The Most Efficient Pop Songs

Cafe Society
1

Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime” is one of my favourite songs - it’s one of your favourite songs as well. And the video. The bit where the strange man makes a chopping motion on his right forearm, just like the woman on the screen behind him. As if we were all connected in some way. And that was 1980, imagine what people could do nowadays.

But famously the music is just four seconds long - two bars of a bassline, with overdubs - for the entire song, including the chorus. The production is very elaborate and the song doesn’t sound boring, but I’m always impressed at how much Brian Eno did with so little. It’s an efficient song. The opposite of “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Based on the evidence in front of me I believe that Brian Eno should be put in charge of managing the world’s resources. He would leave ample supplies for our distant ancestors whilst providing enough for us to explore the solar system and also live harmoniously in peace and plenty. We would go to our graves will full bellies, but not too full. Death would be an opportunity for us to ponder the universe for all eternity. Our children will be strong and beautiful. It can happen. Eno can happen. Eno can have a pen. Eno, Can, Hawkwind, three great bands.

But, yeah, it got me to thinking about similarly efficient pop songs. Songs that charted in the US or UK. “Once in a Lifetime” was top twenty in the UK in 1980, #103 in the US, because the UK had much more sophisticated taste in music back then*. Talking Heads probably hold the record unless there’s a dance track (for example) that just has two bars of music with no overdubs at all. I remember an early Coldcut track that went drum loop - James Brown - drum loop - James Brown for six minutes. And an Aphex Twin song that went drums - ELEPHANT! - drums - ELEPHANT! for a similar length of time. But they didn’t chart.

The next that comes to mind is “One Step Beyond” by Madness, which is a catchy saxophone line repeated a couple of times in different keys for seventy seconds - which was bulked out to single length by just copying and pasting** those seventy seconds, thus making a single that was just over two minutes long. #7 UK 1979, amazingly #76 US but it’s one of those stupid “hot 100 top airplay bubbling under” charts they have over there. I mean, did it get to #76, or what? Is that equal to, like, #15 on the main chart, or #700, or what?

Phil Spector did a similar thing to George Harrison’s “I Me Mine”, but that was never released as a single. But worldwide chart-topper “My Sweet Lord” is really just one verse and one chorus repeated several times.

Rotterdam Termination Source’s “Poing” - #27 in the UK in 1992 - is basically a single verse that goes poing poing poing poing for four minutes. But there’s a bit of variation in the drum programming, and sometimes it goes poing (pause) poing (pause) and sometimes there’s no poing. Wicked track though. Early gabber. The grindcore of electronic dance music. And as far as I know no grindcore tracks have ever charted in the UK.

“Papa Was a Rolling Stone”. Eleven minutes, two chords and the truth, topped the charts in the US, sold millions. There’s probably a rich seam in the whole Isaac Hayes / Parliament / James Brown motherlode, but their songs were mostly shuffled off into ghetto charts. Meanwhile Rolling Stone magazine waxed lyrical on the immortal genius of Chicago and their tasteful solos. But, no, yes, any more? I’m thinking of charting pop songs that used the minimal amount of musical material to produce maximal effect. One verse. No verses. One note. Silence for four seconds. If it charted, it’s pop.

  • Laurie Anderson, “O Superman”, #2. Not #2 in The NME’s Top One Hundred Most Fastest Charting Avant Garde Pop Singles (Monochrome Sleeve) but #2 in the one true official pop chart played on the one true official radio station and served with chips and salad on the one true Anthony Wedgwood Benn aspirin flower banana piece-of-cake baker man.

** Okay, splicing.

2

Tomorrow Never Knows by the Beatles, off Revolver, was famously composed with just one chord. Very much a predecessor to Once in a Lifetime, in terms of using studio work and vocals to mix it up and keep it interesting.

Little Richard’s Keep a Knockin’(but you can’t come in), with its drum intro that John Bonham used as the intro to Rock n’ Roll was maybe a minute and a bit, so they spliced in a repeat of a verse and put in another sax solo to get it to the desired length.

Those are what come to mind…oh, and acapella songs that are, strangely enough, just vocals. Like that cover of **Only You by the Flying Widgets **which went to #1 in the UK…

3

Having learned to play A Horse with No Name on the guitar, I’m 99% sure the damn thing is only two chords.

4

Or how about **Phil Collins’ **songs off his solo debut, Face Value? He did some demo’s at home, got a deal, started work on full studio versions…then he/they decided that the spare, sparse demos were spot on and just released those for most, if not all, of the songs…which defined a “signature 80’s sound” due to the space in the mix and how the drum sounds were set up…

5

I like the topic a lot. I think you have have boiled down “Once in a Lifetime” a little too far. It does have a couple of chord changes - think of “letting the days go by” chorus and then the “time isn’t holding up” part, which might count as a coda. I think there are some other Talking Heads songs on Remain in Light that don’t. “Listening Wind” has two chords, according to the rest of the interweb, and I think “Houses in Motion” may be one chord.

6

Most efficient in terms of use of studio time and instrumentation was The Flying Lizards’s version of “Money.” It was recorded in a single take, supposedly for a cost of less than $10. The drum and piano parts are basically the same riffs repeated.

7

Nice.

8

I haven’t heard it in a while (on a car radio in the late 80s, probably), but in my recollection “Electric Avenue” by Eddy Grant is the same 4-bar, one-chord riff repeated throughout. With very little additional embellishment. It was a big hit in the US, I can’t be arsed to look up chart positions though.

Also: “Tomorrow Never Knows,” although drony, does change from G to Fadd2 (or something like that) at some point. “It is not dying…” Or the guitar plays one, anyway.

9

IIRC, Lennon brought it in as a one-chorder, but it evolved from there…

10

The Drawback–Joy Division

Of course a lot of their stuff has a minimalist feel to it.

11

Try out the lyrics of Blondie’s - Atomic.

12

The Verve spun a 12 note sample of Andrew Loog Oldham’s interpretation of the Stones’ “the Last Time” into “Bittersweet Symphony”. Also has a pretty efficient video: just Richard Ashcroft walking down the street for the whole song. Why did he have to knock that nice lady down?

13

Hmm… I was going to mention Neu! and Stereolab, but it doesn’t seem that either band had songs that charted–at least not in the US.

Trio’s “Da Da Da” was pretty efficient–just that looped synth drum beat, and that little guitar & bass part during the chorus. Oh, damn, I guess there’s also a little bit of a synth line at the end of the chorus, too. Still, you can pretty much reconstruct the entire song with about 10 seconds or so of samples total.

14

A song jumped into my head after reading the OP, but now after listening to it again I don’t think it really qualifies, but here it is: One Time, by King Crimson. The bass line is pretty simple, and the lyrics are pretty minimal, but potent. But there’s a lot of other stuff going on in the song, so it’s probably not what you’re looking for – but I think worth a listen if someone’s never heard it before.

15

You, sir, have excellent taste.

Now, not exactly a “pop song”, but a great favourite of mine is Rhys Chatham’s Guitar Trio, which features three guitars all tuned to the same note (in, if I’m not mistaken, three octaves), all strumming the same pattern, and not fretting anything.

Not even one chord, that’s just one single note. And it’s great.

16

More notes come in at about the 3-minute mark. (Sounds like maybe all the strings on a standard tuned guitar ringing out?)

17

Harry Nilsson’s “Jump Into the Fire”. One two-bar riff. Fantastic song.

Hank Williams’ “Jambalaya”. Two chords.

Plenty of stuff by James Brown is basically a single repeated riff. He really messed with the whole concept of pop music, at least in the traditional Western sense.

18

nm

19

Hmm, checking indicates that the last part of Guitar Trio is, in fact, built around an Em7 chord. My mistake; Chatham later moved to guitars tuned to single notes in octaves.

Still one chord with a total of four notes is pretty minimal.

20

Yeah, I was going to say, there’s definite minor tonality at that part, and D-G-B-E (the last four strings in standard tuning) spell an Em7, so all the open strings in standard tuning guess wasn’t far off.