The Art of the Song "Oxygen" by Kings Kaleidoscope

The band Kings Kaleidoscope makes some of the most beautiful and sophisticated music today, and I want to show you how with their song “Oxygen” off of their album Zeal.

In order to understand the song, you need to understand why this album was written. Chad Gardner, the frontman of Kings Kaleidoscope, was a worship leader at Mars Hill Church. And then, of course, Mars Hill imploded. Many of Chad’s friends left the church, some left the faith, and some became jaded. This album is an account of Chad’s striving to regain the zeal of his faith.

Memories and Oxygen

The song begins with a melodic phrase that was recorded in reverse, along with these opening lines. This verse is repeated twice. Chad opens the song by recalling memories, and this is mirrored both in the music and the lyrics.

In the music, that reversed melodic phrase is an image of memories. That is because memories are about something that happened in the past that you are returning to. When you reverse music, you are returning to its inception, because it can only be reversed once it has been played.

Lyrically, this opening verse is repeated twice, like recalling a memory. A memory is what happens a second time after the event occurs. And the thing Chad remembers is the original zeal of his faith. He is returning to the thing that was lost. Part of that zeal that was lost was suffering—that is, he assumed that everything that happened with the destruction of his church and the waywardness of his friends, not to mention all his personal struggles with mental illness, was all a parenthesis to his faith. But what he had forgotten was that God gives joy in suffering. This suffering, the implosion of Mars Hill, is part of what God is doing.

Notice also that this remembrance is described as oxygen. There is a similarity between breathing oxygen and memory: both are repetitive. So the doubling of the music and the lyrics is both a remembrance and oxygen, a breathing in and out that gives zeal. Chad then repeats the phrase, “I’d lose it all.”

The Recovery of Childhood Faith

This short song ends with the children’s song “Jesus Loves Me,” but with some fascinating musical decisions. Before we get there: why the song “Jesus Loves Me”?

If the song is about recovering the zeal of old, “Jesus Loves Me” is a paradigmatic symbol for the old faith. It is not just an old faith, but an old faith recovered, and that is reflected in the music. When “Jesus Loves Me” begins, it is mixed to sound like an old children’s choir through a crackling radio. But then strong drum and flute sections take off, as if giving life and bones to this old tune. Then the strings fill out the aural space to create a full orchestra with beautiful cascading variations on the theme of “Jesus Loves Me.”

Next, a weak voice whistles the tune with the orchestra as the rest of the choir comes in. Finally, the choir and orchestra decrescendo out, and a simple piano closes the song with a final version of “Jesus Loves Me.”

This last section musically portrays Chad’s journey. His childhood faith is given full expression and life again, but it is still fundamentally that normal, single-piano faith of a child.

Unity in Opposites

One of the fascinating decisions Chad made in the song was to combine every style of musical expression, even seemingly opposite styles, into one cohesive, beautiful whole. He combined high and low styles (orchestra and guitar/electronic), old and new styles (“Jesus Loves Me” and the crackling radio), and forwards and backwards. At the beginning of the song the loop is backwards, yet it is part of a song moving forwards. He pairs fast and slow, loud and soft, many people (the choir) and one person, simple and complex, young and old—everything.

This communicates the heart of the song. Remember that first line: Chad forgot the joy of suffering. He forgot that God is working everything together, even these things that seem so sideways. Chad demonstrates this by combining extremes and opposites into a unity.

Tension and Resolution

There is one thing left. Chad ends the song in a slightly jarring way. Normally “Jesus Loves Me” ends on the tonic, the root note of the key. Chad plays the song in B-flat, so the tonic would be B-flat. Yet he deliberately chooses not to completely resolve the melody to the tonic, concluding instead on the third.

What is alluring about this decision is that it does two things musically. First, it introduces tension, because it does not resolve where the song normally resolves—or where most songs resolve—nor does he resolve to the second most common place, the fifth. So the tension is increased.

Second, he does not make it completely dissonant. The third in the key is the middle note in the tonic chord (in B-flat major, B-flat, D, F). In that sense, it is resolved and at home; it is not a non-diatonic note, nor a choice like the seventh which would bring even more tension.

In the final two notes, Chad musically communicates the entire message of the song: joy in suffering, tension and resolution at the same time. And that, my friends, is why Kings Kaleidoscope is art.

Watch the original episode.