Song: Brown Girl
Artist: Aaradhna
Album: Brown Girl
Songwriter: Aaradhna Jayantilal Patel
Release: 2016
Genre: R&B/soul
Key: F# Minor
Chords in Key:
|
i |
ii |
III |
iv |
v |
VI |
VII |
|
F#m |
G#° |
A |
Bm |
C#m |
D |
E |
Brown Girl is primarily written for vocals, piano, electric guitar, bass guitar, drums as well as some keyboard pads and backing vocals. It follows a conventional pop song format.
Verse
Aaradhna’s Brown Girl begins on the tonic chord. It uses a VII - i cadence, found in many rock and pop songs in minor keys, at the end of each bar (but is not considered a cadence in classical music). At Bar 5, a mixture chord from the enharmonic major is used, before going back to the mediant from the key of F#m to show it has not modulated. The second verse adds some pentatonic lead guitar breaks for variation.
Chorus
All of the chords in the chorus stay inside the key of the song, helping to make it sound strong and full. This emphasises that it’s the chorus. Usually a chorus starts on the tonic. Brown Girl starts on the subdominant. Aaradhna raises the vocal pitch and volume, which helps bring attention to the vocals and make the chorus stand out.
Bridge
The bridge takes the intro chords and transposes them up to the dominant and subdominant. It rounds out this phrase by going back to the intro/verse chords.
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