By altering the bass line, DeLeo also alters the progression, changing things up to keep a listener engaged.Įven more fascinating is the harmony. This is an example of what Mark Spicer calls a "fragile tonic", in which “the tonic chord is present but its hierarchical status is weakened." DeLeo's bass line is also what determines the B bMM7 chord ( bVI in D) that appears near the end of each verse, differentiating that particular progression from the D minor chord that appears earlier in the same location. The former seems to be in D major while the latter is in C major. What particularly captures my current attention is Robert DeLeo's bass line, which, by often playing the third and fifth of the tonic D major chord, constantly undermines any authoritative tonal conclusions about the verse. One of the first things I noticed was the change in key between the verse and chorus. 4, which immediately captivated my 14-year-old ears. They played a song called 'Sour Girl' from their 1999 album No. One night, I turned on the radio and heard for the first time a band called Stone Temple Pilots.
And Loveline would frequently feature guests, including many pop bands who were promoting their recent records.
I suspect many of a certain age connect The Beatles with this process, one major reason they're still so popular a half-century later. Like many adolescents, I used musical preference as a way to establish an identity, or at least the beginnings of an adult identify. I suspect I'd be a very different person today had I not randomly encountered that broadcast while scanning the radio dial that night. With the benefit of hindsight, it's difficult to overestimate how important that discovery was because hearing frank and explicit discussion of sexual matters helped me realize, understand, and accept my own maturation process, both physical and mental. I was in eighth grade and starting to assert personal independence. Her attempts to deal with his erraticism take their toll: “The rollercoaster ride’s a lonely one.” The desolate nature of the vocal makes clear what this fracture has done to his emotional state, but he also makes direct lyrical reference to the monetary cost: “I paid a ransom note to stop it from steaming.I discovered the late-night radio talk show Loveline, with Adam Carolla and Dr. “I was a superman but looks are deceiving,” Weiland sings. When it comes to naming the reasons for her departure, he can’t help but looking in the mirror. The song’s refrain, rendered in wistful, wondrous harmonies, asks, “What would you do if I followed you?” Based on what he reveals as the song progresses, she’d probably quicken her pace. “She was a sour girl the day that she met me,” Weiland sings, then admits, “She was a happy girl the day that she left me.” It’s bitter irony that the one thing that finally brightens the girl’s mood is the narrator’s absence from her life. ‘Sour Girl’ was written after the collapse of my relationship with Jannina. “Everyone is convinced that it’s about my romance with Mary ,” Weiland remembered. In his 2011 autobiography Not Dead & Not For Sale, Weiland wrote about how the inspiration for “Sour Girl” was misconstrued by fans.
Found on their 1999 album No.4, the acoustic-based number gave them their biggest chart success and finds Weiland and company mixing pop smarts with arrestingly honest self-recrimination. That they could pull off a song like “Sour Girl,” which relied on musical restraint and melodic prettiness more than guitar crunch, was evidence of this. The guy even danced in his videos.Īnother thing that kept Stone Temple Pilots from being typecast was their willingness to alter their formula at regular intervals. After all, frontman Scott Weiland had more in common with the decadent glam-rockers of the early ’70s than the dour-faced singers that populated grunge. But they were a little bit too slippery to be cornered so neatly in any classifying box. Stone Temple Pilots rose to fame in the midst of the grunge era and certainly shared certain traits with some of the leading lights of that genre.
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