What Makes These Grammy-Nominated Tracks Tick?

A single tune can amplify our present temper or transport us to a completely new realm of feeling. Wallowing in self-pity in your bed room ground? Deepen your blues with some blues. Pulling your self out of your distress to jump-start an evening in town? Bump top-40 pop hits. Dancing your troubles away? Loop trippy EDM tracks ‘til dawn.

The field of music psychology offers some insights into the feelings evoked by certain pieces of music, but it also recognizes that these feelings cannot always be tucked into neat boxes. “Our emotional experience is often quite rich and complex and diverse, and it changes from moment to moment,” Hauke Egermann, a professor at the University of York Department of Music and the director of the York Music Psychology Group, tells WebMD. “It’s not [so] straightforward and easy to say, ‘Well, this is a happy song, this is a sad song.’ Often the reality is someplace in between, or it’s joyful and unhappy on the similar time.”

Each yr, the Recording Academy types songs into classes and awards Grammys to the “best” of the bunch. A Grammy-worthy tune might showcase the singer’s wealthy vocals, break floor with avant-garde manufacturing, or grasp that successful four-chord development. But forward of the sixty fourth Annual Grammy Awards on April 3, Egermann explores why 5 of this yr’s nominees may strike an emotional chord.

“Kiss Me More” by Doja Cat ft. SZA (Song of the Year)

Doja Cat and SZA’s “Kiss Me More” opens with a guitar riff that instantly units the listener’s temper by making a “calm atmosphere,” in keeping with Egermann. “It triggers our ability to resonate with these very basic expressions in music,” he says of the repetitive riff, which runs via the complete tune. “It’s like you empathize with the [artist]. It takes you there.”

The tune emulates the catchy, bubblegum-pop refrain of one other Grammy-nominated hit, Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical,” however modernizes it with assertive rap verses. “What’s interesting about this piece is that the rap is a bit more aggressive, and it sort of creates a bit of a contrast and a bit of a tension,” Egermann says. “It’s an interesting stylistic mixture.”

“Genesis” by Deftones (Best Metal Performance)

Deftones’ “Genesis” begins with sluggish synths that shift right into a heavier, darker rock sound with scream-adjacent vocals. “These are [elements] that are associated with expressions of negative emotion,” Egermann says. “If you hear someone on the street that makes sounds that are really rough and dissonant and dark and loud, you might think they’re in pain or that they’re [screaming] in anger.”

When it involves steel music like “Genesis,” one listener’s torment is one other listener’s remedy. “We have the ability to take things which would be negative, and turn them into positive things by interpreting it as art,” Egermann says. “It’s a process of distancing or dissociation. We step back, and then we can look at that [emotion] from the outside as opposed to feeling it directly … There’s the idea of catharsis, that you go through a sort of tragedy [through the music] and that helps you to overcome your own tragedy, in a way.”

“All Eyes on Me” by Bo Burnham (Best Song Written for Visual Media)

Released as a part of his lockdown comedy particular “Inside,” Bo Burnham’s “All Eyes on Me” follows the comic’s normal method of delivering social commentary and self-reflection via contrived — and even corny — pop parts. The tune harnesses the facility of the Autotune, repetitive hooks, and viewers instructions of Y2K hip-hop-tinged pop, slowed down and looped nearly to the purpose of hypnosis.

“It’s very melodic, it’s very repetitive, it creates a sort of earworm,” Egermann says. “If there are some musical traits that people are more likely to remember, they’re incorporated here. The structure is not too complex, but it’s also not too simple — it’s just right, somewhere in between. You can sing along because it’s this clearly formulated melody. It pulls you in.”

“Family Ties” by Baby Keem ft. Kendrick Lamar (Best Rap Performance)

Baby Keem’s “Family Ties” begins with a visceral beat that sounds a bit like a mashup of a wrestling entrance theme and a wolf howling on the moon. “It stimulates a bodily, direct response,” Egermann says. “There’s this sort of low subbase, which directly resonates in us … not even on an abstract level; it’s on a bodily level. If you stand in front of your speakers, your body will [literally] resonate with that. So it gets you right away.”

Rap is constructed on repetitive patterns of rhyme and rhythm, however it’s the unpredictability of the movement that creates a type of “flow state” within the listener. “On a syntactic level, it’s very complex,” Egermann says of “Family Ties.” “Through rhyme and repetition, you build up expectations, which are then violated once in a while. This creates tension and makes things aesthetically interesting.”

“MOVEMENT 11′” by Jon Batiste (Best Contemporary Classical Composition)

Jon Batiste is the king of the Grammys this yr with 11 nominations, protecting R&B, the broad-spectrum “American Roots” style, the jazz soundtrack of Pixar’s “Soul,” and past. His tune “MOVEMENT 11’” can be rooted in jazz, regardless of its classification as a recent classical composition.

“It’s a very jazzy piano [performance], and that plays very much with our expectations as well,” Egermann says. “During a jazz performance, you would have an original motive that would be presented, and then it will repeat, but it will be varied and worked on. The variations will confirm your expectations and violate your expectations.”

A cliche-ridden pop tune or rom-com might consolation us with its predictability, however a jazz piece excites us by zigzagging like a thriller. “Playing with expectations can create tension, surprise, relief, satisfaction, [and] anticipation,” Egermann says.

So what’s the “golden ratio” that deems all of those stylistically various songs worthy of a golden gramophone? “Scientists have been trying to find this formula for a hit song for many years, and it’s not that easy,” Egermann says.

Hit songs, like human feelings, can’t all the time be distilled into classes. “A lot of the pop music today is not in these boxes it used to be in maybe thirty years ago,” Egermann says. “Now everything’s sort of fused together, mixed together. I think this is what makes music interesting. It is maybe also what the judges thought was particularly valuable here.”

Popular music is notoriously formulaic, however judging by this yr’s Grammy nominees, the “best” of it follows a method solely to disrupt it. Repetition and expectation might catch the ear, however the ingredient of shock is what retains folks listening.