In 2014, Thundercat retweeted my analysis of Never Catch Me, a moment I wish I could highlight on my CV. In 2018, I played with Louis Cole played in Boston with a local band I put together, and it will always be one of my favorite hits of all time. In 2020, Thundercat drops his new album It Is What It Is just in time for a year-long global quarantine and there’s a new Thundercat/Louis Cole collab track on it – two of my favorite artists, of course I’m going to dig into this the second it’s released! I adore this song and had to take a minute to understand it a little better, so let’s just get right to it and transcribe and analyze the harmony of “I Love Louis Cole.”
The Verse
Here is basically what’s going on here:
This relatively static chord progression here is a perfect counterbalance for what is to come. The DMaj13(#11) chord is a nice touch. It is basically a reharmonization of the expected F#-11 chord: it contains all of the same notes (F#, A, C#, E, G#, B) but the change in root keeps the progression fresh and adds some extra momentum to get to the final satisfying F#(add9).
A nice detail in the orchestration is the impressionistic strings on the 2nd pass (around 0:37), which tells me that Louis Cole is definitely on this track!
Chorus
Here is where “I Love Louis Cole” gets really interesting. After the largely diatonic verse chords that center around the I and the IV, these chorus chords have a non-function, through-composed relationship that is anchored on upwardly chromatic root motion. Starting on A-7 (which sort of mirrors the verse move from F# to D), for six bars the roots move up by mostly half steps (missing only a B chord).
The 2nd bar contains a really unique moment, an A-9 chord on top of a Bb chord. Or to be a bit simpler, it’s more like an E- triad over a BbMaj9 chord. I picked A-9|Bb for visualization purposes, so you could see that the upper structure holds from the 1st to 2nd bars. It doesn’t really matter what you call it though, as long as the notes are there.
Now, if this was simply A-7|Bb, it would be a full Bb Lydian chord, but the melody really distinctly has a B natural in it. You could make a case for this moment to be “polytonal,” or, two different tonalities existing in the same space. I see this more like what Herbie Hancock did in Tell Me a Bedtime Story, where the first bar has a G# on a GMaj13(#11) chord. The function is identical in both songs, where we have a B on a BbMaj13(#11) chord. It’s a b9 that exists along with a natural 9. Again, call it what you want, but it works because the “wrong” note is part of a strong melody. Try changing the “wrong” note to the “right” note, the root – it sounds pretty bad!
Just remember this – no matter how many cool chords you have, melody is what makes or breaks a good song.
The rest of the progression uses common notes in neighboring chords (sung) to bind them together and create a sort of hypnotic effect. To increase that effect, the 7th bar dips down a major 3rd (similar to the F# –> D movement in the verse), giving us that missing B chord. A new pattern begins to emerge as the B-7 moves up a half step to C(add9), which then goes down a 3rd (minor this time) to get us back to A-7. By the time we hear A-7 to Bb for a second time, it sounds like the chord progression is still moving through a pattern into new chordal territory–in fact, it’s an auditory illusion, a sort of funky Shepard tone. To increase the loopiness, both times Thundercat sings with lyrics he’s using notes of G Major (despite there being no G Major chords!).
Ultimately, this all just serves to reinforce the lyrics – “Let’s do it all again.” The term you’re looking for here is word painting.
Post-Chorus
Here the song moves definitively into A Major. This is a pretty classic diatonic chord progression that makes the most sense if you again follow the root motion. Where the verse was mostly static, the chorus was mostly upwardly chromatic, this post-chorus is primarily downwardly diatonic. This is a chord progression you’ve probably heard before. I immediately think of the end theme of Mario 64, though this fundamentally goes back at least to Pachelbel’s Canon.
But what makes this unique to me is another Louis Cole signature, the hazy organ-y overlap of chords with strings. Instead of the 2nd bar having the more predictable E Major chord, we get a partially suspended sound with A(add9)/G#. Instead of the 3rd bar having the more predictable F# Minor chord, we get a sus-y sounding D in 1st inversion. It reminds me of the sounds he was getting on Night or even More Love Less Hate, both from his latest album.
But as Thundercat sings “It’s just more fun when you come around” and that extra cymbal bell layer comes in, it just makes it sound like the soundtrack to TC and Louis Cole playing video games together. I can’t get over how wholesome “I Love Louis Cole” is honestly.
The Rest
Cole sings a verse, which now in retrospect works perfectly as a fairly blank canvas for the two artists to each sing over. As Thundercat comes back singing “let’s do it again,” we get back to this abrupt shift:
Instead of cutting from F#(add9) to A-7 like before, they go into the final chorus on the original verse 1st chord, F#Maj9. Then they jump into the 2nd bar of the chorus. Prior to this we saw movement down a major 3rd, down a minor 3rd, and up a minor third. The only thing missing in this cluster of unique intervals was up a major 3rd, and here they finally give it to us. Pretty neat! They then finish the chorus chord progression as expected (with a Thundercat bass solo underneath some Louis Cole high notes (which basically centers around the key of F#- despite a lack of F# chords in this section)), before moving to the post-chorus one last time.
Final Thoughts
My main takeaways from transcribing the chords of “I Love Louis Cole”:
- There is a lot more word-painting happening in this song than I realized upon my first couple of listens
- Melody and lyrics take priority over chord progressions, which only serve in a supporting role
- The three sections have completely unique constructions
- Little details like the set of 4 unexpected root motions up and down a minor and major 3rd, or the skipped B chord that is brought back, help show thoughtful composition minds at work here – on purpose or not, the natural sense of balance is always on display.
- This song makes me want to write songs for all my friends now
Be safe everyone–stay home and listen to this record. A couple more harmony breakdowns from It Is What It Is are coming soon!
Nice analysis, but it’s pretty clear that the section with the diatonically descending bassline in the chorus of this song. The second section is a pre-chorus, and there’s no such thing as a post-chorus. The chorus has the most striking melodic figure and he ends on it. Personally, I’d call them sections A, B and C.