Listen Close #3 'If You're Too Shy (Let Me Know)' by The 1975

Listen Close is a weekly feature where I take a long hard listen to a song that really grabbed my ears. I think about which elements of the production have got me so interested and try to understand how and why they work, as well as how I can apply these techniques to my own productions.
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This week I’m delving into ‘If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)’ by The 1975.

‘Too Shy’, as it will be referred to from here on, was released on the 23rd of April 2020. It’s the sixth single from the band’s fourth album, ‘Notes on a Conditional Form’, which came out on the 22nd of May 2020.  The track has production by George Daniel and Matthew Healy (Drummer and Singer of the band respectively) along with Jonathan Gilmore. ‘Too Shy’ was Mixed by Mike Crossey and Mastered by Robin Schmidt.
 
The track can be listened to in all the usual places, Spotify, Tidal etc. I couldn’t easily find a high-resolution version of the track to buy, so I’ve been doing the majority of my listening from an Apple Music stream. Two versions of the song have been released, but I have focussed on the longer album version rather than the cut down radio edit.
 
This week's Listen Close has an extra leg up as the band has made a 96k 32bit version of the mixed stems available to download. If you’re interested in listening to the song in even more detail I would definitely recommend grabbing these from mindshower.ai to get a rare chance to hear parts of a big chart single in isolation. 
 
It’s worth keeping in mind that I’ve used those stems to hear some things that maybe aren’t so obvious in the final master, but I will try and make it clear where that’s the case.
 
On to the listening! I am unashamed to say that this song puts a big giddy smile on my face. If you’re not familiar with The 1975 they are something of a Swiss army knife of a band. Each album they’ve released contains progressively more diverse styles of song, including but not limited to; pulsing electronica, nostalgic indie rock and acoustic ballads. ‘Too Shy’ falls into the style they are arguably most well known for, heavily 80’s influenced pop rock. This song is the band firing on all cylinders from a production standpoint, employing a huge range of techniques that have at times been utilised on earlier The 1975 tracks, but here coalesce into one of their most ear-catching songs. 
 
‘Too Shy’ is absolutely monstrous sounding pop music. Opening with an extended intro section, which features vocalisations from FKA Twigs (00:16) and scene-setting guitar and synth parts, the song launches into a powerful sounding live drum beat and thick synth bass (01:05). From here the guitars and synths come into focus, providing a super wide sound stage and when the lead vocal enters (01:18) it some how increases that sense of size again. This large-scale sound doesn’t let up for the rest of the song, with live brass parts further heightening the chorus sections (first chorus 02:04) and a jubilant saxophone solo (04:07) switching up the lead melody sound, without dropping any of the intensity. 
 
The production and mix of this song make almost every element feel big and powerful, resulting in a track that keeps up it’s level of excitement and that glossy sense of size all the way through an over five minute run time. While that might not sound like a huge achievement on paper, in practice making everything in a mix feel ‘big’ individually can quite easily result in a complete muddle when it all comes together. 
 
What do I mean when I say a sound is big? For me this is sort of an instinctual thing. It’s very easy to hear a song and point to a sound that feels exciting, powerful and larger than life. This is especially true in high-energy genres, such as pop, rock, metal and dance music, where those sorts of sounds are absolutely sought after by producers and engineers to grab the listeners’ attention. 
 
The first thing to note is that size is a relative term. America is a big country, compared to England. The chorus has a massive bass line, compared to the verse. Whether we are conscious of it or not, when we listen we are always comparing the sound to other things we have already heard. Whether that’s the intro compared to the verse of a song, this song versus the previous track on the radio or an artist’s new album compared to their previous one. The trick is that when it comes to how things actually sound, our memory of the specifics is really rather short. 
 
‘Too Shy’ uses that fact to grab it’s first points on the ‘big mix’ scoreboard by giving us a long intro section, where the sound is focussed between 63hz and 4kHz. This means that as soon as the main track kicks in (01:05) we hear a whole new range of bass and high frequency content as it fills out to the full range of human hearing, 20Hz-20kHz. After over a minute of not hearing those frequencies our brains have largely forgotten about them, regardless of what you were listening to before. Their reintroduction is both exciting and gives the song a real sense of getting bigger! 

Frequency Analysers 

You might have noticed me mention some specific frequencies above; to find these out I used a frequency analyser plugin. These are really handy tools when listening and mixing, allowing you to visualise how much of any given frequency you’re hearing. When mixing I find this most useful from a zoomed out perspective, using it so compare the general ‘shape’ of the song I’m working on to my references. 
This helps me see whether I have far too much or too little of a particular frequency range. They can also be very useful for revealing the cause of a problem you might have with an individual track, perhaps letting you see that your snare drum track contains a lot of sub information that isn’t immediately audible, but is messing with your compressor settings. 
 
It’s worth remembering that it’s not useful to get too worried about what the analyser looks like, compared to what you are hearing. It’s all too easy to trick yourself into thinking something ‘looks wrong’ when it actually sounds great!
 
For my frequency analyser I tend to use the free SPAN by Voxengo, but all the big plugin companies make a version, and many EQ plugins contain an analyser as part of their display.

SPAN Plug-in created by Voxengo

​At this point the track gets louder, another comparative term, which is an easy way of generating the perception of it getting ‘bigger.’ Out in the world we have visual indicators that loud means large; a big truck makes more noise than a small car for example. When the visual isn’t present and we experience a sound in isolation, our brains reverse engineer that expectation in to a sense of its’ size. ‘Too Shy’ applies this to great effect with the drum and bass sounds, when they arrive they are the loudest things in the track and to us they sound massive. 
 
Something to consider here is that the listener ultimately has the final say in the actual real world loudness of the track, as they can use the volume control on their playback device. So we can only meaningfully make something in the mix ‘loud’ relative to the rest of the elements of the track.
 
Reverb also plays a big part in how we perceive the size of a space. The main guitar part in ‘Too Shy’s verses uses a large reverb sound combined with a delay to conjure the sense that it’s playing out into a huge space. In contrast to this, the drum sound is very tight, with a much smaller ‘room’ type reverb. The difference between these two different reverbs informs our ears that the Guitar is much larger than the Drums, but this doesn’t distract from the drums gaining size through loudness, allowing both elements to feel inflated. The two reverbs are much easier to differentiate when listening to their respective stems in solo. 
 
The third contributor to the large-scale nature of this track is the layering of sounds. Multiple instruments playing the same part can really increase the sense of size. Imagine a solo violin playing a melody, then hearing that same melody played by a whole orchestral violin section. Even if we heard these at the same perceived volume, the subtle variations introduced by multiple players and different instruments would indicate an increased sense of scale to our ear. In ‘Too Shy’ this concept is applied subtly to almost all of the sustained parts in the track, guitar, synth and brass parts are almost all doubled up in some way, but I think it’s most effective with the vocals. 
 
When listening to the song in full there are some fairly obvious double tracks throughout which spread the lead vocal across the stereo image. Using the track stems to listen to the vocal parts in isolation it becomes obvious there is a huge amount going on that contributes to the huge overall vocal sound.
 
The lead vocal track in the centre of the stereo image is doubled in all of the verse and pre-chorus sections with a second, centred performance around 6dB quieter. This thickens up the sound and increases it’s perceived size. During the choruses this becomes two double tracks panned to the left and right, adding a width component to the sound, giving the size another bump. 
 
In addition to this there are a massive amount of backing vocals. They generally follow the lead performance rhythmically, but there is a diverse array of performances, harmonies and pitch shift effects that add up to an impossible choir. Because the same vocalist sings all of these parts we get the overall impression of one giant performance. 
 
Using a variety of methods to achieve a sense of space in the mix allows ‘Too Shy’ to avoid the elements feeling like they are all the same size, while retaining the feeling that they are all ‘large’. 

Listening To The Stems

Obtaining the stems for this track isn’t the most straightforward process, once you’ve clicked through to the mindshower website, click enter to be brought into a 3D waiting room, you need to manoeuvre yourself Google street view style to the computer on the desk. Next click on the computer and then ‘create’, from here you’ll see an ‘Audio’ folder on the right hand side, click this and then ‘If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know) Stems’ and you’ll finally be presented with a ‘Download Now’ button, phew!
 
Once I'd got through that process,  I dropped the audio files into Logic Pro X and reordered and renamed the tracks in a way that was familiar to me. I also colour coded the tracks in the same way I would any mix I’m working on, which lets me quickly get around the project and gives me a good idea of which track I’m looking at any one time. 

Logic Pro X set up for listening to stems.

Now hitting play lets me listen to the full mix of the track, although it’s worth noting any dynamic processing on the stereo bus won’t have been applied in the same way as the released track, and neither will any of the mastering processes. It seems to me that the band have made sure this mix is as close as is reasonable to the finished master though, so it makes this a very interesting listen! Soloing each individual stem or combinations of them lets me hear what’s happening arrangement and effects wise in a lot greater detail, and I highly recommend having a good poke around for yourself.

​So the mix is very effectively giving me this sense of large scale and size that has grabbed my attention, but just as quickly as our ears forget what we’ve heard before, they also get bored with hearing the same thing constantly. 
Modern pop production is all about capturing the listener's attention, and then keeping it. 
 
‘Too Shy’ goes about this by using a lots of little ‘moments’ in the song to constantly tickle your ear with something new to listen to. These include delay and reverb throws, speech samples and one-off synth sounds. 
 
For example, as the first verse comes to the end of it’s first half (01:33), a delay throw of the word ‘time’ steps forward in the mix and descends in pitch keeping the vocal in focus even as there is a gap in the lyrics. Leading into the first chorus a telephone dial tone and a filtered line of speech momentarily distract your ear from the music (02:05), letting the chorus melody have even more impact when your attention snaps back.
 
Delving into the stems reveals that there are many of these moments, some of which aren’t immediately obvious, but keep that idea of novelty throughout. The second half of the first verse (01:36) is announced by a dense reverb impulse bloom from the guitars, and the introduction of a plucky rhythmic guitar in the right channel. In the full mix this isn’t clearly audible, but adds to the sense that ‘something’ has happened.
 
Elsewhere a speech sample "Now all I can see is chaos" is deployed, being played backwards (01:19, BV Stem), as a tip-off that the lead vocal is about to enter, and also forwards (04:52, BV Stem) as ear candy in the final chorus when the drums and bass drop out. It even turns up to support a synth riser that leads us into the second verse (02:43. Synth Stem).
 
All these individual moments continue to add variety and keep your ear interested throughout a song that is both quite long and fairly rigid in it’s structure. The drums, bass, core guitar and synth parts get to continue being just as big and satisfying for the whole run time because your ear is never quite settled, there is always a new sound to grab your attention .
 
‘Too Shy’ is a triumph of a big, loud pop song. The producers and mixer have worked to ensure that every part of the arrangement gets to feel big and bold throughout the song, resulting in a track that feels powerful and energetic despite a long run time. I’m sure there was a clear intention to push those concepts of size and excitement as far as they could go, and in that they have totally succeeded. Going forward I am definitely going to consider which elements of my mixes I want to feel big, and feel a little better equipped to make that a reality. 

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Stray observations
 

• The intro features some really interesting reversed guitar and synth parts.
• The intro section is mostly stereo information, which lets the drums and bass really feel solid when they come in.
• Love the guitar slide as that first drum fill hits (01:04).
• The drums stick with that tight roomy sound the whole way through the song, with just some extra reverb accentuating some of the Tom fills (eg. (01:05).
• There’s some absolutely mad sounds in the Percussion stem.
• Percussion carries on providing some very subtle rhythmic information even when the main kit drops out. 
• Cheesy ‘That’s Right!’ at 03:01 is doubled with an 808 clap for added punch.
• The glorious Sax solo features a really wide sounding slap back delay. That delay sounds to me like it’s been given the worst mp3 conversion possible, with artefacts and noise all over the place, somehow this makes the whole thing sound even better!
• There’s a lovely Guitar sound that has a tape speed up and then slow down at 04:54, throwing you into that last chorus.

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​Further Listening
 
For another swing at a big The 1975 pop production try ‘It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You)’ and enjoy that monster snare sound. 
 
If this is all too glossy for you, try fellow ‘Notes On A Conditional Form’ tantrum  ‘People’ which you can also grab the stems for. 
 
FKA twigs features in the intro of 'Too Shy' and I would definitely recommend listening to her own music, start with the song ‘thousand eyes’ for a showcase of what she can do with that voice. 

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Thanks again for taking the time to listen with me! I’d love to know what you thought of the song and its mix. Did you catch any great moments I didn’t?