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1
When Doves Cry
Listen below the voices in the 1984 recording. Prince pulled the bass line out, leaving a lot of room between the drum machine and the guitar and keyboard parts. Follow the kick through the chorus and notice how much motion the song gets from sounds that never fill that space.
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In the Air Tonight
For most of the record, the drum machine keeps its distance. When Collins’s kit enters, listen for the space around the hits as much as the fill itself. Hugh Padgham emphasized the room sound of the drums, so the arrival of the kit feels like a sudden change in the size of the room.
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Don't You Want Me
Philip Oakey and Susan Ann Sulley sing different accounts of the same relationship. Listen to how the change of singer makes the return of the same chorus feel like an argument neither side is going to win. The bright backing gives both voices the same setting, which makes their disagreement sharper.
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Running Up That Hill
Listen to the sound that hangs behind the beat in the verses. Kate Bush made that drone by freezing a chord from the Fairlight. Her voice moves between the two layers, sometimes drawing out a word until it seems to join the held sound.
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Billie Jean
Follow Ndugu Chancler’s kick before the bass arrives. Engineer Bruce Swedien covered the kick drum to help isolate its sound, and you can hear the result in how sharply it holds its place as the arrangement fills out. Once the voices multiply, the opening beat still feels close enough to touch.
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Material Girl
Listen for how much of the tune is already there in the bass on Nile Rodgers’s production. Madonna can keep her phrases short because the lower part is doing so much of the moving. Follow it through the chorus and notice how the backing voices give her delivery a sharper edge.
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Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)
Listen to the weight of the first beat before Annie Lennox comes in. Dave Stewart remembers combining two drum sounds for that opening thump. The repeating synth figure can feel almost weightless above it, which gives the song a curious balance between something that stomps and something that glides.
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Once in a Lifetime
The bass figure keeps returning while David Byrne’s verses land in the uneven rhythm of speech. When the sung chorus arrives, it sounds like a release without requiring the bass to change its job. Try following the low part straight through that change to hear what the voices are doing to the feel of the recording.
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Blue Monday
On the 1983 recording, the Oberheim DMX pattern introduces the track before the other parts have much to say. Wait for the sampled choir and notice how its sustained sound sits against that hard-edged beat. The patience of the arrangement gives each sound a chance to change the temperature of the track.
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Sledgehammer
The opening flute sound on the album recording comes from a Fairlight sample. The brass that answers later has the attack of players working together, including musicians Peter Gabriel admired from Otis Redding’s records. Follow that change in texture and the song’s mix of studio electronics and soul makes immediate sense.
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Take on Me
In Alan Tarney’s 1985 recording, the keyboard hook gives you the shape of the song before Morten Harket sings a word. When the chorus takes the voice higher, the low keyboard part keeps the track on the ground. Listen for that part if you’ve always heard this as a song about its highest note.
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Rockit
Grandmixer D.ST’s scratches arrive as short phrases you can recognize when they return. Listen to the gaps around them and to how they answer the keyboard hook. The turntable has a part in the arrangement that you can hum almost as readily as anything played on a keyboard.
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Girls Just Want to Have Fun
Cyndi Lauper and producer Rick Chertoff mixed electronic sounds with the sound of a band. Listen for the size of the snare and how springy the parts around that backbeat are, especially when the backing voices come in. That contrast gives the recording some lightness even when every part seems to be asking you to move.
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Fast Car
The guitar figure is so steady that it can take a while to notice the size of the arrangement around it. The band recorded live in the studio with Tracy Chapman, who sang and played guitar from a vocal booth. When the bass and drums give the song more weight, listen for how little she has to change the guitar to carry that extra lift.
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Need You Tonight
Andrew Farriss worked out the guitar riff with a drum-machine pattern. Listen for the rests in the guitar part once Michael Hutchence comes in. Those gaps give his quiet phrases a place to land, which is why turning the recording up can make it sound more intimate.
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