Summer months has always been better for me musically than writing...ly, and I don't know why that is, but my brain loves odd time signatures and counting in them and trying to figure out melody vs rhythm and idk I am tired but 7/4 slash 7/8 is underappreciated as well
Like listen, people rag on folks for loving radiohead and tool, and to be fair, there are plenty of reasons to dislike tool and I am saying that as a fan,
But part of what is so fun for me with those bands is getting into the weirder songs and figuring out how they tick. If you can figure out how to count a bar of something, you can do some absolutely spectacular things, like this example:
The majority of pop music is in 4/4 but it doesn't have to be, and you can chase down a hundred cultures across the globe that have been doing interesting stuff not in 4/4 for centuries or longer.
Somewhere in my drafts is a long post about how even a simple shift from 5/4 to 3/4 in Darren Korb and Ashley Barrett's "In Circles" from the Transistor soundtrack elevates an otherwise simple song. I should go finish that.
Because holy fucking shit. It's good. It's so goddamn good. The verses are in 7/4, then at the chorus it drops into 4/4 (or 8/8, depending on how you want to count it). That chorus is so straightforward it feels radically different, and the accents in both the vocals and the percussion give it this off-kilter feeling even though the rhythm is so even and clean you could use it to hand paintings, then eat off it.
There's a million other things going on with this song, too—for example, @makyo pointed out that this is Willow Smith, who, in addition to being Will Smith's daughter, had her breakout single with I whip my hair back and forth. the piano chords in the verses are very dense cluster chords, unexpected but absolutely spectacular. The lyrics are brilliant and heartfelt, the performances are pitch-perfect and just....30 listens in it's still just as euphoric.
Also it's apparently one of three songs on the album with 7/4, which for a pop/R&B record in this vein is absolutely astounding.
And good. God it's good. Golly.
