Take A Chance/Just A Friend
- Mar 6, 2017
- 2 min read
The Songs:
Take a Chance on Me - ABBA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-crgQGdpZR0)
Just a Friend - Jamie Grace (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiJ71ZLkUSk)
The Why:
I really enjoy making multi-genre mash-ups, with songs that you’d never expect to be sung together. This mash-up brings together a song from the Swedish pop band ABBA in the 1970s, “Take a Chance on Me” and a modern Christian pop song by singer songwriter Jamie Grace “Just a Friend.” I love listening to songs by ABBA and from the musical Mamma Mia, and “Take a Chance” is one of my favorites. Jamie Grace has emerged as a songwriter with songs that any Christian mom might want her pre-teen daughter to listen to. Her songs contain themes of trusting in Jesus through daily life’s events -- doubts and insecurities that plague the mind, dealing with relationships and crushes, and embracing every moment as a chance to live life for God unapologetically.
Why then, you may ask, did these two songs end up anywhere near each other in my mind?
Well, I was listening to Jamie Grace on Spotify, and I heard “Just a Friend” and was taken back to the dreamy vision that TV and movies often paint, when you see a person for the first time and everything around them moves in slow motion; maybe your heart beats faster, or stops for a moment, and maybe your sentences get tangled and out of order when you try to vocalize what you’re feeling. This song paints the typical picture of what many experience as your first school crush enters your path, and you realize that life as you know it has been changed forever (if you watch more romantic comedies than you should, you might recognize that line from P.S. I Love You). Jamie writes this song with an attitude of “I like you a lot, and I’m not afraid to let you know. But you don’t feel that way, you say we’re just friends. I think I could make you happy and I can see us together. I will still be okay, because I trust in my Heavenly Father to be my true source of love and life.”
The song “Take a Chance on Me” basically says “When your first, second or third choice has left you, I’ll still be here waiting. My love for you will last, I’m patient and strong, and I just want to spend time with you. So whenever you’re ready, I’m right here!” Together these songs bear the singer’s heart on her sleeve, inviting that guy to give her a chance.
The How:
These two songs have very different melody ranges, so it took some trying a few different keys in between the originals to get them to work for me in the same key. For this video, I capo 6, playing G (making the actual key Db). Below is the order of the arrangement, with abbreviations “Take a Chance (TAC)” and “Just a Friend” (JAF)
TAC chorus intro (start acapella, add guitar halfway in)
TAC Pre-chorus
TAC Verse 1
TAC Chorus line 1
JAF Chorus
TAC Chorus (part 2)
JAF Verse 2
TAC Chorus part 1
JAF Chorus
TAC/JAF interchange taglines to end
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