Composition
"Unfinished Sympathy" is a trip hop track, and makes use of instruments common to tracks in the trip hop genre: keyboards, strings, drum machines, and turntables.
The song title is a play on words, regarding the phrase "unfinished symphony", which refers to a fragment of a symphony left by composers that are considered incomplete or unfinished for various reasons. In context of the song, the lyricist is missing something of the one she desires.
Sampling is also utilized: the percussion loop of the song is sampled from the song "Parade Strut" by American composer J. J. Johnson, from the soundtrack to the 1974 film Willie Dynamite. The "hey, hey, hey, hey..." voice that recurs throughout the song is a sample from John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra's "Planetary Citizen". The voice was sampled without clearance.
Read more about this topic: Unfinished Sympathy
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—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
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