Case Study - Treat You Better Shawn Mendes

Intro:

Treat you better is the latest song from Canadian singer and songwriter Shawn Mendes. It features emotional lyrics about wanting a girl who's already in an abusive relationship with someone they can't give up, this is typical of a song marketed at young children and teenagers. With elements of acoustic guitar and great vocal harmony it has all the traits that make a good pop song.

Musical Theory:

This song is played in the key of B flat Minor at 83 BPM for a total of 3:07 minutes for the album version or 4:16 for the video. With the key of B flat minor it matches very well with the sad lyrics and is designed to bring out emotion in the listener. The song structure follows a Verse Chorus Verse Chorus Alt Verse/Bridge Chorus pattern.

Instrumentation: With a background in playing acoustic guitar it only makes sense that this song is heavily laden with them and is obviously the main instrument used apart from the vocals. Some subtle synth strings provide high frequency content to boost the richness of the sound through the chorus. The intro brings a steady clean guitar bass line with a small amount of reverb and echo with a stereo delay creating a panning to the left. This is very layered with several tracks over a couple of octaves of guitar to give a very punchy initial hit. The bass appears to be an electric bass guitar with a very clean tone, a simple melody and only a small amount of tie between riffs. Through most of the song there is a strong kick and snare but little drums to be heard in the mix as they are pushed far to the back underneath the bass hit. The drums are timed perfectly with the strumming of the guitars. The drums also get distorted and crushed in a compressor towards the end of the song. The vocals come in softly for the first verse then immediately pick up for the first chorus. They have a fair bit of reverb and are layered with multiple tracks of varying octaves. The EQ done to the vocal tracks is mostly around the mids/highs, it is boosted at around the 4k mark. His voice goes between gentle and clean to compressed and distorted. The vocals are the main instrument in the song and everything else is built around them. Below is an analyser of the introduction.

The introduction of distortion towards the mid-end of the song shows a good way of keeping the interest of the listener because it's the same but different. Distortion in this song helps to build the dramatic tension into the final chorus, which is initially stripped back before everything comes back in for the finale.

Below is an analyser image of the distorted drum break.

Soundstage:

This song uses lots of reverb and the panning is mostly fixed through the whole song, with a couple of synth elements that pan across the soundstage. The stage is narrow to begin with and also for the verses, and open up wide for the chorus.

The Drums:

The kick is panned down the centre, while the chorus hits the drums reveal they are double tracked and panned to the far left and far right. The panning stays in that position the entire song, relying on changes in volume and timbre to keep up interest.

The Vocals:

While the vocals take centre stage in this mix there is slight panning between the many vocal layers. The reverb is bright and benefits the stationary panning technique for the vocals.

The Guitars:

At the beginning of the song the guitar is panned slightly left through the first verse, then slowly adds balance with subsequent tracks until the chorus hits and there's tracks filling the entire stage. When the verse comes back the guitars drop back to just 2 tracks panned one left and one right. In the final verse/bridge the 1 guitar is panned to the right and distorted.

Guitar 1

Guitar 2

Spectral Balance:

The verses of the song are, for the most part very soft and lacking in bass with the exception of the 65 - 75 hz kick drum.

The volume difference between the verse and chorus is about 5 - 7db as seen in the two images below.

The change between verse and chorus is immediate and instantly opens up with the drums that bring in the bass and the claps that bring in the high-end frequency content.

When the distortion is brought in towards the end, most of the guitar parts drop back to the one track, leaving room in the high-end for the distorted content.

Final Thoughts:

This song is a well made accurate representation of a modern pop hit, that's more inclusive of a guitarist background. The market for this kind of song is always going to stay the same, so its longevity should stand the test of time.

A lot of post production would have been used in the making of this song to keep it punchy and attractive to listeners. However it doesn't immediately scream pop hit which makes it a good example of genres blending.