Happiness Is a Warm Monster
by Ryan McGuirk
Analysis of “Happiness is a Warm Monster”
Music is indefinable. There is no dictionary that describes
the sound of an A minor chord or a pentatonic scale. This is not just a slip-up
on the part of musical theorists throughout the world, however. This lack
of concrete meanings to musical sounds is quite intentional. Music is, always
has been, and, if composers continue to get their way, always will be ambiguous.
In his chronicle of U2’s 1992-1993 Zoo TV tour, author Bill Flanagan
describes the band’s song, “One,” in various ways. He says:
When that song appeared in the studio in Berlin it seemed
almost like a gift telling the struggling members of U2
that they could trust each other and lay down their arms.
Later, it became the centerpiece of an album about the
struggles within a marriage. As an AIDS benefit single,
it spoke of the possibility of conciliation between those
who hate gays and the victims of that hatred. (Flanagan 169)
Songs have this ability. To one listener they can sound entirely
optimistic and brimming with hope. To a different set of ears, the same song
evokes only sentiments of sorrow. This is, perhaps, why music exists in every
culture and has survived since the era of pre-history. This is also why is
it is hard to classify. What sounds like pop music could really be rock and
roll, hip-hop could be R & B, soul turns into gospel, and so on. However,
there are those who professionally attempt to classify and categorize all
forms of music. These critics provide the music’s public with, at the
very least, a basis upon which that public can form their own opinions on
a song by either agreeing or disagreeing with the critics review. Therefore,
perhaps the only way to classify music has having certain tones, meanings,
and qualities is through the use of these professionals. However, in classifying
my song, “Happiness is a Warm Monster,” as monstrous, I do not
have the ability to submit it to a panel of professional critics. To accomplish
this task, what I have done instead, is attempted to make my song “monstrous
by association.” To do this, I modeled my piece after a well-reviewed
album by the band, Radiohead, Kid A, paying particularly close attention to
that album’s song, “The National Anthem.” In addition to
using a previously reviewed piece of music as inspiration, I also incorporated
into the song samples from other pieces of music and popular culture that
have also been reviewed or remarked upon by professional critics. These inspirational
and incorporated pieces have all been described as monstrous in some fashion,
and their use in my song, therefore, makes it monstrous as well. Therefore,
if it is still unclear that “Happiness is a Warm Monster” is monstrous
after an analysis of the song’s non-sampled parts, then the inclusion
of the samples will prove it to be so.
The main guitar line to “Happiness is a Warm Monster”
is centered on a progression off of an F#minor7 chord. The minor chord, which
is formed by lowering the third of the chord one half step or semitone, tends
to produce a less bright sound than its major counterpart (Boatwright 186-188).
This progression, which is played on a guitar, is then distorted through the
use of guitar effects pedals. The resulting sound is clearly made by a guitar,
and yet, it sounds nothing like how a guitar normally sounds. In his book,
How We Hear Music, James Beament speaks to the effect harmonics have to the
human ear. He says, “harmonies play a very important part in the sensation
of tone,” and when these natural harmonics are changed by the use of
distortion, the ear’s ability to recognize the tonality of the instrument
is diminished. This effect is similar to what Sigmund Freud calls the “uncanny”
and, therefore, monstrous. For Freud, one instance of the “uncanny”
is the double. The double, according to Freud, is the self and, simultaneously,
not the self. It contains characteristics of the familiar and unfamiliar at
the same time, which renders it both recognizable and unrecognizable, and
therefore, uncanny (Freud 210). Arguably this presentation of the “double”
is also found in the distorted sound of the guitar. The listener hears the
tones emanating from what he/she believes to be a guitar, and yet, through
the distortion, the sound bears little resemblance to the original sound of
the instrument. The use of this in “Happiness is a Warm Monster”
enables the song to be labeled as monstrous.
A second aspect of my song that is non-sampled, and therefore,
only arguably monstrous, is its polyrhythmic nature. The song contains a basic
drumbeat consisting of bass, snare, and crash cymbals. This beat is the rhythm
upon which the guitar and samples are placed. However, it is not the only
source of rhythm in the piece. Added to the bass, snare, and cymbal drum line
is a second percussion rhythm consisting of the alternation between an open
and closed hi-hat cymbal. This second rhythm appears sporadically throughout
the piece, but upon its appearance each time, the overall rhythm of the song
is changed because it possesses polyrhythm- more than one rhythm at the same
time. In addition to the multiple rhythms occurring during the piece, there
are also multiple melodies. The sounding of two or more melodic lines simultaneously
is known as polyphony (Boatwright 174). The first and primary melody of the
piece would be the distorted pattern based off of the F#minor7 chord previously
described. Added to this is a (single-note) F#-G#-A melody present in the
left speaker, and a riff based off of the G# pentatonic scale present in the
right speaker. The monstrous aspect of this polyphony and polyrhythm stems
from Jeffrey Cohen’s essay, “Monster Culture (Seven Theses).”
Cohen’s third thesis, “The Monster is the Harbinger of Category
Crisis,” discusses humans’ propensity to call the things they
cannot classify monstrous (6). In the case of music, it is most often (and
most simply) classified by its melody or rhythm. When one recognizably hums
along to a song or taps his/her foot while listening to it, what he/she is
relating to is the melody and/or the rhythm. These two features are how humans
relate at the most basic level to the music they hear. From a recognizable
melody or rhythm, the listener can then classify the song. However, the absence
of such features, or, as in this instance, the inability to discern a distinct
melody and rhythm would lead to Cohen’s “category crisis.”
In turn, this would result in “Happiness is a Warm Monster” gaining
a monstrous attribute.
As stated previously, music is ambiguous and open to different
interpretations. Therefore, I must concede that the points already outlined
are merely opinion and might not be reached by a different set off ears. The
monstrous aspects of “Happiness is a Warm Monster” that have already
been outlined, however, are the non-sampled, new parts of the song. There
also exists in the composition a number of samples from other pieces of music
as well as popular culture. All of these samples have monstrous connotations
as well, and all have been stated as such by professionals in the field of
music critique. These monstrous samples that will now be expounded upon will
further solidify the claim that the song is monstrous by association.
Not directly sampled in the body of music, but serving as the
main inspiration for the rhythm, sound, and structure of “Happiness
is a Warm Monster,” is the Radiohead song, “The National Anthem,”
which is found on the album, Kid A. Described by PopMatters critic David Powers,
Kid A is “an album that is languid, spooky. . . and tiring;” the
critics of Rolling Stone refer to the album as sounding as if nothing is in
its right place. From these two reviews, the conclusion can be made that there
is something monstrous about this collection of music. An easy parallel can
be drawn between the PopMatters review and the monstrous: both are seen in
society as being spooky. A less obvious connection is made between the Rolling
Stone critique and the monstrous. While initially nothing may seem that spooky,
uncanny, or monstrous about the music sounding out of place, if one relates
this to the monstrous in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein an obvious connection
is made. In her novel, Dr. Frankenstein’s creation is deemed a monster
because of its physical deformities; nothing is as it should be, his lips
are black and his body parts are sewn together from the parts of corpses.
The physical aberrations lead to the creature’s isolation and labeling
as a monster, much for the same reasons that Kid A has been branded as such
by Rolling Stone.
The main body of samples found in “Happiness is a Warm
Monster” comes from the introduction played prior to every show on U2’s
Zoo TV tour. The montage of sights and sound is described by rock and roll
columnist, David Fricke as an “agitated splash of appropriated video
images and glib buzz phrases. . .[that] jacks up the mind-fuck quotient”—not
soothing material by any means. The particular reference to the mind-fucking
ability of the introduction lends itself to an idea of the monstrous presented
by Mary Douglas in her work, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts
of Pollution and Taboo. In it, Douglas presents the theory that one place
where the marginal, or monstrous, is found in society is in the people who
have been incarcerated in mental institutions (97). Presumably, these are
the people who have suffered some sort of mind-fuck, and as a result, have
become monstrous. Therefore, since this introduction possesses the same mind-fucking
capability, it can be classified in the same category as Douglas’s mentally
unstable monster. In turn, because “Happiness is a Warm Monster”
contains the sample of this introduction, it too can lay claim to this monstrous
characteristic, and, in doing so, become monstrous.
By containing both an original musical composition and borrowed
samples from popular culture, “Happiness is a Warm Monster,” as
an entire song and not merely a sum of monstrous parts, can be considered
monstrous. The ability to view it in this context is derived from Cohen’s
first monster thesis: “The Monster’s Body is a Cultural Body.”
Cohen claims that monsters are a collection of societal fears and desires
that reflect the image of the culture that created them. It is the representation
of these fears, which are noticeable to the society but also frighteningly
presented, that enables a culture to both recognize and fear its monsters
(4). The incorporation of the monstrous samples in “Happiness is a Warm
Monster” allow for the same reaction by its audience. The use of a speech
by Adolph Hitler and the rallying cheers of Nazi crowd as well as a sample
from the record, Lenin’s Favorite Songs—a collection of songs
preferred by the Russian dictator—allow for the cultural placement of
the song. These samples provide a recognizable basis for the listener, however
it is not a basis that is happy, peaceful, or heroic; instead, it is evil,
spooky, and monstrous.
Of course, you, the reader/listener, may read this analysis of “Happiness
is a Warm Monster” and completely disagree. Perhaps, to you, the song,
despite its distortion, mind-fucking samples, and historically disturbing
incorporations, is light-hearted and full of that “bubblegum pop”
sound associated with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. That may be your
opinion, and you are certainly entitled to it. What I have done here, is presented
the strongest argument to dissuade you from thinking such thoughts. The piece,
about which you have just read, contains the monstrous as presented by Douglas,
Freud, and Cohen. It does so through its own structure and sound, as well
as its use of monstrous samples that have been called such by critics. What
“Happiness is a Warm Monster” is because it draws upon these outside
sources is monstrous by association.
