Composition and Theme
"Ugly" is a midtempo pop song that has a length of three minutes and fifty-three seconds. The song was composed in the key of C major using common time with a tempo of 117 beats per minute. The Sugababes' vocal range on the song span from the lower note of G3 to the higher note of E5. Instrumentation consists of a guitar, bass guitar, drums and keys. Nick Southall of Stylus Magazine noted that the song incorporates acoustic guitars "buoyed by peripheral detail".
K. Ross Hoffman of Allmusic described "Ugly" as a "towering ballad" with romantic and body-image issues. The song received numerous comparisons to "Unpretty" by American girl group TLC, another track composed by Austin. Group member Heidi Range compared the song's lyrics to "Beautiful", a song performed by American recording artist Christina Aguilera. Harry Rubenstein of The Jerusalem Post also noted that the song is reminiscent of both "Unpretty" and "Beautiful". The lyrical content makes reference to feeling ugly from having different eyes and hair, in addition to being shorter than other people.
Read more about this topic: Ugly (Sugababes Song)
Famous quotes containing the words composition and, composition and/or theme:
“The naive notion that a mother naturally acquires the complex skills of childrearing simply because she has given birth now seems as absurd to me as enrolling in a nine-month class in composition and imagining that at the end of the course you are now prepared to begin writing War and Peace.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“Since body and soul are radically different from one another and belong to different worlds, the destruction of the body cannot mean the destruction of the soul, any more than a musical composition can be destroyed when the instrument is destroyed.”
—Oscar Cullman. Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead? The Witness of the New Testament, ch. 1, Epworth Press (1958)
“This is certainly not the place for a discourse about what festivals are for. Discussions on this theme were plentiful during that phase of preparation and on the whole were fruitless. My experience is that discussion is fruitless. What sets forth and demonstrates is the sight of events in action, is living through these events and understanding them.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)