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Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Tinie Tempah "Written In The Stars" Song Analysis

Today we'll so a song analysis of a song that's number 12 on the Ultimate Chart and a former number one in Britain. It's British rapper Tinie Tempah's "Written In The Stars" featuring Eric Turner. The song is from his debut album Disc-Overy. Like every song analysis, we look at the song itself, the arrangement, the sound and the production.

The Song
"Written In The Stars" features a fairly straight-ahead form with nothing much fancy about it. It looks like:

 Chorus, Verse, Chorus, Interlude, Verse, Chorus, Interlude, Chorus

Two slightly different features is the songs begins with the chorus, and the interlude is vocal instead of the usual instrumental.

The Arrangement
What's cool about this song is the development, which is certainly needed for a song with a simple form. It builds and releases, builds and releases, just like most hits.

  * The Foundation: Primarily the drums, or drum-like track

  * The Pad: The low octaves on the piano during the second verse, low bass synth during the chorus

  * The Rhythm: All the way through the song there's a delayed, arpeggiated synth

  * The Lead: The melody vocal, which is doubled by the piano in the chorus, and rap.

  * The Fills: Synth during the verse.

The Sound
The sound of "Written In The Stars" isn't what I'd call "state of the art." The vocals are a bit spitting because of the compression, and there's a hint of distortion on everything, although that may have been intentional.

One of the things that's common to most rap songs is the huge kick sound, which can be found here. The snare sounds like a distorted sample that has a long envelope thanks to the compression and reverb.

One of the things that I cool was the tape echo, which you can hear on the repeats of the vocal as the song fades out. You can tell it's a tape echo (or at least a simulator) by the poor frequency response and the distortion on the repeats.

The Production
The production by iSHi is really good as you hear a lot of subtle parts that add to the development of the song as it goes along. Parts are brought in and taken out in an effort to add some tension and release, which happens between the beginning of the verses and the rest of the song. The interludes are different because they're vocal in nature instead of instrumental like more songs, which adds a nice bridge between the chorus and verse. The second one also adds a harmony for development.

Send me your song analysis requests.

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1 comment:

Bill Clarke-Fields said...

Note also the electric guitar that comes in during the last chorus, to take the energy even one step higher.

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