Closure in Pop-Rock
Music: "Julia" by King's X
Guy Capuzzo, Texas Tech
University
Music
theorists have developed powerful tools for the analysis of common practice
compositions that lack tonal closure -- the property of beginning and ending in the
same key. Bailey's theory of directional tonality (1977, 1985), Harrison's
linking analysis (1994), Schenker's auxiliary cadences (1935/1979), and
articles by Agawu (1987), Krebs (1981), and McCreless (1991) are representative
examples. But the jury's out on how to analyze pop-rock songs that lack tonal
closure, since many of the techniques developed in the above studies apply to
few (if any) pop-rock songs.
This proposal
demonstrates one way that hypermeter, clock-time duration, and form can outweigh tonality in the
creation of closure in pop-rock music. In "Julia," by the acclaimed
Houston power trio King's X, these factors imbue the song with a firm, though
different, sense of closure.
Many pop-rock songs
"compensate" for a lack of tonal closure through strict hypermetric
regularity, but few forge a tonal path as winding as "Julia." No
functional relationship exists between the E and A tonal centers; hypermetric
regularity and clock-time duration foster large-scale coherence in the absence
of traditional tonal closure. The song ends with a tonal question mark, but an
emphatic metric and clock-time period.