV, imo.

While BM gets away with having no depth to his lyrics because BM music is what you would want to listen to, while floating down a lazy river in a tube boat or something, Adam's music is music that shakes up, wakes up, moves you, makes you think, is thought provoking, makes you feel something with intensity....all the things we love about his music. Adam's music is like caffeine, BM music is more like Prozac or a few shots of Tequila or something.

3) In Adam's songs the melody and lyrics/ content play off of each other. They support and enhance each other.

In NCOE the long arch of the phrase contrast with the text to keep your eyes open and the legato line that make it sound almost ballady contrasts with the fast tempo beat that it is set to.

4) Adam's songs are grounded and based in their rhythm. IN NCOE the rhythm seems an afterthought. The Dr Luke magic seems to me like a first attempt at creating a remix rather than the foundation of the song. And most remixes leave me unimpressed, this Dr Luke one included.

I have no idea whether listeners intrinsically felt that and therefore could not connect with the song, or whether that is just my deep end analysis and has nothing to do with why it did not resonate. My taste in music is neither mainstream nor represented by radio.

But I struggled with NCOE, even though I liked the melody and obviously like Adam's singing. Something just always left me unimpressed.

Trespassing and Cuckoo both spell Adam every step of the way. Whether radio gets that, is beyond me. I don't know anymore, but I am slightly more optimistic than some others, because so many even within the industry were waiting for the release of either of these two that I hope it may connect, even though it is the third single. I think both songs have a chance.