After months of buzz, an inescapable video, and 37 shows over four days at SXSW, do you still have the whistling bit to “Young Folks” looping in your cranium? So does Wired Blog — only instead of cursing that irresistibly sweet Swedish pop, they came upon a rather amusing realization.
Possibly due to repeated exposure down in Austin, something has finally sunken in about “Young Folks.” The song’s main melodic figure, which recurs in the whistling section and each verse, is identical to what’s known as the “Asian riff” … based on the pentatonic scale.
Don’t know what the Asian Riff sounds like? Dust off your solfege skills with the sheet notation (via Wikipedia’s Asian Riff entry, naturally).
For the less apt sight-readers, allow The Vapors to play you the way.
Still love ya, PB&J; we’re sure you didn’t appropriate Asian riffage consciously to satisfy your deviously infectious melodic ends. But hey, you guys, isn’t this the sort of shit you were made for? Maybe time to dust off the old sandwich boards…
You Might Also Like
 Smile – “From Time To Time” (Stereogum Premiere) |  Peter Bjorn & John Play Kimmel |  Stereogum Presents… STROKED: A Tribute To Is This It |  Peter Bjorn & John Soundtrack Bud Light Lime Spot |
 |
 |
%s1 / %s2
I have the opening whistling from young folks set as my ringtone, and for hours after my phone rings I hear the others in my office whistling it.
good times.
Though I haven’t heard it in a while (not since I first heard “Young Folks,” anyway) I always thought the whistling bit sounded kind of like that Christmas song that Jimmy Fallon, Horatio Sanz, Chris Kattan, and Tracy Morgan did every year on SNL – “I wish it was Christmas today…” Has anyone heard the SNL thing recently? Am I crazy?
yeah actually the way i hear it, while the notes in the Asian riff are a relative D, C, A, C (in that chart you have there), the notes in PBJ’s are an F, Eb, Db, F. Transpose that down to your scale and you get D, C, Bb, C. anybody else hear that?
Just a half-step off, but give the boys some credit already.
re: SNL song… it’s funny you should say that ’cause there was a Ryan Adams lick that reminded me of that riff. I think it was in “Trains.”
Whoa, it is the SNL song. I guess it’s an oddly common note sequence.
The “Sitar Folks” instrumental on the bonus disk makes it pretty obvious that they’re not exactly trying to hide their South Asian musical influences.
the other asian-trope lick i know is this (voiced in open fourths):
144141
488481
horace silver used it in his “tokyo blues”, which is out of print so check your local library, kids.
CASSADAGA
http://rs7.rapidshare.com/files/23260869/Cassadaga.zip
what’s even crazier, if you transpose the notes into numerical values you get:
4, 8, 15, 16, 23, & 42
THE LOST NUMBERS! WAHHHHH???
stereogum should start a new feature called “music theory time kidz!!!” and dissect the chord changes of all the big buzz hits.
oh man that lost thing that toast discovered is insane.
shannon doherty once told me this song was about flogging the dolphin, but i thought she was just being a bitch
The melody is basically the same, but the chord structure is different so it’s less noticeable. Doesn’t keep me from enjoying it!
wait, seriously? It’s just a descending pattern in the natural major scale. It’s not even pentatonic, actually, because the last note is the major 7th of the key, which is not in the pentatonic scale.
People shouldn’t try to be so clever when they actually don’t know music theory at all. Not blaming stereogum, of course, just the folks who thought it up.
You’re right about it not being pentatonic, but hey, don’t be too harsh – when else have you ever heard the word ‘solfege’ used on a music blog? Fixed or moveable ‘do’ anyone?
I’m not bein’ harsh on Stereogum, Scott has all my love.
I’m sayin’, whoever wrote that for Wired should attempt to learn what they’re talking about before trying to be smarty pants about it, you know?
Visualize a Vapors/PBJ mashup. Vapors music, PBJ vocal track. It would be better than any of the remixes …
Shannon doherty, you are right. However, the phrase “Turning Japanese” does not mean “to masturbate.” It’s an enjoyably racist slang term for making an orgasm face.
The More You Know.
i think chanting hare krishna is the same equation
fixed do. obviously. *snob*