Asteroids Galaxy Tour "Golden Age" Song Analysis

I'm sure that everyone who watches television lately has seen the Heineken commercial called "The Entrance." One of the most catchy tunes you'll ever want to hear is the underscore for the commercial, a song by Asteroids Galaxy Tour called "Golden Age," which gets our song analysis for today. Go here to get the full 3 minute version of the commercial, rather than the usual 30 seconds, which makes the premise of the commercial make a whole lot more sense.

The Asteroids Galaxy Tour is a Danish pop band consisting of vocalist Mette Lindberg and producer Lars Iversen, and "Golden Age" is from their first album called Fruit, released in 2009. As with all song analysis, we'll look at the song form, the arrangement, the sound and the production.

The Song
As we've seen over and over, great songs don't have to be complex. "Golden Age" has 3 sections like most songs and the form looks like this:

Intro, Verse, Chorus, Interlude, Verse, Chorus, Chorus, Bridge, Verse, Chorus, Chorus, Bridge, Interlude

The chord changes are the same for the verse, chorus and interlude, with only the melody changing, while the bridge is completely different. What's interesting is that the song ends on a bridge rather than an interlude, which is quite unusual.

The Arrangement
"Golden Age" is actually a fairly sparse arrangement, with just piano, bass and drums carrying most of the song. A horn section playing fills that outline the chords in the chorus, then enter again in the bridge playing a unison melody.

  * The Foundation: Bass and drums

  * The Pad: None

  * The Rhythm: Quarter note piano chords, shaker

  * The Lead: Vocal, horns in the bridge

  * The Fills: Piano lines

Another interesting point in the arrangement is that the overdubbed piano lines change during each verse, which is the major difference between them.

The Sound
Depending upon the version of the song that you hear (the commercial is bit different from the album), you'll hear some differences. The drums are fairly trashy sounding, but work great here. The vocal in the chorus has a long timed delay that differentiates it from the verse.

The Production
What makes this production so cool is how the sections build. The verses are very sparse, then the choruses are larger. Finally the bridge is even bigger sounding with synth arpeggios underneath the horn section and the entrance of a guitar. Yet the song breaths dynamically, with the last verse even sparser for the first half until the bass enters. That's always the sign of a great production - the song dynamics.

Send me your suggestions for song analysis.

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