The Songwriting Secret Hidden Inside This Hit Song

[00:01] song Do You Realize by the Flaming Lips? And even though I've heard this song many, many times before, for some reason, listening to it this time round, way this song is constructed, something that surprised me and made me want to

[00:14] investigate further. So, in this video, I want to take you on a little journey through this strange and beautiful song. And by deconstructing its form, we're songwriting concepts and principles that

[00:26] songwriting. Firstly, a little bit of background. The song Do You Realize was released in 2002 on the album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. And far from being an obscure indie track with over a 100red million Spotify streams to date,

[00:40] this song is by far the biggest in the Flaming Lips catalog. So, what I'm going to do now is play you the opening of this song and I'm going to have a little faster than the original. I'm going to change it up a little and make it feel a

[00:53] bit more like an indie folk song. And I'm also going to sing the melody down an octave, but structurally it's going to be exactly the same as the way this song was written. It's going to have the same lyrics, the same chords, the same

[01:05] melody. So the song begins with an instrumental four chord intro before the instrumental four chord intro before the lyrics come in. 2 3 4

[01:22] and do you [Music] [Music] realize that you have the realize that you have the most beautiful face?

[01:37] Do you [Music] floating in space? Do you

[01:57] realize that happiness makes you cry? Do you [Music] realize that everyone know someday we'll

[02:20] this song and this is what I really want to investigate. What is that section? What have we just heard? Is it a verse? Is it a chorus? Is it something else?

[02:32] as I was listening to this song again because I've been thinking a lot about song form and song sections lately. And when I heard this section and then heard the following sections, I was really struck by this question. Where is the

[02:44] verse of this song? Is it possible this song doesn't have any verses? Is that even allowed? Can we do that with song form? So, a couple of key things to note. Firstly, the song is in the key of C. So C is the home chord or the tonic

[03:00] which means every time we hear that chord it feels stable and reinforces in a very confident and unambiguous way whatever lyrical message is being sung at the time. Secondly the title of the song is do you realize and songwriting

[03:14] is unique from all other art forms in how much importance it places on the title. The title is not only there to give us a sense of what this song is about. It's also often used as the refrain line as the chorus line. It can

[03:26] be repeated and reappear many times throughout the song form. And we expect the title or the refrain line to really carry and deliver the central message of the song. So with those two pieces of information in mind, let's take a closer

[03:40] look at the section I just played for you. The first lyrics we hear sung by Wayne Coin, the lead singer, are do you realize that you have the most beautiful face? Followed by, "Do you realize we're floating in space?" followed by, "Do you

[03:55] realize that happiness makes you cry?" And finally, "Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die?" So, we get all four lines of this section starting with the title of the song. Do you realize? And this really leads our

[04:10] ear to identify this first section that we're hearing as the chorus. Because again, the chorus's job is to deliver the central message of the song. We've been told the title of the song is Do You Realize? We've just heard the

[04:24] phrase, "Do you realize appear four consecutive times?" It feels like the chorus. Not only that, but if you look at the chords being used when that title phrase lands, we're hearing the C chord, the tonic chord, appearing three out of

[04:39] the four times. So, we've got the repetition of the title phrase. We've got the home chord or the tonic being used to support and emphasize that line three out of the four times. Everything is leading us to believe that

[04:53] this is the chorus. Okay, so what? What if it is the chorus? What's wrong with answer is, of course, nothing. There are lots of other songs that start with the chorus. It's not as common as a song that starts with a verse, but it's

[05:06] certainly something that we've heard in other song forms. And when we're talking about song form, we're really talking about the arrangement of song sections. sections, we're really considering what

[05:18] each section's function is or what role it has to play in the form. So, it's generally accepted that the chorus is there to deliver the central message of the song. The verses are there to give us some context or backstory, perhaps

[05:31] develop some of the characters. If there's a pre chorus, its role is to sit create tension that can then be resolved by the chorus. Solos are a chance to create contrast, featuring instrumental improvisation. Post choruses extend and

[05:45] maintain the energy of the chorus, sometimes introducing additional hook material. Bridges are versatile and really offer us a chance to create musical contrast, provide different lyrical perspectives or an opportunity

[05:57] to pivot the narrative. Interludes can create buffers between sections. Intros set the mood and create first impressions. And outros leave the listeners with a final thought or a feeling. And these are the general terms

[06:10] sections. And every genre or style of music has their own approach to arranging these song sections. But what I encourage you to do as a songwriter is to think about these sections as colored blocks that can be moved around and

[06:23] arranged in different orders. And we can really use this system to map out any song that we're listening to. Let's take the song Believer by Imagine Dragons for example. You can see that this song begins with an intro, moves into a

[06:35] verse, then to a pre chorus, then to a chorus. It repeats that structure going verse, preorus, chorus again before coming back to another verse, then a bridge, then a final chorus. So, this diagram really shows you the layout of

[06:50] the song arranged section by section. And the other great thing we can do with this system is move the blocks up and down to represent dynamic changes. So when the blocks are higher, they're representing louder moments in the song.

[07:02] Let Me Down by the Beatles, you can see that we've got a short intro at the beginning, but then we go straight into the chorus. We then get a verse, another chorus, the bridge appears quite early, then we get chorus, verse, chorus, and

[07:16] an outro with a solo embedded in it. There's a song form where we do have the chorus appear first and outnumber the verses 2 to one. So, it's not unprecedented that we have a chorus begin the form. But what makes do you

[07:30] realize really interesting is what happens after that first chorus section. happens after that first chorus section. We get this. And instead of saying all of your goodbyes, let them know you realize the

[07:44] life goes fast. It's hard to make the good things last. You realize the sun doesn't go down. It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning

[07:59] round. If this song was following that bele structure where we get the chorus first, then the verse, we would expect to hear this section as a verse, but it doesn't sound like a verse. It doesn't feel like a verse. And there are several

[08:12] reasons for that. Firstly, that line and instead of saying all of your goodbyes is using three chords that are not the home chord, they're all away chords in the key. And this creates a little bit of tension that can then be resolved by

[08:27] returning back to the home chord. So if we hear those chords and instead of saying all of your goodbyes, that G chord there is really

[08:39] sitting and waiting for us to resolve back to the C chord, which we do in the back to the C chord, which we do in the next line again, emphasizing the word realize. Let them know you realize that life goes fast. It's hard to make the

[08:56] life goes fast. It's hard to make the good things last. You realize the sun don't go down. It's just an illusion go by the world spinning by the world spinning around and the use of the word realize

[09:11] again in this section and that C chord that home chord or tonic supporting that word it just feels like another chorus. It feels like anything other than a verse. It's not there really giving us backstory. It's not giving us character

[09:27] development. It's giving us a slight shift in the perspective because instead of the question being posed, do you realize, we're now getting more of a statement. Instead of saying all your goodbyes, let them know you realize that

[09:39] good things last. You realize the sun doesn't go down. It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round. And those statements really feel like like that's the message the songwriter is trying to deliver. And the fact that

[09:54] those lines are again being supported so consistently by the home chord, the tonic chord, delivers that message with a real sense of confidence and authenticity. So if we were mapping out this song with the section blocks, we

[10:06] this song with the section blocks, we may have an intro, then the chorus, then may have an intro, then the chorus, then a oneline preorus that then takes us to a oneline preorus that then takes us to a second chorus maybe, or is it a

[10:18] bridge? Whatever we call it, this is certainly not behaving like a conventional song form. And the fact that the title word realize is appearing in both of these choruslike sections is significant. And listening to Wayne Coin

[10:32] and Steven Droids break down the writing of this song on the Song Exploder episode possibly sheds a little more light on why we're hearing the entire song structured around this title phrase and this word realize.

[10:45] Wayne says, "There were a couple of songs where we used this lyric realize and this word realize. It resonated with the way I communicate." Steven then said, "Yeah, we'd done a BBC session, a song called We Can't Predict the Future

[10:58] that had that word realize at the end of it." And that's the first time that we back with, "And Steven and I both thought, ah, we didn't nail that one. Let's see if we can find the song that word is going to work with." So, it's

[11:12] interesting to hear the songwriters talk about their affinity with this word and how they really built a song around that word and that title line. And to reinforce this point further, when we go back to the form, what follows that

[11:26] section I just played you is a key change. It's a modulation upper minor third. Again, stating the title and the rest of the song really is restating material that we've heard before. It goes back to that little pre chorus and

[11:41] that second chorus, if that's what we're calling it, and finally ends with the line that the song opens with. Do you realize you have the most beautiful face, do you realize? So, after listening to this song over and over,

[11:54] chord progressions and the melodies, analyzing the song structure, I've concluded that this song really is constructed using a very unique form. a form that essentially operates as one big chorus or possibly two choruses that

[12:12] are saying very similar things. The first chorus really setting up the question, the second chorus possibly delivering the answer, but both of them featuring heavily this title and refrain line. Do you realize? And this is really

[12:25] important because it challenges some of our common conceptions about songwriting and what good songwriting is or should be. It reminds us that there are no rules. That music operates on different levels and it is possible to move

[12:39] millions of people and communicate a powerful message through unconventional choices and forms. It also reemphasizes something that we really need to take seriously as songwriters, which is the power of the title and the refrain line.

[12:51] The word realize appears no less than 12 times throughout this song. And so if you didn't catch any of the other lyrics, you still walk away feeling that there is one very clear question being asked or one very clear message being

[13:04] communicated. And this is the power of the title and the refrain line in takeaways and things you can try with your own songwriting. Break down the interesting and listen to them with the intention of mapping out the sections

[13:18] and observe the arrangement of these sections. I guarantee you every time you do this, you will learn something interesting and new about the songs that names of the sections and the order they appear, consider the functions or the

[13:31] roles these sections are performing in carrying the song forward and supporting the central message. If you're not already doing it, start collecting separate book or folder dedicated only

[13:44] to these special lines or phrases. And finally, not only can you focus on writing the chorus first, you can also experiment with placing the chorus first with every song, but you'll find that some concepts really lend themselves to

[13:57] beginning of the arrangement. Happy beginning of the arrangement. Happy songwriting. Bye.