Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

Fans Debate Whether The Weeknd Really Uses ‘The Same Four Notes’ On Every Song

Getty Image

It’s often been said that pop music is formulaic — or, more recently algorithmic, because the zeitgeist — but when a Twitter user posted a video of himself playing songs from The Weeknd on a mini-piano, users on the app went nuts debating just how true of the Canadian singer’s catalog that aphorism is.

The user in question was Andrew Huang, a self-declared “music human” who is best-known for his “Song Challenge” video series on YouTube (ironically, he too is Canadian, from Ottawa). Known for making music with unconventional tools and techniques, Huang posted a video playing the chord progressions of songs from The Weeknd’s catalog, positing in the caption, “Every Weeknd song uses the same 4 notes.” The songs played included “Tell Your Friends” and “Often” from Beauty Behind The Madness, “Reminder” and “Starboy” from Starboy, and “Heartless” from After Hours.

It didn’t take long for fans to rev up their best arguments for whether the video was accurate, inaccurate, good, or bad. A number of replies explained why The Weeknd does this in musical theory terms, with one clarifying that ‘the man found his key signature” and pointing out “some Broadway singers even have parts written specifically for them in their prefered key signatures.”

Others had some fun with the conceit, using it to make fun of both pop music and its critics, while others used it to criticize what they perceived as a lack of songwriting growth from The Weeknd, despite his ever-increasing popularity. There’s a pretty good pun in there too.

Still others just used the opportunity to marvel at the talent and hidden complexity of songwriters like The Weeknd and the fact that they are able to create so much diversity with just a handful of notes (there are only so many keys, chords, and sounds the human brain can interpret as music, yet we’vve been reinterpreting them for centuries and they all sound different — mostly). Meanwhile, one responder summed up the hype in one clever observation, remarking that while Huang never gave commentary on this tendency by The Weeknd, Twitter commenters have rivaled songwriters in their ability to turn basically anything into an argument.

Check out more replies below.