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I'm trying to apply Roman numeral analysis to some pop songs and am a little stumped on Coldplay's "God put a smile upon your face".
The chords, as I understand them, are:
Section A: D♭, E6, E♭7, Dmaj7
Section B: Amaj7, E6, F♯add9
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
In some cases, Roman numerals aren't all that helpful, and this piece might be one of them.
In my opinion, Section A is best understood by considering two simultaneous actions:
These two aspects make it very clear that D♭ is tonic, and that's ultimately what drives the harmonic motion: tension and resolution to that D♭.
The B Section is less clear, but there are two things to consider: B Sections often go somewhere else tonally, and here it seems to be rooted in A, which is enharmonic to ♭VI (B♭♭), a relatively common move dating back almost two centuries. Note also that the overall tonic D♭ is still present in every single chord, though now always spelled as C♯: it's the third of Amaj7, the sixth of E6, and the fifth of F♯add9.
In other words, Coldplay makes clear what the tonic is by playing it in every single chord of the song. If you try to sing a D♭ throughout the song, you'll see that it fits everywhere!
I tried listening to the song and the progression in the A section is pretty non-functional which means there are going to be some ambiguities when doing the analysis. The B section sounds like I-V-VI-I in the key of A (I'm not sure about the tensions, but if you're right then Imaj7-V6-VIadd9). If I'm hearing it right each chord in the A section is played on the guitar by moving the open C chord shape around but leaving the open stings open, so each chord has an E and G though I think you got the basic movement down. We could interpret this section to also be in the key of A as III#9#11-V#9-bVb9-IVadd11 with the G and/or E providing the tensions on each, but I think you could make an argument for analyzing this in Db/C# since during the verse the bass is alternating between B and C# throughout. Either way there are many non-diatonic tones throughout. I like the interpretation in A since the III chord could be thought of as a sort of substitute for the I.
