![]() ![]() ![]() But why isn't this rap, then? The main thing is that Shatner isn't following the beat. People commonly describe rap as "talking over music." Shatner is talking over music, so he must be rapping, right? All joking aside, I wouldn't describe it that way. This performance, goofy though it may be, is musicologically useful. If you want to hear someone actually rap on "Rocket Man," listen to William Shatner's indescribable performance from the 1978 Saturn Awards. He sings like a rapper, in short percussive phrases rather than in long arcs, but he's still singing. The thing is, though, that Young Thug doesn't actually rap on it-he sings throughout. So far in this post, I've been calling "High" a rap song. The sense of ambiguity is helped by the strange harmonic rhythm, with chord changes falling a sixteenth note before beat two in each measure. Even though "High" spends about twice as much time on the Bb chord as it does on the Gm, I would still pick G minor as the key in keeping with its generally melancholy atmosphere. By contrast, Young Thug's track oscillates ambiguously between G minor and B-flat major. Elton John's song begins in G minor, but by the time you get to the chorus, it's clearly in B-flat major. Rap songs tend to have more happening rhythmically than harmonically, but the chords to "High" are pretty interesting. Young Thug sings the melisma instead, with his Auto-Tuned warble. But Phili displaces "high" by one beat, and then cuts it off before the long melisma. Phili places it at the end of the bar, leading you to expect the word "high" on the next downbeat. The original Elton John phrase comes in the middle of the bar, with the word "high" landing on beat three. Phili doesn't just loop the line from "Rocket Man " he flips it in a crafty way. I include my transcription mostly to show how complex this kind of track is at the micro level, how much attention is being devoted to each sixteenth note. I attempted to transcribe the main groove of "High." I didn't try to write out all the little vocal samples, and notation doesn't capture the timbre and space, which is where most of the musical interest lies. I didn't transcribe the piano part under that verse in "Rocket Man," but it's deeply funky, with accents on weak beats throughout. Beyond his gift for inescapable earworms, he has a jazzier, more sophisticated rhythmic sensibility than your typical soft rocker. I can see why black musicians admire Elton John. Really, Bernie? Why is this astronaut already "high as a kite" before his 9 AM liftoff? Maybe it wasn't intended to be about a junkie who gets high before work, but that's how the song has been popularly received, and it's the interpretation that Young Thug takes. According to Bernie Taupin, "Rocket Man" is not about drugs it's a straightforward story about an astronaut who misses his family. Aside from their similar themes, both songs have the same producer, Gus Dudgeon. The resemblance between "Rocket Man" and David Bowie's " Space Oddity " is not a coincidence. Someone posted this video with the vocals in the left channel and the drums in the right. Phili sampled the acapella, which you can easily find online. The Elton John sample comes not from the chorus of "Rocket Man" like you'd expect, but from the first verse: Here's some background on how it came to be. It was produced by Stelios Phili, and it's a beauty. I'm more interested in the rest of the track. It sounds like the standard trap themes: bragging about his sexual prowess, criminal dangerousness, and drug world connections. ![]() I don't exactly know what Young Thug's lyrics are about. My favorite rap song of the moment is Young Thug's "High," which prominently samples Elton John's "Rocket Man." ![]()
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