The lyrics have just enough ambiguity that they can touch on our present moment in this surprising way. The pulsing drums, the screaming synthesizers, but underneath it, this very modern, familiar bass sound.
Just wanted to clarify that this is cool, ’cause I’m hearing this very familiar song in kind of a new way, right? These classic ’80s elements. Now people use samples and synthesizers to sort of approximate that sound and to make it even more rich and harmonic. And it becomes a bass sound, not a bass drum, but actually like a bass instrument. Producers figured out that they could pitch that bass sound really low. The 808 drum machine is known for its very deep bass sound. Nate: Is the “Blinding Lights” bass an 808 drum machine technically?Ĭharlie: That’s an interesting question. … Lil Baby, “On Me.” I’m sure it’s got it.Ĭharlie: The Weeknd, Max Martin, and the rest of the songwriting team are smart to realize that you can use this sound to make an ’80s kind of production sound totally modern. And of course this sound can be heard most prominently in the world of hip-hop and trap, which pioneered that deep 808 bass. We’re in some, I don’t know what we call this, post-rock polka or something, but still there’s that deep, sludgy sub-bass once again.Ĭharlie: Right. And now we’re in a very different style than Ariana Grande’s R&B. Let’s see what else we have: AJR’s “Bang!” The song is called “Bang!” - it’s got to have an 808 style bass. Nate: Another frequent Max Martin collaborator.Ĭharlie: That’s true, but she’s not alone. Let’s take a random song: “34+35” by Ariana Grande. If you’ve listened to songs across genre, you hear that 808 bass sound. The 808 is the hallmark sound of a lot of modern bass production.Ĭharlie: It’s the connective tissue across Billboard’s Hot 100. It’s a very modern sound because it’s almost at the edge of audibility, as much felt in your gut as it is heard. But one of the ways that we can hear that contemporary quality is the underlying 808 bass sound. Listening to “Blinding Lights,” it’s clear that the Weeknd, Martin, and their other collaborators are choosing very deliberate points of reference in the 1980s, but still making the song sound entirely contemporary. The only way that I know that I’m hearing a Max Martin production and songwriting is that everything just clicks. Martin is able to very easily slip between styles. The guy’s composed for everyone from Brittany Spears to Taylor Swift and has a magic touch.Ĭharlie: Right. Nate: He’s also working with one of his collaborators from “Can’t Feel My Face,” the kind of dean of modern pop, Max Martin. It is comforting nostalgia - like when he mined an ’80s pop sound on 2015’s “Can’t Feel My Face.”
Listen here, on Apple Podcasts, or on Spotify, and read an excerpt from the conversation below.Ĭharlie: “Blinding Lights” connection to the ’80s comes from the “Maniac” beat and its “ Take On Me” synthesizers. On Switched on Pop’s first episode as part of Vulture, we break down how “Blinding Lights” blends lyrical relatability with musical familiarity, earning the Weeknd the biggest, and perhaps most misunderstood, hit of his career. (Given the song’s success, the Weeknd is justly aggrieved by his recent Grammys snub). Since then, seemingly every radio format, adult contemporary included, has played the song on repeat, making it the longest-running entry in the Hot 100 top five and top ten. Using the song’s opening instrumental as inspiration, countless families performed the dance together while sheltering in place. The song vaulted up the charts in March 2020, supported by a viral TikTok challenge. While his sheer volume of Hot 100 hits have rightly earned him mainstream status, even his most commercial material is hardly PG - the 2015 hit “ Can’t Feel My Face” is an ’80s throwback laced with on-the-nose cocaine metaphors.īut over the last year his subversive image has been rewritten by the song “Blinding Lights,” from his 2020 album After Hours. On the surface, the alter ego of Abel Tesfaye was a strange pick for the ostensibly family-friendly main stage - for more than a decade, the Weeknd has fused the sounds of pop, R&B, and trap into a cinematic horror-thriller about drugs, sex, and the excess of fame. On Sunday, the Weeknd performed his distinctly dark (though highly meme-able) brand of pop at the Super Bowl halftime show.
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