Incidentally, I've been studying the chords of two of their more popular songs - Feels Like We Only Go Backwards and It's Not Meant To Be, and there's some interesting stuff going on. I had started writing a long description of something in Backwards, but I'm not sure the website I was looking at had the right chords, so I'm going to have to chew on that one a bit longer.
In It's Not Meant To Be he does a great job of using off-chord tones in the melody in the right spots. For example, in the lines:
She doesn't like the life that I lead,
She doesn't like the life that I lead
The chords are just:
Am - D - Am - D
Am - D - Am - D
However, beginning with the 2nd "like" the melody lands on a B when playing a D chord and again he sings that same B when singing "life" in an Am. However, the note of B occurs neither in D or Am. It would be one thing if the melody was just "passing through" that B, but he actually lands the melody on it, emphasizing that note. It's as if the melody would suggest something like:
Am - D - Am - D
Am - G - Em - G
Or perhaps:
Am - D - Am - D
Am - Em - G - Em
But, since that's not what the actual chords are, this creates a bit of tension between the melody and the background chords and makes it sound "sad." He does this throughout the song. I'd be interested to know if he's astute enough to do this deliberately, or if he's just sounding it out and doing it more by "instinct."
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