Recently added
Biggie's signature swagger comes partly from the way he uses cross-rhythms. These "grouping dissonances" make his rhymes fall in unpredictable places.
These examples are one subtype of his syncopation strategy: when he puts two rhymes in one bar, he often places the first rhyme on beat 2, and the second rhyme on the "and" of beat 4.
He did it a lot more often on his first album than on his second. I don't know any prior rappers who used this flow.
On early albums, Robert Plant frequently ends vocal phrases by dropping a whole step from scale degree 1̂ down to b7̂ in a minor pentatonic blues context. It's usually a sliding melisma on the lyric's last syllable.
It's a common blues device, but he uses it more often than most blues singers do, especially in a song's opening line. As Led Zeppelin evolved away from their blues roots, he sang this interval less often.
Some cases are sliding and ambiguous, and notating blues vocals requires severe approximation, but there's a clear pattern nevertheless.
Points of connection
- The key of Db major
- Both songs contain the highlighted melodic fragment: an eighth note on 5̂, then quarter notes on 6̂-1̂-3̂, then they descend to start the next bar on 2̂.
- These phrases are located in the same metric position, starting halfway through the second measure and ending in the first half of the fourth measure
- Clairo opened for Sabrina Carpenter on tour in July 2025 and performed Bags both nights
Bob Dylan adds a tender, vulnerable quality to many of his phrases by ending on 4 over a I chord with which it does not agree; this [...] is so frequently heard [...] that it might be referred to as the Dylan cadence.
— Walter Everett, The Foundations of Rock (2009), p. 186
Points of connection
- Both songs are in the key of A and share a single rhythmically-identical pentatonic melody line (highlighted)
- Phonetically similar lyrics in the same rhythmic positions ("thought I knew"/"think I need", "an[swer]"/"an[ything]")
Points of connection
- Both songs are in the key of G# minor and end their chorus on this melodic phrase of identical length, similar rhythm and contour, and many identical notes
- The chorus in each song strongly accents its second beat on a shouted vocal syllable ("hey" vs. "self")
- Chester Bennington of Linkin Park has cited Nirvana as a source of inspiration
2Pac often inserts a single pair of 32nd notes into a line otherwise comprised mostly of 8th and 16th notes.
He used this technique on his earliest recorded verses as a member of Digital Underground, but it's especially characteristic of his late-career work.
Points of connection
- Both songs sing their respective titles on an identical ascending bar-ending three-note phrase: 3̂-5̂-6̂
- The three-note title phrase's first syllable contains a long "o" vowel, and its third syllable finishes with an "n" sound
- Both songs begin by comping the tonic chord with a similar keyboard texture
The descending melody 6̂-3̂-1̂-7̂, played on a short-short-short-long rhythm, appears in four different Yes songs from the early '70s.
The album Tales From Topographic Oceans also contains musical references to other prior Yes songs.
Submitted by @marshmallowturnip. Close to the Edge example contributed by @ed.g00dwin.
Points of connection
- The verse of each song starts with a two-bar phrase, starting on the "and" of 1, ending on beat 3 of the second measure, and repeating twice
- The second measure in each phrase opens by traversing scale degrees 4̂-3̂-4̂-5̂ using eighth notes
- Both songs are in the same key (E mixolydian)
- Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran recounted in a 2021 interview that Michael Jackson called him in 1984 to propose a collaboration, but the band declined
Kacey Musgraves evokes a hint of wistfulness at important moments in her songs by singing the 3rd scale degree. She uses 3̂ (or, less often, 5̂) to punctuate a key phrase, especially a line including the song's title, in places where resolution to the tonic would otherwise be expected.
This device is most strongly associated with country music: see e.g. Jim Croce's Operator (1972) and Tim McGraw's Can't Tell Me Nothin' (2004).
In Kacey Musgraves' catalogue, the frequency of phrase-ending 3̂s peaks on 2018's Golden Hour, after which she deploys them more sparingly.
Many pop-rock songs from the '90s and early '00s create a lingering unresolved feeling by including the 4th scale degree in their final chord.
Sometimes it's the root of a IV chord, but it can also be the 5th of the bVII chord.
Points of connection
- A seven-note sequence, sung on the same rhythm, in the same part of the bar, and in the same key (C)
- Supercut contains an additional melodic reference to another Taylor Swift song (Out of the Woods)
Points of connection
- These lines are sung on a similar lyric in the same bar position: starting on the "and" of 3 and ending on the following measure's third beat. The word "a" appears in the same position, and both lines end with "of us."
- The same melodic contour
- Supercut contains an additional melodic reference to another Taylor Swift song (Stay Stay Stay)
Caroline Polachek sings a lot of wide melodic leaps, including frequent fourths and fifths, but she's especially well-distinguished by how often she sings the minor 6th interval. It's uncommon in pop vocals at large, but common in her work.
It doesn't appear on Chairlift's first album, but becomes increasingly common starting with 2019's Pang.
Andrew McMahon of Jack's Mannequin and Something Corporate often ends vocal phrases by singing 1̂, rising to 5̂, then dropping to 3̂. He's not the only one but he does it surprisingly often, throughout his career, and with little regard for the underlying harmony.
In 2017 on Instagram Live, John Mayer described the guitar riff from Edge of Desire as "not that different from Satellite."
In 2025 on his Sirius XM radio station, he also recounted that as a teenager he'd practiced using a four-track recorder by recording layered guitar parts from Satellite.
Points of connection
- These songs share a rhythmically and lyrically identical 4̂-3̂-2̂ melody in the key of A major
- Girl Almighty contains substantial material from another Paul Simon song (The Obvious Child)
These songs share
- The key of E minor
- Verse melodies that alternate 2̂ and 3̂ in a similar rhythmic pattern
- Lyrical reference to a gun, unusual in the work of Michelle Branch
Similarities
These songs share a repeating series of six intervals in similar metric positions, each ending on the word "want."
Many hip hop and R&B songs from the '90s and late '80s feature percussion swung at the 16th-note level. In this context, when a rapper articulates 16th-note triplets, it creates a distinctive sound commonly associated with Das EFX.
It fell out of popular use by the latter half of the decade.
Paul Simon achieves a folky quality in his melodies by descending stepwise from 2 to 1, then leaping up to 3 and descending stepwise to 1 again: 2-1-3-2-1.
Often, but not always, this pattern is preceded by an additional 3: altogether, 3-2-1-3-2-1.
[...] there is a certain vocal gesture used by singer-songwriter Ben Folds [...] that tends to occur at the ends of phrases (scale degree 5̂ falls to 3̂, and then leaps up to 6̂). It may seem like a coincidence, [...] but in Ben Folds Five's cover of the Buggles' classic "Video Killed The Radio Star" [...] Folds interpolates the 5̂-3̂-6̂ gesture at the end of a phrase that, in the original version, was simply a repeated dominant tone.
— Nathaniel Adam, Coding OK Computer (2011)
5̂-3̂-6̂ in original songs by Ben Folds
Related
- Many vocal lines by Elvis Costello also end with 5̂-3̂-6̂.
Elvis Costello frequently ends vocal phrases by singing 5̂, descending to 3̂, then rising to 6̂. Sometimes he appends an additional 5̂, altogether 5̂-3̂-6̂(-5̂).
Related
- Many vocal lines by Ben Folds also end with 5̂-3̂-6̂.
These songs share
- The first and third measure of their intro guitar riffs (shown)
- A lyrical theme and some similar phrases ("I got him where I want him now" vs "I had him right there where I wanted him")
These lines have identical lyrics, an identical rhythm, and share four of their seven pitches.
The choruses of these songs
- Start their first two measures on a high 5̂
- Share identical rhythmes for the first measure and a half
- End their first phrase with a high melisma on 3̂-6̂-5̂, sung on "whoa"
Taylor Swift and Hayley Williams sang That's What You Get together at a concert in September 2011.
In the late '90s and early '00s, pop songs often used the leading tone in a minor key (i.e., the note one half-step below the tonic), along with the V7/vi dominant chord to which it belongs.
Ancestors
There is [...] a tradition of pure [i.e., "harmonic"] minor modality, blues aside, in the R&B music of Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson; this is the heritage of the Backstreet Boys.
— Walter Everett, "Pitch Down the Middle", from Expression in Pop-Rock Music (2008), p. 172
It was common in the 1970s and '80s to end a rap line with this rhythmic figure on the third beat of a measure:
It fell out of favor by the early '90s.
Several Billy Joel songs from the mid-'70s contain a similar rhythmic pattern: he sings a dense sequence of sixteenth or eighth notes, with a note onset on all subdivisions but the first in each group of four.
In the early '90s, Ghostface favored a sequence of three rhythms, always appearing together in the same bar:
- 2-3 syncopated eighth notes
- the last three sixteenth notes of the third beat
- a single-syllable rhyme on the fourth beat
Little Richard made famous the registral isolation of a single tone in falsetto [...]. Richard would usually break his voice to arrive on a high 1̂ [...].
— Walter Everett, The Beatles as Musicians (2001), p. 73
Swift has her own melodic signature [...]: a three-note melodic motif [usually descending from 4̂ to 3̂ and then to 6̂] that we've termed the "T Drop."
— Nate Sloan & Charlie Harding, Switched On Pop (2020), p. 22
It first appears in You Belong With Me (2008) and is a consistent feature of her writing since then.
The sequence [that opens the chorus of Movin' Out] is heard untransposed [...] in the F-major Sonatina ascribed by Thayer to Beethoven's Bonn period (first movement, mm. 35-38).
— Walter Everett, 2000. "The Learned vs. The Vernacular in the Songs of Billy Joel". Contemporary Music Review, 18(4).
I was really inspired by that synth riff in that song "Betty Davis Eyes."
— Caroline Polachek, interview with genius.com, 2020
The verses in both songs alternate one-bar phrases between two voices, emphasizing the second eighth note in each measure.
These songs share
- A section comprised of three notes, one per measure, with two voices in harmony, where one voice descends from 3̂ to 2̂ to 1̂
- A snare drum pattern that accents the second eighth note of the third beat in each measure
- The long "A" vowel on the first syllable
These songs share
- Phonetically similar words ("had"/"have", "money"/"mighty", "son"/"young") occur in the same rhythmic locations (underlined)
- Two measures of unaccompanied lyrics alternate with two measures of rhythmically and harmonically similar guitar chord stabs
- The highlighted sections of melody are identical
These songs share
- A lyric
- A sequence on the word "waterfalls" that descends from 7̂ to 6̂ and then to 5̂ (though the 7̂ is flat in McCartney's case)
AV Club: TLC ripped off Paul McCartney? I had no idea!
Paul McCartney: I think so.
— AV Club interview (2007)
Similarities
They share a three-note sequence, each located at the end of its phrase: 2̂ rises to 3̂, then drops to 5̂.
SZA performed Kiss Me in concert six times in 2019.