Saturday Songwriting: Adam Neely on James Brown’s I Feel Good

A few weeks ago, I talked about strong and weak beats in music in a post called The Beat of Falling Slowly.

As is often the case, rules are made to be broken. And, if someone’s going to break some musical rules*, James Brown is definitely one of the people to do it. Here’s Adam Neely doing a deep dive talking about emphasis, feel, and strong vs. weak beats in music using Brown’s I Feel Good.

*It’s worth noting, the rules I’m talking about are really cultural norms, and those cultural norms are generally white and European. Adam gets into this point about halfway through his video.

Enjoy!