"Glad You Came": Repetition and the Poetry In Pop
If there is any hit song from the 2010s that is way better than it has any right to be, it’s “Glad You Came,” performed by The Wanted and written by Ed Drewett, Wayne Hector and Steve Mac. Upon first listen, it comes across as a solid pop song. The production consists of pure club boom pop, with trumpeting synths and a thudding beat begging to be played on a dance floor. The Wanted provide enough variety in each of their performances for engaging vocal interplay, all unified by a healthy dose of British-ness. It’s fun, catchy and distinctly 2012 in its relentless, buoyant energy. But even just looking at the cheeky double entendre of the title, you can tell there’s a bit more going on under the surface. There’s a reason why “Glad You Came” works so well as a pop song, and the answer lies somewhere on the border between pop structure and poetics.
Repetition is littered all throughout “Glad You Came.” Pop music is often reviled for its repetitive tendencies, but repetition is only aggravating when it’s being used lazily, such as with repeating a single phrase over and over without any underlying meaning. There are ways to use repetition creatively, and we see this in “Glad You Came.” For example, look at the verse of the song:
You cast a spell on me, spell on me
You hit me like the sky fell on me, fell on me
And I decided you look well on me, well on me
So let's go somewhere no one else can see
You and me
The first three lines in this verse establish a pattern through their rhyme scheme and structure. They start with a clause, such as “you cast a spell on me,” and then repeat the last three words in that clause, “spell on me.” The words at the end of each line, “spell” “fell” and “well,” all rhyme with one another, which sets up an AAA rhyme scheme. When listening to this verse, after hearing these three lines, the listener expects the following line to not only follow the same repetitive structure, but contain the same rhyme. Maybe it will be something like “And when I woke you left your smell on me, smell on me,” (apologies, I don’t write songs I only analyze them.)
But that’s not what we get! Instead, we’re thrown the curveball of “So let’s go somewhere no one else can see / You and me.” The word “else” is an imperfect rhyme for the established rhyme scheme, only slightly jarring in its usage. But then, the last three words of the first clause, “else can see,” aren’t repeated. Instead, they sing “you and me.” Through the last line not using repetition, not following the established rhyming pattern, it subverts the listener’s expectations. This keeps the listening experience engaging, it keeps the listener on their toes, unsure of what will come next.
“Glad You Came” also uses a specific rhetorical device in its repetition. An anadiplosis is a rhetorical device where the last word in a clause is repeated as the first word in the following clause. It comes from the Greek for “folding up” or “a doubling.” As that meaning implies, an anadiplosis can emphasize or “double” the meaning of a word through its repetition. It can also work to flow sentences together. The pre chorus of “Glad You Came” uses seven anadiplosis in a row, to both of these effects. The lyrics read as such:
Turn the lights out now
Now I'll take you by the hand
Hand you another drink
Drink it if you can
Can you spend a little time
Time is slipping away
Away from us so stay
Stay with me I can make
Make you glad you came
Through the use of anadiplosis, the lyrics blur together and slip by quickly, emphasizing the urgency of time passing that the speaker conveys. Not only that, the repetition makes the pre chorus incredibly easy to remember, an example of achieving catchiness in an incredibly efficient way. The memorability of anadiplosis have been used by several writers for this very reason. William Shakespeare used them in “Richard II” and Martin Luther King Jr. used them in his “I Have A Dream” speech. This is not to compare these people to The Wanted, but to show that a rhetorical device that produces iconic monologues and speeches can also produce a catchy song.
Do I think that Ed Drewett, Wayne Hector and Steve Mac actively tried to subvert listener’s expectations through the disruption of rhyme scheme, or went “hey, I feel like using an anadiplosis today” during their writing session? No, probably not. They were probably trying to write a catchy song that would get on the radio, and using repetitive structures is a sure-fire way to achieve that. However, injecting a little bit of ingenuity into the usual repetition helped these writers arrive at something more memorable and special.
I love finding these little crevices of immense effort and care that are put into tunes that most people wouldn’t give a second thought, that seem like they’re churned out to be blasted over dance floor speakers. There’s a reason why “Glad You Came” is still in my head eight years after its initial release, long after the band that performed it has broken up. “Glad You Came” is memorable not just because it’s repetitive, but because those verses are worth repeating, and worth remembering.