Every now and again, we come across songs that stand out from the vast majority in that style or genre, remaining significant anomalies as the era passes and the context changes.
If we look closely at these outliers, however, we typically find that the production style or sound palette still retains some signifiers of the artist's established genre.
However, the chord progressions and melodic elements used, while not unique or groundbreaking, are often uncommon to the genre or niche. This allows artists and producers to use, what we call ‘crossover songwriting’ techniques' to subvert the listener's expectations. The results speak for themselves.
In order to better understand what makes a song stand out from the rest, we'll highlight a few examples. The first is Pendulum's Hold Your Colour, an example of a drum and bass song that uses melodic and harmonic elements that could easily fit into genres like alternative or metal.
