It sounds like a lot of tracks from its era, but its creators' attention to detail and its dramatic but relatable lyrics make it stand out.
For a 2000 baby, I don't know nearly enough 2000s music.
I realized this about myself over the summer, and I still can't quite get over the fact that I did. On my many drives down Highway 101 to work, I often put on the 2000s XM station. When I did, I was blown away by just how much of what I heard sounded new to me, as in tune with pop music and the trends therein today. Some people may brush it off as just not having heard a song in a while, but considering the musical memory I have — and my really strange ability to recall the most random things about songs — I don't think that's the case.
What it comes down to is that, while I have always enjoyed music, I didn't actively seek out music to listen to on my own time until around the time I started middle school. Sure, I had a radio, but up until 2011 or so I always had it tuned to a sports station for Oakland Athletics, San Jose Sharks, or Cal games. This makes listening to 2000s songs a really strange experience for me — it's as if I'm filling myself in on what I missed, even though it was right at my fingertips the whole time.
One of the songs I heard most frequently on the 2000s station was "Second Chance," a 2008 track by Jacksonville-based band Shinedown. The song instantly struck me as being exactly what I expected: mainstream post-grunge, with cinematic strings, a massive chorus that adds a guitar layer or two and threatens to overpower the vocals, cinematic strings and piano, and as typical a song form as you could find (verse, pre-chorus, chorus, repeat all that, then bridge and somewhat extended final chorus).
After hearing "Second Chance" on consecutive days, I could sing along with nearly the entire track. Now that isn't out of the ordinary for me; I sing along to stuff all the time when I'm alone, and I pick up tunes pretty quickly. What was different was how much I enjoyed singing along to "Second Chance" in particular. I never quite understood why until, in selecting the song for today's post, I took a step back and refrained from singing along while listening for all the details that make the track what it is.
First and foremost, I'm drawn to "Second Chance" by the vocal performance given by Shinedown frontman Brent Smith. His voice is one of the fullest I've heard from any rock singer; you can really tell he makes the most out of every breath he takes while he sings. I'm also impressed by how Smith gradually builds his vocals from the verse to the chorus. At the start of the song, his vocals sound relaxed and slightly dark in timbre, fitting his lyrics about making it through the day and getting ready to leave on his own. When the pre-chorus arrives, he leaps up more than an octave, considerably brightening his tone, but simultaneously shows remarkable restraint by hardly increasing in volume. He leaves the bulk of that to a crescendo in the two measures before the chorus, during the word "disappears" and the subsequent line "somewhere in the stratosphere." The intensity also leads to a brief raspiness in Smith's vocals, which further builds the song's tension leading into the chorus. Upon reaching the chorus, Smith is singing at his loudest and near the top of his vocal range, leading to a sharp but not heavy tone that really carries the song through its most powerful section.
The chorus vocals also sound more powerful because they are both double-tracked and panned pretty widely; one track is strongly on the left side of the mix, the other on the right. Producer Rob Cavallo seemed to have foreshadowed this double-tracking by doing so a couple times in the first verse, with two ever so slightly panned vocals tracks audible on both instances of "by the way." In then keeping the pre-chorus vocals single-tracked while also introducing higher harmonies, Smith, fellow writer Dave Bassett, and Cavallo left room for the song to grow by combining the aforementioned harmonies with the double-tracking from earlier. The chorus thus derives additional power from building on and intensifying the vocal treatment of both sections which preceded it, increasing the panning as described above and additionally making the harmony lines a bit louder. While these elements and changes may not be individually noticeable to the average listener's ears, their cumulative effect certainly leaves an impact. Such an impeccably crafted whole of a song's gradual build is greater than the sum of its parts.
Of course, a vocal performance can't carry an entire track on its own. Thankfully, Shinedown's harmonic choices further facilitate "Second Chance"'s growth and message. The initial harmony in the verse establishes the song's key of C minor while also introducing its more positive outlook through the use of major chords for three of the loop's four measures. In fact, the tonic (or home) chord is the only minor chord used across the entire track — a true musical rarity. This quality is solidified by the pre-chorus progression, but it is really driven home by the use of F Major as the subdominant chord in the two measures leading up to the chorus. That chord, both in its tonality and its placement within the track, strikes me as the defining feature and moment of "Second Chance." F Major is the first and only chord in the track to feature a note from outside the C natural minor scale — its major third note of A-natural is the note in question. Having instead heard the diatonic note of A-flat throughout the song up to that point, hearing A-natural within F Major injects the track with a massive amount of bright energy as it directly approaches its chorus.
Continuing from the F Major at the end of the pre-chorus, the chorus further demonstrates the impact a single chord change can have on a piece. Its chord progression is based off that of the verses. In the verses, the progression is one bar each of C minor and E-flat Major, then two of A-flat Major; the chorus progression is mostly the same, but replaces the first bar of A-flat Major with F Major. Whereas the verse feels somewhat forlorn between its harmony and lyrics, the chorus sounds defiant and hopeful with just one measure's chordal difference. This difference is then repeated, in a condensed form, during the song's bridge, reinforcing its qualities and its relevance to the track. The addition of a third major chord into the progression boosts the track's hopeful feeling, and the contrast and distant relationship between F Major and A-flat Major — generated by their not sharing a chord tone — brightens the section and the song even further.
I'm so impressed by how much the small details of a track can add to my enjoyment of the music... but there's still one big thing I haven't gone over that compels me to sing along. Without lyrics that fit all the aspects of the music over which I've obsessed in this article, I doubt I'd be thinking about this track so much. "Second Chance" is built upon the idea of grabbing life by the horns and making the decision to go for your biggest goals and dreams — and the idea that, in order to do so, you may need to leave the familiar behind. The pre-chorus lyrics hint toward this need for change: the lines "I just saw Halley's Comet, she waved / Said, "why you always runnin' in place?" really stuck with me. It's quite a dramatic line in the image it conveys; if something so distant can recognize my own stagnation, it must be pretty obvious that I'm not doing enough to work toward the future I want. The chorus then leaves nothing to the imagination:
Tell my mother, tell my father I've done the best I can To make them realize, this is my life I hope they understand I'm not angry, I'm just saying Sometimes "goodbye" is a second chance
At some point, I will have to make the heart-wrenching decision to leave behind the people and places with which I'm familiar in pursuit of my goals. While I belted these lyrics in the car many times over the summer, I don't think its meaning has fully sunk in, even now that I'm back in Berkeley, because I'm still so close to home. As such, I hear "Second Chance" as a somewhat bittersweet song with which I could resonate even more in the coming years, as I finish my collegiate studies and look toward true adult life. While I love my family and my community, I understand that nowadays my biggest chances for growth and becoming my own person come from setting out on my own. I just hope that, when the time comes for me to do so, I can look ahead with as much drive and optimism as I hear in this song.
Comments