Lazarus runs on one held shape and a walking floor. The guitar holds a C5, the root and fifth with no third, and never changes it. The bass walks underneath through E to F-sharp to D to F, renaming the chord on every step while the hand above stays still. The third is absent the whole time, so the song keeps its major-or-minor color open.
The F-sharp is the bite. It is the tritone against the C, the most foreign note to the key, and it arrives every other bar as the bass cycles. That tritone is the dissonance the whole song circles, a recurring shadow under the held C5. The engine states the song's tension once and runs on it.
The verse keeps the held C5 and adds the voice. The singing falls in a slow descent, F to E to D to C, four steps down over the unsettled chord. The line moves at a quarter-note pace, each pitch dwelt on against the third-less floor underneath. The descent carries the words about the hair on your head sewing you to the bed.
The voice supplies the color the rhythm guitar leaves out. Over a chord with no third, the falling line traces the minor shape of the key, the melody supplying the darkness the held C5 leaves open. The bass keeps its tritone walk beneath, so the verse stays unsettled even as the voice draws a clear line down. The descent is the song's grief made into a melody.
The refrain leaves the C floor and opens to the flat side. The guitar lifts through A-flat to E-flat to B-flat, the flat-sixth and flat-third and flat-seventh of C minor, three borrowed chords climbing in a row. After a verse held on one shape, the harmony finally moves, and it moves upward and brighter. The floor opening is the whole gesture.
The lyric and the harmony say the same thing at once. The words are the best of all is when it opens up, and the chords open exactly there, the held tension of the engine releasing into the flat-side lift. The music acts out the line as the singer delivers it. The refrain is the song's one stretch of release.
The outro calls the dead man up. The voice sings dance Lazarus arise over a warm A-flat-major-seven glow, the chord ringing bright as a synth pad holds it. The bass that drove the whole song through its tritone walk drops away here, leaving the chord to hang. The song lifts its title into the open air.
The glow is the answer to the engine's tension. After a verse falling minor over a third-less floor, the close settles on a major-seven chord that rings and sustains rather than resolving by a hard cadence. The pad holds it open as the voice repeats the call. Lazarus ends by raising its own dead into a warm chord that simply glows.