Mapping the "Shape of You"

Ed Sheeran's "Shape of You" took home a Grammy Sunday evening for Best Pop Solo Performance. Undoubtedly Shape of You has been the most successful song of 2017: it's gone 8x Platinum in the United States, broke ABBA's record in Australia for longest song at #1 (15 weeks!), and became the most streamed song on Spotify of all time. All records aside, there's another interesting thing about "Shape of You" - the title.

"Shape of You" is an odd title. When the song first dropped a year ago, I was intrigued by the construction. In Standard English, you can't use the possessive construction "of X" with a personal pronoun. For example, you can't say "*This is the castle of me;" you would have to say "this is my castle." This restriction doesn't exist with nouns - you can say both "This is the castle of the king" and "This is the king's castle," even if the former is a little awkward. "Of me" is unusual enough that a reader once wrote in to Language Log about a politician using the construction. Now, some of you may note the existence of the phrase "boss of me," especially "you're not the boss of me," which doesn't sound bad at all. There's even a song by They Might Be Giants called "Boss of Me" which was the theme song of the show "Malcolm in the Middle." Over at Language Log, they did a good post on the history of the phrase "boss of me," which seems to go back to the 1800s! Their analysis is that the use of "of me" is infantile. This can't really apply to "Shape of You," a song about meeting someone in the club, taking them home, and being "in love with [their] body." (At least, I hope Ed wasn't trying to be childish).

One of the songwriters says that growing up in Ireland, there was an expression "look at the shape of you" to mean "look at how you've shown up." He suggested adding this line to the song because they were worried that it would be too objectifying to have a song where the hook was "I'm in love with your body."

Sheeran also came up with what he thought would be a good phrase for a chorus: “I’m in love with your body”. Mac and McDaid weren’t convinced. “’I’m in love with your body,’ on its own with no addendum, with nothing at the end or no preface, felt objectifying to me,” McDaid said. “It felt like that’s the thing ? it’s just physical, it’s nothing else.” He said “the shape of you,” a phrase common in Northern Ireland, where he’s from, “can say ‘whatever you are, whatever it is. I’m in love with you.’ You know, it’s the shape of who you are figuratively.” (Source)

Johnny says, Where I come from, there's this phrase, the say 'Look at the shape of you,' and that means 'Look at the way you've showed up.' (Source).

They reinterpreted "Shape of you" to mean something like someone's essence, though the word "shape" still cheekily implies a certain physicality to the phrase - after all, if he's "in love with [her] body," it's not a stretch that he's in love with the shape of her body. It still allows a certain ambiguity to it that the standard construction, "your shape," wouldn't have. "Your shape" places the emphasis squarely on the shape, with "your" being a descriptor. "Shape of you," on the other hand, is linking a noun and a pronoun, and by placing the pronoun at the end, gives it an extra emphasis. This distance is what allows the ambiguity of what "the shape of you" actually means. The song isn't purely physical - the second verse is dedicated to a mundane date at a buffet, and the chorus assures us that his "heart is falling too". Mining this obscure Northern Irish expression (I can't find any hits for "look at the shape of you" on Google, and Johnny McDaid says that he heard it "growing up" - he was born in 1976) therefore fit the song perfectly.

That it's an Irish expression is even more serendipitous. Sheeran has long had a fascination with Ireland. He has a Irish Gaelic tattoo, Irish folk singer Van Morrisson is one of his favorite singers (and is mentioned on "Shape of You"), and the album "Shape of You" is on, "Divide," has multiple Irish references. He managed to find an expression that also fit in with his "brand" and continuing Celtic craze.

Now remember that Standard English varieties don't allow possessive "of you" to happen. This means that when most native English speakers see a song titled "Shape Of You," it will be slightly off-kilter. Nevertheless, thanks to other pre-existing constructions like "Boss of Me," it's not too unusual. It's exotic enough to grab your attention, but not so exotic as to seem foreign and bizarre. The end result is that one of the most popular songs of the 21st century uses an obscure Hiberno-English grammatical construction for its title. Being that - per Ed Sheeran's admission - they weren't trying to be innovative with this song (similarities to other songs have been noted, and they contacted the writers of TLC to split credit due to similarities to "No Scrubs"), the title is a unique touch that separates it from other songs with the same subject matter.

A lesson to songwriters - don't be afraid to mess with dialectal expressions. By taking the title and hook of his song from an Irish expression, Ed managed to immediately make his song stand out among the rest. He didn't have to compete with other songs that may have shared the same name ("Your Body" could have been the name of the song, but that's also a Christina Aguilera song) or just blend into the background ("Body" is so bland and obvious as to be almost parodic; the longer "I'm In Love With Your Body" gives away the entire theme of the song). Shape of You is so distinctive that any songwriter who tries to re-use the phrase for a different song will be fighting against the strong association with this song. I'm not here to tell you that the secret to the song's success is its title, because it's not. I am here to tell you that the title of the song and the use of the phrase worked very well with each other. Using very common words but putting them together in novel and interesting ways is a solid technique.

These Song Titles Are Too Weird Nowadays

I feel like song titles are never where I expect them to be anymore. If you read my prior post on how album titles have changed over time, you'll know that album titles are shorter and more noun-based nowadays. The same applies to songs, but the thing is that some songs almost seem meant to have a different title from the one they have.

My cousin once asked me, "what's that Halsey song about the bathroom? 'Secret,' right?" There is no Halsey song called "Secret," but there is a Halsey song called "Strange Love" which has a post-chorus that goes "that's the beauty of a secret, you know you're supposed to keep it, that's the beauty of a secret" twice. The chorus says the words "secret" four times - can you blame her for thinking that's the song title? Instead, it's "Strange Love," which does not have the word "strange love" anywhere in the song.

They think I'm insane, they think my lover is strange
But I don't have to fucking tell them anything, anything
And I'm gonna write it all down, and I'm gonna sing it on stage
But I don't have to fucking tell you anything, anything

That's the beauty of a secret
You know you're supposed to keep it
That's the beauty of a secret, oh whoa oh whoa oh whoa-oh oh
That's the beauty of a secret
You know you're supposed to keep it
But I don't have to fucking tell you anything, anything

The closest you get is "They think I'm insane, they think my lover is strange" which is only said once in the chorus. There's no way to predict the title of the song from the actual text. I myself probably would have called this song "Anything" from the part where she repeats "but I don't have to f-ing tell you anything, anything" or "That's the Beauty of a Secret," because both lines are catchy enough to be considered the hook. Someone apparently decided that "Strange Love" was a better descriptor for the song. It's just a bonus track, so maybe nobody put any thought into whether it would be easy to recall the song title. That sort of thought is usually put into singles, so that you know the name of the song without having to Shazam it or Google some snippet of the lyrics in the hope of finding the name.

Except, what about the hit song of 2016? It's called "We Ain't Ever Gettin' Older," right? No, actually it's "Closer," which is taken from the line "so baby pull me closer in the backseat of your Rover..." There is nothing important about that line, other than it being the first line of the chorus; there is nothing important about that melody because it's repeated several times for the rest of the chorus; there's no emphasis on the word "Closer," either. Perhaps most people would try to identify the song by singing the drop after the chorus, which is a simplified electro-bloopy version of the chorus. "We Ain't Ever Gettin' Older" is repeated twice later in the song, with Halsey coming in on top of Drew's vocals, and it seems to sum up the theme of the song... but the name of the song is "Closer," not "We Ain't Ever Gettin' Older" or "*bloo bloop bloop bloo bloo bloop bloop bloop*"."

So, baby, pull me closer
In the back seat of your Rover
That I know you can't afford
Bite that tattoo on your shoulder
Pull the sheets right off the corner
Of that mattress that you stole
From your roommate back in Boulder
We ain't ever getting older
[drop]
We ain't ever getting older
We ain't ever getting older

Thankfully the two megahits of 2017, "Shape of You" and "Despacito (Remix)," have titles that are pretty easy to discern. "Shape of You" introduces the title at the beginning of the chorus: "I'm in love with the shape of you, we push and pull [...]", then it goes into the second part of the chorus where the final line is also "I'm in love with the shape of you." If that wasn't obvious enough to you, the final line of the song is "I'm in love with the shape of you." "I'm in Love With the Shape of You" perhaps would be closer at identifying what the actual hook is, but nowadays we really don't like song titles that are that long (it would have been an excellent song title in 1912, though). "Shape of You" is a distinctive enough phrase (a dialectal turn of phrase from Ireland) that you can imagine it's the title.

I'm in love with the shape of you
We push and pull like a magnet do
Although my heart is falling too
I'm in love with your body
Last night you were in my room
And now my bedsheets smell like you
Every day discovering something brand new
I'm in love with your body

Oh I oh I oh I oh I
I'm in love with your body
Oh I oh I oh I oh I
I'm in love with your body
Oh I oh I oh I oh I
I'm in love with your body
Every day discovering something brand new
I'm in love with the shape of you

Let's look at "Despacito" now, which also has the chorus start with the title, and drops it a second time in the first line just in case you forgot: "Despacito, quiero respirar tu quello despacito [...]" (Slowly, I want to breathe your neck slowly.) The second part has the same techinque: "despacito, quiero desnurdarte a besos despacito [...]" (Slowly, I want to slowly undress you with kisses). The post-chorus makes up for this by not using the word at all. Then after Daddy Yankee's verse, we get the chorus and the post-chorus, but something changes afterwards - Luis Fonsi sings an altered version of the chorus with English lines. "Despacito, this is how we do it down in Puerto Rico." After finishing the chorus, he doens't do a repeat and instead jumps straight into the final post-chorus. This post-chorus is also different in that it ends with Justin Bieber repeating the hook at the very end of the song: "Y que olvides tu apellido, despacito." (...and you forget your last name. Do it slowly). Overall the title of Despacito is repeated 10 times in the song, and each time it has the same hook melody. This makes it very easy to tell what the song's name is, even if you don't speak Spanish (and it's truly a wonder a Spanish language song topped the US charts long enough to tie the record for longest-charting song).

Despacito
Quiero respirar tu cuello despacito
Deja que te diga cosas al oído
Para que te acuerdes si no estás conmigo
Despacito
Quiero desnudarte a besos despacito
Firmo en las paredes de tu laberinto
Y hacer de tu cuerpo todo un manuscrito

I would expect hit songs to have the title be pre-eminently obvious, yet we get songs like "Closer" where it's not clear which word you're supposed to arbitrarily pick as the title. I wonder if this decoupling of hook from title has something to do with the changing structure of pop music. EDM became a popular genre in the early 2010s. In modern pop songs (from the 1950s onward), you have a verse, which expands on the theme of the song and can be a little more experimental, and the chorus, which is the 'payoff', the adrenaline high, the catchiest part of the song. You repeat the verse and chorus, maybe throw in a bridge before the final chorus for some variety, and then end it with a chorus. There are variations like adding pre-choruses which increase tension for the chorus, or a post-chorus which serves as a transition back into the verse, and other things like changing the amount of repetitions, cutting a section short, etc.

The big change EDM brought was replacing the tension of the verse-chorus with the tension of chorus-drop. EDM-inspired pop songs still have verses, but they don't really ramp up the tension the way the chorus does. The chorus starts bringing in more instruments, the drum goes from quarter to eighth to sixteenth notes, the singer's reaching the peak, and then at maximum tension you get the 'drop', which is sort of an electronic hook that's repeated. The drop is not supposed to build tension - it is the result that the song builds up to. Instead of looking forward to the chorus with anticipation, the song looks forward to the drop. Drops, being instrumental in nature, do not have lyrics in them. This is a problem - if the catchiest part of a song is instrumental, what do you call the song? It doesn't really matter much at that point, so you may as well take something from the second-catchiest part - the chorus - and use that. If there's any repetition in the chorus, you can use that (Zedd's "Stay the Night" repeats "Stay The Night" in some way five times, and then it appears during the drop at one point). Otherwise, you can pick a word at the end of a song, since many people remember the last part of a chorus (Zedd's "Clarity": "if our love's insanity, why are you my clarity? [drop]"). The beginning of the chorus is also a good bet ("So baby, pull me closer"). The middle of a chorus is murky ground; it's the least likely to be remembered.

Another structural change may also affect this, but it's not musical - it's technological. Nowadays we have phones and Shazam and many ways to find out a song's title. I mentioned Googling a snippet of song lyrics to find a song's name, but before internet-enabled cell phones you would have had to write those lyrics down somewhere and look them up at the nearest computer. And before the internet, you would have had to hope that one of your friends or the record clerk knew what the song was or that the DJ would play it again. The stakes were higher for song titles in the past - they can't buy your song if they don't know the name. Nowadays it's easy enough to look up names on our own, so you can decide to pick something that's not very distinctive and obvious ("Closer") because people can find it anyway.

I'm still researching why song names are getting shorter. I'm still working on that big old post about song titles throughout pop music history. This is just a short slice of what I'm working on.

Have you ever had trouble figuring out what a song is called? Do you use Shazam or Google to find songs you don't know the name of? Sound off in the comments below!

Jan-22 Review

In the interest of keeping to my New Year's Resolution and updating this blog more frequently, I've decided to start doing a 'week in review' sort of post to summarize developments this past week, preview things to come, and comment on things that happened during the week.

I'm going to cheat a little and look beyond this week by promoting my article "Dialect Dissection: Taylor Swift & Genre Hopping." If you have not read it yet, check it out - it's the start of a series where I look at how major musicians use language and dialect in their music. Here we take a look at how Taylor Swift changes her accent throughout her career. It's got sound samples and IPA previews (done by yours truly), so get your headphones and hurry on over!

This week I tried my hand at publishing more than once per week... previously I had been lucky to publish once per month. I found an Accent Challenge on Twitter with some interesting word choice and delved a little into the history of accent challenges and why they pick the words they do. I also asked the question of why some pop singers in the 70s sounded like they were saying 'WUH-man' instead of 'woman.' As always, comments are welcome: have you participated in an accent challenge? Heard instances of someone saying 'WUH-man'? You don't need an account to comment, so don't let that stop you!

Next week is going to be a tough one. I'm probably about halfway through making the next Dialect Dissection. My goal is to publish it for the beginning of February, but I've got a pretty full schedule next week that may challenge that (Lana Del Rey concert in there, by the way!). There's another article I've been working on since December of 2016 (yes, that long!) that I was hoping to get published mid-December, but I wanted to see if I could get some experts to chime in on the subject matter before haphazardly posting. The next next Dialect Dissection is still a mystery - I can go with the one that's almost entirely written, but where I don't know the musician's backstory and non-studio material well, or I can take a risk and start a new one where I am much more familiar with the singer's oeuvre, but I'd need to start over the work of collecting examples. Either way, there's plenty more Dialect Dissection coming up.

In more personal news:

• I've been re-reading Ada Palmer's "Too Like the Lightning," which is a science-fiction novel that, among many other things, explores how language affects society. I first heard of it because Gretchen McCullough - who runs the wonderful All Things Linguistic blog - read through part of it and tweeted down her reactions. When I saw Language Log had written about it to, I felt there must be something to this book to be written about on two linguistics blogs. It's a good read, but it requires a lot of worldbuilding before you can understand the plot, so don't rush through it. If you're interested in novels that deal with language, this is a pretty good bet.
• If you haven't noticed, I have linked my Twitter and Instagram in the upper right corner! They do not show up yet in mobile view; I'll have to work on that. I post about linguistics and music, as personal posts. If there's any demand for social media that's dedicated solely to the blog, I can do that so you only get the updates. Facebook and a Tumblr page dedicated to the blog will be coming soon.
• I challenged myself to listen to as many newly released and unheard albums that I could in 2017. I ended up listening to something like 80 albums. I don't think I'll be listening to every release of 2018 because that was a tiring project. If you have any recommendations for newly released albums throughout 2018, send them my way.

It's very exciting to be taking these steps towards making this blog a real thing. I don't want to make commitments that I can't keep, but I know that I want to post at least once a week, not including weekly recaps. Once again, thank you to everyone that's read an article and been kind enough to leave a comment or point out a typo. Your thoughts and help are invaluable. Let's see what's in store for next week!

- Karen