Mindless Self Indulgence - Pussy All Night (BREKDOWN)

This is BREKDOWN where we break down the structure of complex pieces of music. Today's song is "Pussy All Night" by Mindless Self Indulgence -- an electropunk band from New York. It's the 9th track in their 1999 album "Tight". 

"Pussy All Night" is only 2 minutes and 22 seconds long, but do not underestimate the intricacy of a short song with a crude title! This fast-paced beast actually has 11 parts zipped into it! And if you don't have 7zip installed in your brain (or WinRAR), then good luck ever getting the brilliance behind it! Here's a list of all the sections: 

  • 1. intro
  • 2. scratch it verse
  • 3. romantic verse
  • 4. light weight breaks
  • 5. sped up section
  • 6. chorus
  • 7. pre-verse
  • 8. french verse
  • 9. i feel good verse
  • 10. ragga verse
  • 11. soft bridge
  • 12. breakdown

Indeed, some of those parts last less than 5 seconds, but they are distinct enough to count as unique sections. Out of those 11 chunks, 4 are repeated once, and 3 are repeated twice. Here's the timeline: 

 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  4  9  10  9  11  7  3  4  5  12  6  11  5  5 

There's a cluster of 3 parts (3-4-5) which is repeated once. All sections are in the key of D#, where most are in the natural minor, the chorus is in the harmonic minor, and the intro is in D# major. Three parts (the french verse, soft bridge, and breakdown) have a modal mixture of both natural and harmonic minor mode. As far as chord progression goes, there generally 8 of those, and if we mark the repeating ones, maybe we could see some clear structure to the song: 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 4 9 10 9 11 7 3 4 5 12 6 11 5

Nope. Still random as fuck. If we simplify and only show each chord progression from 1 to 8, with no regard for the different sections, it looks like this:

1 2 3 4 5 2 6 7 4 7 2 7 8 2 3 4 8 5 8

It's still a total clusterfuck with no predictability! Nonetheless, harmonic progressions #2 and #4 consistently appear throughout the whole song and give it a sense of a whole. So there you have it. Nobody said getting pussy all night was easy. Go find another hobby.

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