In this week's episode, Jenine Brown investigates the emotional impact of meaningful differences she identifies between Ellie Goulding’s cover of “Your Song," and Elton John's original version. Ultimately, Brown's analysis focuses on the feeling of the double upbeat that initiates the bridge that Goulding's includes in her interpretation of "Your Song."

This episode was produced by David Thurmaier.

SMT-Pod Theme music by Zhangcheng Lu; Closing music "hnna" by David Voss. For supplementary materials on this episode and more information on our authors and composers, check out our website: https://smt-pod.org/episodes/season02/.

[SMT-Pod opening theme music playing]

Welcome to SMT-Pod! The premier audio publication of the Society for Music Theory. In this week's episode, Jenine Brown investigates the emotional impact of meaningful differences she identifies between Ellie Goulding’s cover of “Your Song," and Elton John's original version. Ultimately, Brown's analysis focuses on the feeling of the double upbeat that initiates the bridge that Goulding's includes in her interpretation of "Your Song."

On May 7th, 2011, I was up late watching Saturday Night Live. The host was Tina Fey, and the musical guest was Ellie Goulding. Goulding first sang her original called “Lights,” and for her second performance at the end of the night, she sang a cover of Elton John's “Your Song.” Let’s listen to a bit of Johns’ original to remind us what it sounds like.

[Elton John, "Your Song"]

While I had some familiarity with John's song, given its consistent placement on lists of best songs, the original really hadn't spoken to me in a meaningful way. But midway through hearing Goulding’s version, I got chills, and I broke down in tears. That same night, I bought Goulding's debut album and became a devoted fan.

In this podcast, I’ll investigate my strong, emotional reaction to Goulding's cover. I’ll use Victoria Malawey's method for comparing the two versions of “Your Song” through various musical parameters. It’s a method that is described in a book chapter from 2011 called “An Analytical Model for Examining Cover Songs and Their Sources,” which is contained in a book edited by Nicole Biamonte on pop-culture pedagogy in the music classroom.

I'll begin by sharing a brief history of the two versions of the song. Though there are some obvious changes in terms of vocal timbre and production that are certainly notable in the cover, here I’ll instead explore how Goulding’s version of “Your Song” subverts the meter, form, and harmonic progressions of John’s original in important ways that really impacted my emotional experience when hearing the song. I’ll ultimately focus my attention on the expressive impact of what I call a double upbeat that is only heard in Goulding’s version, and I'll then end by describing some future directions for this research.

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Elton John's “Your Song” was released in 1970, written as the B side to “Take me to the pilot.” It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998, and the song is number 202 on the 2021 Rolling Stone list of 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Goulding's “Your Song” appeared on her debut album in 2010. It was arranged by Goulding and Ben Lovett of Mumford and Sons, who wrote the song for use in a 2010 Christmas commercial for the UK department store chain John Lewis. Lovett didn’t write the cover for Goulding, specifically, but since they were working on other projects together, they recorded first and the advertising agency chose her as the vocal lead for the commercial.

What’s interesting is that the part that I love in Goulding’s cover is completely missing from the commercial, which just uses the first verse and then cuts to the final chorus. Goulding’s cover might also be notable to you because she performed the song at the reception party of Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding in April 2011, to which the couple shared their first dance.

There are other performances of Johns’ “Your Song” that are well known, although an analysis of these versions is outside of the scope of this podcast. John performed the song with Billie Joel in a tribute for the 9/11 tragedy in 2001. John also performed “Your Song” with Lady Gaga during the 2010 Grammy Awards, and Gaga herself later put out her cover of the song (with only minor alterations). My second-favorite cover of the song is sung by Ewan McGregor in the 2001 film Moulin Rouge. Other prominent covers of “Your Song” include those by Billy Paul in 1972, Rod Stewart in 1992, Taron Egerton’s performance of the song in the 2019 film Rocketman, and a bilingual cover by Juanes at the 2013 Grammys.

Throughout my analysis of Johns’ original and Goulding’s cover, I’ll only play brief excerpts, so I encourage you to listen to the two songs in their entirety on your own.

So let's first compare the two songs’ formal structure. John's original follows a typical verse-chorus format, with Verse 1 starting off with the lyrics “it’s a little bit funny,” Verse 2 continuing with “if I was a sculptor,” and then the chorus “and you can tell everybody” starting at approximately one minute into the track. The last half of the song repeats this format: there’s a Verse 3, Verse 4, and then chorus.

Goulding's cover is in verse/chorus form as well, but there are some important changes. The first change is that with the exception of Verse 1, the verses from John's original appear in a different order in Goulding's version: that is, Verse 1 is then followed by Verse 4, and then a chorus, and then there’s Verse 2, but instead of the final Verse 3 that we might expect, Goulding substitutes it with a wordless bridge, and then ends with a chorus, just like in the original.

I had an emotional response to Goulding's cover when hearing this new added bridge in particular. And for many years, I thought it was just simply this formal deviation that caused my emotional reaction. But when I heard Martin Blessinger and Chris Endrinal's wonderful 2019 paper on the ineffable quality of wordless vocals at the annual conference of the Society of Music Theory, I determined that it must be the unexpected insertion of this new, novel section in combination with these really beautiful wordless melismas that helped me transcend as a listener and led to my continued love for this cover. Let’s listen a bit to this just to this new bridge, and I’ll play the last few moments of the verse that precedes it and then the entire bridge.

[Ellie Goulding's cover of Elton John's "Your Song"]

An examination of the meter of the two songs also reveals, though, more unexpected changes in Goulding’s version. Throughout my analysis, I hear each pair of chords in Goulding’s cover to be eighth note subdivisions of the quarter-note tactus. The ballad tempo and drum pattern of John’s original supports a tactus around 67 beats per minute, and Goulding’s tempo is just a hair faster around 72, although the faster piano chords in her version make this tempo seem more energized.

Either way, both versions of “Your Song” are in a feeling of 4/4 and contain regular eight-measure phrases. Importantly, while John’s original is in 4/4 throughout, and most of Goulding’s version is also in 4/4, the bridge in her cover is unexpectedly in 3/4. While the quarter note certainly remains consistent through her song, this metric shift to 3/4 in the new bridge is complementing the unexpected change in form at the same time. So, think back, now, to when you heard that bridge a few minutes ago. Is the move to simple triple meter something that you had noticed? I’ll confess that when I heard the bridge for the first time, I was more fascinated by this new formal section and the wordless melismas, rather than the change in meter.

In fact, what's fascinating to me is to consider when the listener might acquire this new 3/4 meter. That is, at some point throughout hearing the bridge, we do shift to this new meter, but I think that this moment differs based on whether we’ve heard the cover for the first time, or once we’ve heard the cover many times.

So let’s first address how I think that the work is composed and understood by the performers. This would also capture how a listener hears the meter once they’ve heard the cover a few times. The verse preceding Goulding's bridge is in a standard eight measures of 4/4 and the bridge, too, is eight measures of 3/4. But an additional upbeat is inserted between these two sections.

I argue that this beat is not a phenomenon of just an added beat, but it’s felt as two back-to-back upbeats due to the established 4/4 in the song's first half. So, as we might expect, we hear that final 4th beat of the last measure of the verse as an upbeat, but then we hear the next beat also as an upbeat because it is leading to the start of an eight-measure bridge that’s now in 3/4.

These two back-to-back upbeats create a feeling of what I call a double upbeat, which amplifies the unexpected formal and metric changes to Goulding's bridge. But this experience of feeling a double upbeat necessitates some knowledge that we’re moving to 3/4: knowledge that's acquired on at least a second hearing.

Let’s listen to this passage again; because you’ve been told that we’re moving to 3/4, let’s hear it from the perspective that you are a listener already familiar with the composition. We’re going to start at the verse before the bridge and then listen through the onset of the bridge, and I’ll narrate the double upbeat as it occurs. While I hesitate talking over beautiful music, I think that this is the best way to express this analysis aurally. When there is a felt upbeat, I’ll say the word “up.” For example, a measure of 4/4 meter will be counted as 1-2-3-up. This will help to illustrate the back-to-back upbeat when it occurs.

[Ellie Goulding's cover of Elton John's "Your Song"]

Nancy Murphy’s research has been influential as I think about this passage. Murphy theorizes six levels of engagement with meter that capture possible metric scenarios in popular music ranging from very ambiguous to extremely consistent meters. The passage in Goulding’s cover that we’re talking about seems to fit Murphy’s category of metric reinterpretation; that is, the hypermeter in the verse is really salient, but then it gets disrupted when this double upbeat occurs and we move from 4/4 to 3/4.

Murphy encourages us to consider the narrative implications of these disruptions. In her article, she describes added beats as “leaving room for reflection,” and evoking “powerful sensations of hiatus” or pause. She provides examples from Joni Mitchell’s song “All I want” and Paul Simon’s song “April Come She Will” that also contain added beats that contribute to feelings of rest and stasis. However, in Goulding’s cover, although the last measure of the verse contains an added beat like these other examples that Murphy talks about, I hear it less of a moment of such stasis and reflection but something instead that’s propelling us forward given its “upbeat”-edness. That is, this double upbeat heard before the start of the bridge is kind of akin to inhaling twice before exhaling, and this extraordinary and unusual feeling has ramifications on the listener. This sense of propelling into the unknown is magnified given that the double upbeat is occurring at the very end of a formal section.

[Ellie Goulding's cover of Elton John's "Your Song"]

Since 3/4 meter is unusual in popular music, the listener hearing Goulding’s cover for the very first time might not hear that added beat as a double upbeat at all, and they might instead hold onto a 4/4 meter for a longer period of time before shifting midway in the bridge to that new 3/4 meter. In fact, the switch to 3/4 may even initiate a temporary loss of meter for listeners. Turning to an investigation of the harmonies helps to reveal when I likely acquired that 3/4 meter upon hearing the cover for the very first time.

Goulding's bridge moves to the submediant, which contrasts the major mode in John's original and the rest of Goulding's verses and choruses. And while this motion to vi isn’t unusual in a bridge, the vi chord is preceded by a ii chord, which might be considered a retrogression, although I completely acknowledge that ii to vi is also just a minor plagal fall within the submediant. To assess the emotional impact of this progression, we might turn to corpus research, such as that by Trevor de Clercq and Davy Temperley's study of the top songs in Rolling Stone Magazine, with the familiar hypothesis that unexpected progressions can give rise to emotional responses.

I used their dataset to query just how often ii goes to vi, finding that the progression occurs in just 0.3% of all progressions and in only five of 200 songs in the corpus, usually falling within the bridge, just like in Goulding's cover. So, the ii to vi progression is rare, and that might add to why I love Goulding’s bridge so much. Or, maybe that progression just reminds me of other chills-inducing moments from compositions that also utilize the ii to vi progression, just like the passage in the famous song “Oh Holy Night.” In that song, in the B section, on the lyrics “Oh hear the angel’s voices” we hear that same ii to vi motion on the lyrics “Oh hear” we hear the ii chord, moving to “the Angel’s voices”: the vi chord. Now, instead of hearing me sing, let’s hear Mariah Carey singing this same passage, now in the key of E major, and I find it difficult not to get chills when hearing this moment.

[Mariah Carey, "Oh Holy Night"]

Returning back to when we might shift to 3/4 meter when hearing the cover for the first time, I hypothesize that the arrival on the vi chord—that very first vi chord that we hear––coincides with when the listener shifts to 3/4. So when the bridge begins, the listener hears the first measure of the bridge in 4/4, but then shifts to 3/4 with the arrival of that vi chord that technically is on the fifth beat of the bridge. Further evidence that supports this mode of hearing comes from the Rolling Stone corpus, as when we do hear ii going to vi (albeit rare), the vi chord is on the downbeat 79% of the time, in songs such as “Georgia on my mind” and “A change is gonna come.”

So let's listen to this passage once more. I'm going to start midway through Goulding’s verse. In the background, you’ll hear me count the 4/4 meter in the verse and then move to the 3/4 meter starting on that first vi chord within the bridge.

[Ellie Goulding's cover of Elton John's "Your Song"]

We've spent a lot of time talking about the bridge, but analytical observations about other sections of ”Your Song” are also relevant to my experience and suggest why my subconscious expectations were thwarted when hearing the cover. For example, whereas John's original is solidly in a major key and starts and ends on tonic, Goulding's version starts on the minor submediant chord.

While ultimately her first phrase does end with a half cadence in the major tonic, this initial deviation drew me in as a listener. Let’s listen to the opening of her SNL performance to hear this submediant start:

[Ellie Goulding's cover of Elton John's "Your Song"]

Turning to an analysis of cadences, whereas John's second verse of every two-verse pairing ends with a plagal cadence, providing a sense of closure, Goulding never has a tonic-ending cadence until the very end of the song, likely contributing to a sense of wanting in some way while we listen to her cover.

When considering the use of instrumentation, Goulding drops down the instrumentation in the first chorus, which runs counter to our normative expectations for a chorus and really contrasts that heard in John’s original. In the recording that follows, you’ll hear piano, cello, and vocals in the verse but then the cello drops out in Goulding’s first chorus.

[Ellie Goulding's cover of Elton John's "Your Song"]

And finally, when comparing the lyrics between the two versions, due to Goulding's reordering of John's verses, the last lyrics that you hear before the bridge are, “My gift is my song, and this one's for you,” and I know it’s cliché, but this really speak to me as a musician.

Taken together, these analytical observations provide an explanation for my emotional response to hearing Goulding's cover. There’s been a lot of research that’s explored cover songs from the standpoint of studying artist identity, such as that described in Lori Burns and Alyssa Woods, Ed Klorman, Serge Lacasse, and Bill O'Hara. Other research into covers has sought to understand listener preferences, like that by Kevin Holm-Hudson and José Luis Ortega.

Here, I'm invoking the study of expectation to understand listener responses to novel passages in cover songs. That is, cover songs have a unique ability to play on our memory of the original, even if knowledge of that original is on a subconscious level, and comparing various differences in a cover song and their impact on our emotions seems to be an underexplored area of investigation.

This is also a newer area of research for me, and I'd be excited for you to share with me what might improve my thinking in this arena. I’m very much curious about the perceptual phenomenon that I call the double upbeat and its emotional connotations. If you have any examples of this in other compositions—in any genre, send them my way! I’m so grateful to those who have already provided other works to think about.

For example, Davy Temperley has suggested to me that Peter Gabriel’s song titled “Solsbury Hill” has a similar “double upbeat.” The song is mostly in 7, but the last measure of the chorus contains an extra beat at the end of the measure. This double upbeat might be less noticeable or have maybe less of an impact than in Goulding’s cover because that added beat makes the final measure of the chorus in 8, which is far more common, of course, than the asymmetrical meter heard throughout the rest of Gabriel’s song. Still, like the double upbeat heard before Goulding’s bridge, the double upbeat in “Solsbury Hill” also occurs at the end of a formal section, in this case the chorus, and I hear it as building an extra beat of anticipation that then amplifies the impact of the downbeat of the next section. Let’s listen to the passage, and I’ll stop after we hear that double upbeat that ends the chorus.

[Peter Gabriel, "Solsbury Hill"]

Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android” also contains a double upbeat that is similar to what we just heard. When I describe Paranoid Android’s form, I’m invoking René Rusch’s formal analysis from her article in Music Theory Online. In “Paranoid Android,” the guitar solo that ends the B section contains three measures in a 7/4 meter, but then the last measure extends just one more beat before the onset of the new C section; this double upbeat once again is occurring at the end of a formal section. In all instances of the double upbeat heard today, it’s occurring at the end of a section and has a similar expressive impact, building anticipation for the arrival of the next downbeat.

Now, since we’re talking about notable covers also in this podcast, I should mention that Brad Mehldau’s adaptation of “Paranoid Android” maintains these same metric patterns as that played by Radiohead. To illustrate the double upbeat in “Paranoid Android,” I’ll play Radiohead’s original and again narrate the beats.

[Radiohead, "Paranoid Android"]

In closing, I'd like to continue this kind of research on covers. This could be the basis for a seminar that I'd like to teach, which would be dear to my heart from a pedagogical standpoint, because much of the analysis would be away from a musical score, developing students' ear training skills. Please contact me if you have ideas that you'd like to send along, and thank you so much for listening.

[Spoken over SMT-Pod closing music]

Thank you to the editorial team at SMT-Pod, especially Jenny Beavers, Megan Lyons, and Anna Rose Nelson for their guidance. I am also grateful for the very helpful comments from Nancy Murphy on an earlier draft of this episode. Finally, I want to thank those who have heard me talk about these ideas over the years, including my students, my children, and my husband. I am so lucky.

Visit our website smt-pod.org for supplemental materials including information about the audio excerpts used in this episode. On our website, you can also learn how to submit your own episode proposal. Join in on the conversation by tweeting your questions and comments about Jenine's episode or about publication through SMT-Pod @SMT_Pod. SMT Pod's theme music was written by Zhangcheng Lu with closing music by David Voss. Thanks for listening!