Reflections on “Unconditional Love” by Esperanza Spalding

I love Esperanza Spalding’s music. I think she’s an amazing singer and composer and bass player.

This time let’s try to look at this song through four different ideas or aspects of music. I’m a fan of these four because they can be used almost universally for all types of music. They’re also the main focus of Aaron Copland’s book What to Listen for in Music, which I highly recommend.

Rhythm

It sounds like it’s mostly in 4/4, but has a lot of syncopation and often has instruments accenting the upbeats. This gives it a funkier sound and makes it a little harder to follow because it’s not super symmetrical.

There’s also a contrast often between the drums and the other instruments. The guitars and the bass often change chords on the upbeats, but the drums don’t always accent those beats.

Melody

This song has a pretty clear melody because Esperanza Spalding is singing the melody most of the time. It jumps around a lot especially in the chorus, but it sounds like she’s singing repeated notes, but jumping around.

At one point she’ll be singing a certain group of three or four notes, then she’ll jump up and sing a different group of three or four notes.

Harmony

Right at the beginning of the song, there’s a nice moment when you first hear the words “unconditional love” where all of these harmony parts are added that haven’t been introduced before. It’s a really nice way of opening up the song that kind of catches you by surprise.

It doesn’t happen every time you hear those words, but it does repeat later on in the song on those same words “unconditional love.”

There’s a lot of chromaticism in this song and a lot of chords with 7ths and tensions. Lots of jazz chords and some of the changes happen pretty quickly.

Honestly, I’m not sure what type of chord it is, but it sounds like one type of chord is being used over and over in the verse. I think it’s a Maj7#11, though I’m not entirely sure.

Timbre

We’ve got a bunch of instruments being used here. There’s bass, guitar, some type of synth, drums, and voices. But the voices have different timbres depending on how they’re used. The harmony voices are a little warmer and softer sounding. The main vocal is a little harsher and clearer.

I like the tone of the guitar. It’s got a little bit of distortion on it, but it’s not too much distortion where the notes become unclear. There’s also a bunch of reverb which sounds super cool. It’s got a softer attack and it sounds like the guitar player is playing with their fingers or has the tone knob on their guitar turned all the way down.

Each different instrument can be heard really clearly which is nice. There’s sometimes a lot going on with each instrument playing different rhythms and different notes, but each instrument can still be heard clearly.

I also like the texture. The bass, guitar, and often drums accent the same chord changes and rhythms, and those beats are often upbeats, but the constant hi-hat in the drums keeps everything together. Without that constant hi-hat I don’t think it’d sound as fast-paced. It probably also would sound rhythmically a lot weirder because there isn’t that other thing keeping everything together.

That’s all I’ve got for this song. Thanks for reading.

ISJ