Production and Composition
Upon reading the script for Dreamgirls, director Bill Condon felt the second half of the film needed a song. The "emotional punch" of "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" led him to ask the musical team for Dreamgirls "to create a new and equally moving song to energize the second act". Led by Henry Krieger, the composer of the original 1981 Broadway musical version of Dreamgirls, "Listen" was written with help from Scott Cutler, Preven, and Knowles; it was one of four songs written for the film version of Dreamgirls. "Listen" was produced by the R&B-pop production duo The Underdogs.
"Listen" is an R&B-soul ballad, which is written in the key of B major, and set in common time at a moderately slow groove of 80 beats per minute. Knowles' vocals range from the note of F♯3 to G5. The song's music takes its instrumentation from the bass, celli, drums, guitars, keyboards, percussion, violas, and violins. According to Sarah Rodman of The Boston Globe, its lyrics make reference to tenacity, love, and the refusal to defer dreams; Knowles, as the female protagonist, sings, "demanding her moment in the sun". Chuck Taylor of Billboard magazine wrote that Knowles shimmers "with evocative emotion", rising to new heights alongside "a golden melody with spellbinding, rafter-raising production". The lyrics are written in the traditional verse-chorus form. The song starts with the lines: "Listen to the song here in my heart, a melody I start but can't complete". A bridge follows after repeating the pattern and ends in another chorus.
Read more about this topic: Listen (song)
Famous quotes containing the words production and, production and/or composition:
“Production and consumption are the nipples of modern society. Thus suckled, humanity grows in strength and beauty; rising standard of living, all modern conveniences, distractions of all kinds, culture for all, the comfort of your dreams.”
—Raoul Vaneigem (b. 1934)
“To expect to increase prices and then to maintain them at a higher level by means of a plan which must of necessity increase production while decreasing consumption is to fly in the face of an economic law as well established as any law of nature.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“Give a scientist a problem and he will probably provide a solution; historians and sociologists, by contrast, can offer only opinions. Ask a dozen chemists the composition of an organic compound such as methane, and within a short time all twelve will have come up with the same solution of CH4. Ask, however, a dozen economists or sociologists to provide policies to reduce unemployment or the level of crime and twelve widely differing opinions are likely to be offered.”
—Derek Gjertsen, British scientist, author. Science and Philosophy: Past and Present, ch. 3, Penguin (1989)