Music Structure and Composition
"Heard 'Em Say" is a mid-tempo hip-hop/R&B song. It is set in common time with a moderate tempo of 95 beats per minute and composed in the key of F major. The song begins with a medium tempo followed by its melody, a cascading piano medley provided by excerpts of "Someone That I Used To Love" as performed by Natalie Cole, laced over cluttered beats, warped bass and a slight mix of acoustic guitar. Its chords are arranged in the progression of F9-Bbma7-Bb6 Aaug-F. West raps two verses within the song, both followed by a refrain which he delivers in tandem with Levine. The lyrics of "Heard 'Em Say" are constructed in verse-chorus form with a brief bridge after the second chorus. As the composition enters its coda, it acquires new musical aspects, exhibiting xylophone flourishes, quivery synth riffs, and twinkling foreign bells before reaching its conclusion.
Lyrically, "Heard 'Em Say" is a "mournfully contemplative" song that "talks about being honest with yourself in a world that is not." The song is conceptually written from the perspective of an afflicted, impoverished American quietly lamenting the fallacies of society and questioning the ways of the world, swiftly touching on various social, economical, and religious issues along the way.
Read more about this topic: Heard 'Em Say
Famous quotes containing the words music, structure and/or composition:
“It was a poetic recreation to watch those distant sails steering for half-fabulous ports, whose very names are a mysterious music to our ears.... It is remarkable that men do not sail the sea with more expectation. Nothing was ever accomplished in a prosaic mood.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)