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Pop Music Audio Oddities: A Brief Revue

By Paulo Camacho

I’m sure that you’ve heard of this little clip going around, recently, and setting the internet ablaze with the biggest sense-to-reality debate since The Dress:

For those who have been away from the internet for the past week or so, that was the infamous “Laurel/Yanny” clip — a sound clip of opera singer Jay Aubrey Jones, commissioned by Vocabulary.com, saying the word “Laurel.” The debate began when people weren’t hearing the word “Laurel,” but instead what sounded like “Yanny.” People were hearing two completely different things, from the exact same audio.

While an electronic dissection proved that people weren’t crazy, it just goes to show how people can hear the same music differently for so long, and miss things that were always in the background.

Music, like all things audio, can be quirky like that — intentional or not, even some of the most popular music will have oddities that have sneaked into tracks that audiences, for the most part, never noticed. And — much like hearing “Laurel” or “Yanny” for the first time — once you hear them, they can’t be unheard.


The Police — Roxanne

Possibly one of lead singer Sting’s most recognizable songs when he was with The Police, “Roxanne” presents the protagonist as a man who has fallen in love with a prostitute, and desires to take her away from her current situation. The song was inspired by two things that the band experienced while staying in Paris, France: the subject was derived from the prostitutes that Sting had seen hanging around theri seedy hotel; while the name for the main character’s love interest was inspired by a poster of Shakespeare’s seminal play Cyrano de Bergerac, which hung in the hotel foyer.

While many can recall the iconic electric guitar to open the song, the Easter Egg-like flub is surprisingly easy to overlook: at the 0:04 mark, you can clearly hear a faint piano chord randomly played in the background, followed by Sting’s voice openly laughing at the 0:07 mark. Music junkies have long since queried about the pair of random noises that open with the track, wondering if it was a deliberate artistic punctuation in the music. I’ll let Sting, himself — quoted in a 2000 interview with Revolver Magazine — tell the story:

I was just about to sing the first line of this celebrated song when I noticed there was an upright piano next to the microphone. I was feeling tired — I’d been up all night for some reason — so I just sort of sat down. I though the piano lid was closed, but it was open, so I wound up playing this incredible chord with my a**. It was this atonal sort of cluster that went really nicely against the chords we were playing. We thought it was funny, so we left it in.


James Blunt — You’re Beautiful

Released in 2005, “You’re Beautiful” remains James Blunt’s most successful single to date — it reached No. 1 on the charts of ten different countries, including the UK and the United States. Blunt described the song on The Oprah Winfrey Show being about discovering an ex-girlfriend with a new man, catching her gaze for a moment, and living a lifetime of memories in that moment — only to do nothing about it. However, while many have speculated the song to be about Blunt’s former girlfriend and casting director for the Harry Potter series Dixie Chassay, Blunt himself has neither confirmed nor denied it.

The ambiguity of the subject matter may have contributed to the idea that a seemingly obvious audible mistake had gone unnoticed by many who heard it — despite being a prominent part of the song’s intro. It actually happens eight measures into the song: he recites the line, “My life is brilliant,” but doesn’t finish the rest of the first lyric. Blunt then repeats the first lyric at measure 12, and subsequently begins the song. Any individual listener could write this off as an artistic choice and nothing more. In fact, he came in four bars too early, and the flub was inexplicably left in the final track, with no explanation.


The Beatles — Strawberry Fields Forever

As one of two tracks on the fabled group’s Double A-Side single in 1967, “Strawberry Fields Forever” was considered by lead singer John Lennon as his highest achievement, as a part of The Beatles. It represented a listening experience for a contemporary pop audience that broke free from previous singles — so much so, that while it perplexed both critics and fans at first, it would soon come to epitomize the psychedelic rock genre.

Interestingly enough, an unintentional part of why that was the case may have come in the post-production of the track. The band had recorded multiple takes of the song over a five-week period, which took a total of 45 hours. Ultimately, Lennon decided he wanted to combine two separate takes — specifically, the “original, lighter” Take 7, and the “intense, scored” Take 26 — to make the final song. There was one problem: the two takes were taken at different speeds, and in different keys. Nonetheless, Lennon tasked George Martin with the final edit, and the result was a hard-to-catch, yet abundantly clear, cut of both tracks overlapping at the 60-second mark. Those with expert aural skills will be able to catch it — but, once it’s found, it’s hard to ignore.


Christina Aguilera — Beautiful

From the 2002 album “Stripped” — one that definitively separated her image from that of the “Teen Pop Princess” mold that defined acts of the time like Britney Spears and Mandy Moore — “Beautiful” served as a touching message for those struggling with the societal definition of beauty. It soon after became the definitive anthem for the LGBT community for its strong message of self-empowerment and inner beauty. Considered Aguilera’s strongest ballad at the time, she won the 2004 Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, and was nominated for 2004 Song of the Year.

However, for such a strong, powerful track, there was one “flaw” that, once noticed, can’t be unheard. At around the 3:45 mark, when Aguilera is finishing her vocals, you can faintly hear the backing track that the artist can hear in her studio headphones bleeding into the actual song. It’s rather easy to miss, as it could be construed as a part of the background — but once you notice it, it’s clear as day.

Fascinatingly, however, “Beautiful” editor and mixer Dave “Hard Drive” Pensado loves the raw symbolism of the bleed:

The song was about being beautiful and honest in EVERY way. That bleed is honest. It was one of the most honest vocal performances I had EVER heard. It was actually the scratch vocal. Christina still had the lyrics in her hand. She truly has THE GIFT. So I tried to make the mix as honest as I knew how. I studied Imagine by John Lennon and used that as a guide. To me the bleed at the end was HONEST. When I took it out, I missed it. It sounded too clean and contrived.