‘Lost Stars’, sung by Adam Levine in the movie ‘Begin Again’, is a powerful and touching song*.  It also has some really crafty aspects to its songwriting that are worth taking a look at (and listen to – below). I’m going to focus here mainly on the melody and harmony.

The song’s melody consists, with one exception, of the C pentatonic scale; that is, it uses the notes C, D, E, G, and A. Because Levine and his falsetto have a wide range the song goes from a low ‘G’ up an octave and a sixth to an ‘E’ – a big stretch for what you might call an indie pop tune.

(Without Levine’s range the high part – the bridge – could be sung down an octave, greatly reducing the vocal range to an octave and a second. Keira Knightly sings it that way in the movie’s other version. It may have originally been written that way and then, smartly, adjusted for Levine particular skills.)

So the notes themselves, though nicely arranged, aren’t different from many other songs. Let’s consider what gives the song its identity and haunting quality.

The Verse melody starts over 8 full bars of an ‘F’ chord – no harmonic motion. When a chord doesn’t move for a while it puts a special emphasis on the melody, which in this case is a really nice move.

The melody’s high points move around ‘G’, ‘A’, and down to ‘E’ – the 2nd, 3rd, and major 7th degrees of the scale. The 2nd and major 7th give the melody a lot of character and sweetness, and the static chord amplifies it.

Note that the chord is played on the acoustic guitar as a straight ‘F’ triad, helping the crucial melody notes which are not played on the guitar (‘G’ and ‘E’) to stand out.

The Pre-Chorus’s chords are:

|| Eminor | F | Eminor | F | Eminor | F | G | G ||

The melody isn’t especially surprising (though it does contain a nice repeated leap from ‘D’ up to ‘G’} but, over the ‘G’ chord on the last two bars, the melody rises – D, E, F, G. The ‘F’ is a nice surprise, not given away by a G7 underneath – which is the same idea as in the Verse: using extended harmonies in the melody that are not emphasized in the chord.

Also note that this big two bar buildup at the end of the Bridge on ‘G’, for a song in the key of ‘C’, leads to an expectation of a ‘C’ chord… and that expectation is deferred (as it also is everywhere else in the song there’s a V chord… until the very last chord).

The Chorus’s chords are:

|| F | C | F | C | F | Eminor | D | D | Dminor7 | G ||

A few cool things happen in this section. One is the repeated leap in the melody from the low ‘G’ (the lowest note in the song) up a ‘G’ an octave higher. Another is following that ‘G’ by landing hard on an ‘E’ (over the ‘F’ chord – the major 7 again). The Chorus also starts with that ‘E’ over the ‘F’ chord (“God“) on the first downbeat.

Another is that, right as the Title is sung (on the words “all Lost Stars”), there’s a ‘D’ chord – the first and only chord in the song that’s not a ‘C’ diatonic chord, that’s out of the key. Crafty!

The Bridge is where the melody jumps up to the high notes, stretching the vocal range of the song by a fifth. It really kicks ass.

The chords are almost the same as the Chorus’s but are abbreviated by leaving out the two bars of ‘D’ – so that ‘D’ chord only gets played when you hear the Title. Crafty!! The one-time substitution of ‘C/E’ for the ‘Eminor’ chord is also a nice touch, as is the ‘G’ in the bass for the last two bars of the Bridge.

Craft turned into beauty. That’s what I’m talkin’ about!

(* written by Gregg Alexander, Danielle Brisbois, Nick Lashley, and Nick Southwood)

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