Weekend Goodbye is a garage-punk band based in Brampton, Ontario. Their lead singer, lyricist, and guitarist Dylan DG graduated from Fanshawe’s Music Industry Arts program in the spring of 2020, shortly before the band released their third single on streaming platforms. Although they are just starting out, their music is incredibly catchy and features emotional, well-written lyrics. A perfect example of this is the song “Hard Luck,” which features a clean and ear-catching mix, including effects, instrumentation, phrasing, and harmony that perfectly reflect and enhance the lyrics.
In order to unpack what is going on in this song, I’d first like to examine the vocal layers and effects. The first instance of vocals in “Hard Luck” is a simple spoken line, heard very faintly underneath a sample of Ralph Wiggum from The Simpsons. We next hear a scream, distorted, and overlaid with similarly overdriven guitar and bass. This sets the tone for the lyrics to follow, which relate to mental health, and especially anxiety and panic attacks.
The first verse begins after the introduction, and we are introduced to the lead vocal that delivers most of the lyrics. This consists of three layers: the first effected by heavy compression—a way to even out volume levels and apply extra tone—a large amount of reverb, and some soft distortion. The second is the exact same vocal, still very compressed, but effected by a slap delay and a gate—making it sound similar to a walky talky on the release of words and phrases. The final layer is a double of that same vocal line, which is again compressed, and this time extremely distorted. The combination of these three tracks produces a vocal that is clear enough to deliver the lyrics, while also containing harmonic distortion which adds an interesting tone not heard in the natural voice, and allows the vocal to nicely match the guitars and the garage-punk aesthetic of the song. A quarter-note delay is also added to the lead vocal, automated so that it only affects certain words, such as at the ends of phrases (e.g., “I’m freaking out”). Not only is this delay very interesting for the listener, but I believe it also adds extra emphasis to important phrases that provide the most meaning to the song. An example of this is the doubting voice in the chorus, saying “I just can’t figure it out.”
Background vocals in “Hard Luck” include an “oooh” that takes place over the last phrase in each three-phrase stanza of the verses, a harmony on those same lines, and a harmony in the chorus. These are again effected by compression, reverb, and distortion.
Finally, the only voice that we hear in the song that does not belong to Dylan DG is that of the bassist, Sebastian Balenzano. He shouts “one, two, three, four!” leading into the bridge. This line is heavily distorted as well, similar to DG’s scream at the beginning, producing an intensity that I doubt could be achieved with an unaffected delivery. This vocal was also recorded simply with an iPhone microphone, creating a lo-fi effect. And was additionally drowned in an eighth-note delay and a half-note delay, creating a very interesting spacial effect, which depicts the disorientation that the lyrics may be describing in the choruses.
An interesting point about all these layers of vocals is that there are five distinct sounds coming from the lead vocalist: the spoken line, the scream, the lead vocal (sometimes effected by that quarter-note delay), the background vocals, and the “ooohs.” This could be interpreted as an effort to depict the various critical voices within oneself, contributing to the climactic exclamation in the chorus, “I’m freaking out,” and presumably some period of more intense anxiety.
I would next like to examine the lyrics and phrasing that are at the forefront of “Hard Luck.” Firstly, the verses comprise six lines each, separated into two three-line stanzas. The first verse talks about staying home “on a Friday night” and being unable to have fun, while the second speaks of going out with friends, and masking feelings of inadequacy until returning home. The rhyme scheme of the verses is very interesting. While both verses follow an AAB AAB pattern, the second verse includes the word “now” at the end of the second and fifth lines, thereby essentially changing the rhyme scheme to ABC ABC, although the second-last word of each B line rhyme with the A line, still maintaining the original pattern.
The second element regarding the lyrics that I will analyze are the techniques employed to musically depict the lyrical meaning throughout the song. One example of this occurs in the choruses. When DG sings the fragmented sentence “I just can’t, I just can’t figure it out,” he is portraying the feeling of uncertainty of which he speaks. It sounds as though he’s having trouble describing his thoughts and experiences and therefore hesitates before finishing his sentence, unsure of what to do. Another place in which more obvious word-painting occurs is in the bridge, when DG states that he is “always scared of falling down those Hard Luck stairs, again.” At the end of this line, the word “again” is repeated nine times, literally happening repeatedly in the same way he says he is repeatedly falling down the stairs.
There is a shift when we reach the bridge of “Hard Luck,” both harmonically, and in terms of phrasing. Harmonically, we shift from the standard pattern of (I-VII)x2 - (vi-V)x2 in the intro and repeated interludes, (I-VII)x2 - vi - V - I in the verses, and IV - (I-VII)x2 in the choruses, to the following progression: (IV-I-vi-V)x2 - IV - I. This bridge progression is noticeably missing the (I-VII)x2 motion we’ve grown used to throughout the song. The bridge also contains longer, more fluid phrases, contrasting with the short and fragmented phrases we’ve heard earlier in the song. On top of all of this, the rhythm of the band changes. The instruments start and stop together throughout the bridge, until the part where DG sings “again and again.” Each time the band resumes together it is preceded by a drum fill, which could be heard as the banging sound of falling down the stairs. All these changes give us a break from the patterns we’ve come to expect, but it also helps to bring to light some of the meaning behind the lyrics. The description of falling down the stairs repeatedly, coupled with these longer phrases and alternate chord progression, gives the listener the impression that they are no longer in the same headspace as in the rest of the song, and are perhaps in a dream instead.
The form of “Hard Luck” is very interesting to me, as it generally follows the usual verse, chorus structure of most pop songs—however, it also includes a few interludes that comprise the same instrumental as the intro, and sometimes an “ooh” in the vocal. The form, then, reads as follows: A (intro) B (verse) C (chorus) A B C A D (bridge) A C A. The shift to a different section of the song can be heard not only in melody and lyrics, but also through instrumentation. For example, the guitars drop out at the beginning of the second verse, marking a change and abruptly coming down dynamically from the chorus. Another example is in the bridge, where the band stops and starts together, in a much different rhythmic pattern than elsewhere in the song.
My final point serves to elaborate more on some of the techniques Weekend Goodbye uses in terms of instrumentation of this song. The instrumentation is effectively conveying the unstable mindset the lyrics describe, in that there is an accent on the “and” of beat three each time we hear that I-vii progression. This accent is not on a strong beat, therefore the listener is immediately caught off guard. The accented beats become much more regular however, each time the vocals enter. This effectively draws our attention back to the lyrics, where otherwise the instrumentation would have become distracting from the meaning of the song instead of enhancing it.
Although some may consider punk a genre less oriented around music theory, word-painting, and other techniques observed by classical musicians, “Hard Luck” is very clearly brimming with emotional intensity, and this has manifested itself through those aforementioned techniques. Whether intentional or not, the phrasing, instrumentation, harmony, and vocal effects used throughout “Hard Luck” enhance the lyrics, and radiate significance.