Heart - 'Magic Man' (Classical Musician Reaction & Analysis)

[00:00:00]Yes yes. Sir Hairless here. We've seen Crazy on  You. We've seen Barracuda. Quite different songs, all things considered. On both videos of them, I received a lot of requests for this  one, Magic Man. It was released in 1976 on Heart's debut album. It was one of  their first really big hits. Apparently, this song is about their band's manager at  the time, who was Anne Wilson's boyfriend.

[00:01:55]Oh, the structure of this  song is really interesting, isn't it? Is this the chorus then? This bit.

[00:02:05]I think that's the chorus. And essentially  what we've had is verse, chorus, verse, chorus. Not like two verses and then a chorus  like you might expect. There seems to be an equal weighting of chorus to verse, which I don't  know. I feel like that's not a common thing.

[00:02:19]Or if this bit is the pre-chorus. Well,  well, no, because that would mean there isn't a chorus. At least not yet. So, for now,  I'll stick with my initial thoughts of verse, chorus, verse, chorus. And it's interesting as  well just how the song is constructed in terms of the instrumentation rhythmically. There's  not too much going on. Most of it, I think, actually, is coming in the harmony. But where  should we start? How about the melody? That would make sense. I think the melody has a lot  of rhythmic variety with irregular rhythms. And that's really all down to the singing. Often you  can get crazy rhythms and stuff like that that come in the instruments because it's much easier  to play something crazy when strumming a guitar, for example, than when singing. But not  here. So let's go back to the beginning.

[00:03:07]We can really hear in the guitar and then  off the two. So it's like dmm off off and now it's on the offbeats. And then just  before what I think is the chorus. Listen out to the guitar. It's suddenly strummed  very quickly, like that kind of effect.

[00:03:41]And again there. And it's also syncopated now.  So it's not fitting in with the exact 1 2 3 4 protocol that we heard in the previous two  versions of the guitar rhythms. The percussion as well, the drums, pretty consistent, fairly  subtle. Occasionally we get something like, well, we just heard just before  the chorus. Let's listen again.

[00:04:05]You'll have to forgive my impressions of drums.  I am no beatboxer. And elsewhere in the song, I think we've heard about one and  a half minutes so far. There's not too much going on. The instrumentation  is fairly contained and reserved. So, I want to talk about the harmony a little bit.  I have the theory knowledge and it's what I think makes this song very interesting, especially  because there's not loads going on elsewhere. So, let me start with the chords.

[00:04:36]The dum dums in the guitar I spoke about  before. It's a G chord. So that's our note G. And it's called an open fifth because if you  take the fifth note above it, this is what we're hearing. It's called an open fifth because in  a chord typically there are three notes. You have this middle note as well. But the middle  note determines if it's major, happy sounding, or minor, sadder sounding. These two notes don't  change and they fit into both the major or the minor versions of the chord. So if we don't have  that in there, it's a little bit ambiguous. It could be major or minor. The first time we get  unambiguous chords again is for the chorus.

[00:05:22]On home. That bit. So they are full chords,  both major and then back to the ambiguous open fifth. The chorus is a good place to  introduce these full chords. They sound like they have more conviction. They're fuller.  You don't have to love me and let's get, and the melody adds almost further ambiguity  because on top of that open fifth, ambiguous, her melody is turning it into like a  seventh chord. So it's a bit more dissonant.

[00:06:02]Try to understand. That's where things get even  more interesting. Try to understand. On the first "try to understand" it is clear that it's a major  chord and her melody, and then they just move up one. This is the first time on G that we were  talking about before where now it's obviously a major, happier sounding chord. It comes on  the second "try to understand." It's hopeful, positive, uplifting. She's repeating it. It's  almost like she's begging. Trying to understand, especially when we consider what she's  talking about, you know, kind of being a young girl going out with an older guy. Her  mom is saying, "No, you're not ready yet."

[00:06:42]And I'll just very quickly pick out a few other  moments and then we'll carry on with the song.

[00:06:50]The guitar there. So again, we have that open  fifth G chord and the guitar comes straight in on creating dissonance. Seemed like he knew  me. He looked right through me. So there we got these kind of magic sounding bell chimes.  Mark tree. I think the guitar line underneath is doing that. Why is that ambiguous? Well,  we're in this scale. So it should be going, but no, just all these subtle things. And her  opening as well. Cold late night so long ago.

[00:07:27]That second note is called the supertonic  because G is note number one and it's note number two causing a direct clash with it.  Well, I'm sorry that was a bit of theory, but so far I think the harmony really is the  most interesting thing. There's not too much going on elsewhere. So, let's carry on and  see what the rest of the song has in store.

[00:08:14]That was meant to be me guitar, by the way.

[00:09:26]Look, I wouldn't normally pause mid  guitar solo. I don't know how long this solo will be. There's another 2 and  1/2 minutes of the song. And of course, copyright is the main issue. If I just  play huge, huge portions of the song, my video will get removed. I'll get a strike  and no more videos because of these repeated chords that we're getting over and over. It's  almost like a heartbeat in a way. There's something weirdly trance-like about them. I  feel like I'm just becoming part of the song and because of the structure I pointed out earlier  that seemed a bit peculiar. Verse, chorus, verse, chorus. Now that has sort of changed and the  chorus is being thrown in there. Then we might get an instrumental solo in between. I mean, long  story short, I have no idea what to expect at this point anymore, which is strange because there's  not been too many new musical ideas, right? The chorus is the same, the verses are the same. The  harmony, we have a few little interesting things like I pointed out earlier, but overall the  chords that we hear, they're not complicated.

[00:10:23]There aren't many of them. It's really quite  repetitive, but they do implement things constantly to reduce the repetition. Trying  to understand, like these chords coming in there. What is that? It could be a guitar. To  me, it sounds a bit more like a synthesizer.

[00:10:40]There's a bit more of an almost like a synthetic  vibe to the sound. It sounds a bit video game.

[00:10:51]You see what I mean about the video game? And  I know there'll be people commenting, "Oh, you can't reference video games because video  games came after this." Generally speaking, every time I reference something that wasn't  in chronological order, people complain. Yes, I know this came first, but the music, the video  game music in my head, I knew before this. So, for me, that's the reference. And  here we do get peculiar chord changes.

[00:11:21]Is it going to go up or down? I don't  know. It's just really interesting. Uh, and then of course we've got the vocals going  on. Crazy high belted chesty vocalizations above the point "try to understand" that I  mentioned earlier. I was saying instead of, we now have a full, a definitively  major chord and I was saying it's like she's begging. Well here even  more so, right? We can all hear that.

[00:11:52]That's interesting in and of itself but I  love the sort of call and response between the voice and then the guitar coming  in and this crescendo starting quietly, like coming out of the  shadows, guitar mimicking it, which takes us into the solo. So all in  all right now I'm basically thinking, right, they have the chorus, they have  the verse, the melodies. It's a long song, so if they're not introducing new chords,  new musical ideas, these kind of things, what are they going to do to keep us engaged  with the song? Like I say, I find it a little bit trance-like so it's very easy to listen  to it even though it is intrinsically a bit repetitive. I'm basically wondering, will we get  more guitar solos? Will there be solos of other instruments? Will we have vocal harmonies coming  in? All these kind of questions. Let's find... Cool.

[00:13:11]Proper distance there.

[00:13:43][laughter] What? What are these? I don't know. I  honestly don't think anyone, you know, on a first listen could expect what we're  hearing. Who could expect this to come in?

[00:13:59]So we're getting these really dissonant  guitar glissandos, these slides, which naturally will cause dissonance because  unlike an actual note on the keyboard, which has a set frequency, if you  slide through all the frequencies then yeah you're going to get loads of  dissonances. Then suddenly a rhythmic break, a silence, a pause. I was thinking, is that the end? The rest of the YouTube  video is noise, but they come back in.

[00:14:37]So that's got to be a synth. I would not be  surprised if this song acted in some ways as the basis for a lot of the kind of more early  popular video games of the '80s. You might think me crazy for that, but as someone who has  heard a lot of video game music, the resemblance in parts is uncanny. Not just in terms of the  instrumentation, the rhythms, the structure, but also actually certain melodic fragments.  Crazy thought, but you never know. You never know.

[00:15:06]That's nice.

[00:15:34]Is this just going to fade out?

[00:16:25]Right. The first word that comes into my head  as that song finished is hectic. Quite a hectic song. Very sporadic, irregular. And I've got  this huge sort of contradiction in my head because on the one hand I feel like it's quite  trance-like. Like we just have these repeated all the way through the song pretty much, at  least for the vast majority. Then they change in the choruses which naturally makes the choruses  stand out. But we have this trance-like element that just keeps the song almost in like perpetual  motion, just ticking over and over. But then on the other hand, it's the complete opposite  of routine. It's just these random sections coming in, guitar solos, synth solos, harmonic  changes, sudden silences, drums coming in with a bit of syncopation. The list goes on and on. So,  it's just this really weird blend of like trance essentially. I'm sure over the decades a lot of  people have listened to this song when high on various substances and then also the kind of  unexpectedness, not knowing what is coming, which in my head is kind of like a dichotomy  to what I've just been talking about. So, yeah, it's really interesting. A very, very interesting  song. Very truthfully right now. There are some parts I really enjoyed and there are other parts  I didn't enjoy so much. So I'll need to listen to it again a few times. I think you have to give  songs chances. Who knows? Maybe it will be a song that grows on me. I think sometimes the more  standout songs or slightly strange or peculiar songs often are growers. Very interesting. Really  interesting. Let me know your thoughts below. If you completely disagree or hate anything I've  said, comment them below. Don't abuse me, but just comment them. We are all entitled to  our own thoughts. And let me know which is your favorite Heart song right now. I definitely have  one in mind of the ones I've reacted to. If you don't want to write any words, then why not leave  an emoji? I think we'll go for the magic emoji like you see on the screen now. Thank you if  you made it this far. Really, really appreciate it. Would also appreciate a like on the video. It  helps a lot. And I will see you in the next one.