Monsters

James Blunt's heartfelt song to his father has everything you could want from a ballad: a complex emotional mix of yearning, wisdom, kindness, and huge quantities of love. Adding barbershop harmonies to bring it into a contest-grade stylistic world only serves to amplify the emotional impact.

The arrangement mostly aims to stay out of the way of the song to let the emotional content come through with the directness it deserves. It is primarily homophonic, with all singers having the lyrics most of the time, and the lines are crafted map both tessitura and prosody onto the narrative so that all can sing with expressive authenticity.