Mod of the Day

Jennifer Lopez | This Land Is Your Land / America the Beautiful

At today’s Biden/Harris Inaugural, pop diva Jennifer Lopez performed a medley of the populist folk anthem “This Land is Your Land” and “America The Beautiful” for a small in-person audience on the Capitol steps, while tens of millions watched worldwide.

The Los Angeles Times reports that JLo “linked the first two verses of Woody Guthrie’s ‘This Land Is Your Land’ with ‘America the Beautiful’ — and threw in a line from her own ‘Let’s Get Loud’ just for good measure … Lopez remade the two American standards — the first a famously fought-over piece of U.S. history.

And she didn’t pass up the opportunity to try to cleanse the spot where insurgents soiled the American dream two weeks ago: Building up to her big finish, Lopez paused to recite the last line of the Pledge of Allegiance — in Spanish. ‘Una nación, bajo Dios, indivisible, con libertad y justicia para todos!‘ she said, her eyes sparkling with pride — ‘One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.'”

As the arrangement returns to “This Land Is Your Land” after “America the Beautiful” (3:00), the key is a half-step lower than the opening rendition of the same tune. The music begins at the 0:40 mark.

Let It Sing (from “Violet”)

“Let It Sing” is featured in composer Jeanine Tesori’s 1997 Off-Broadway musical Violet. Based on the short story “The Ugliest Pilgrim” by Doris Betts, Violet won the Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Musical the year of its premiere, and was revived on Broadway in 2014 starring Sutton Foster and Joshua Henry, who performs here. Key changes at 0:57, 1:05, 1:18, 1:39, 1:48, 2:00, 2:32, and 2:57.

The Walker Brothers | I Can’t Let It Happen to You

“They weren’t British, they weren’t brothers, and their real names weren’t Walker, but Californians Scott Engel, John Maus, and Gary Leeds were briefly huge stars in England (and small ones in their native land) at the peak of the British Invasion,” reports AllMusic. “…They favored orchestrated ballads that were a studied attempt to emulate the success of another brother act who weren’t really brothers: the Righteous Brothers.”

The tune appeared in the recent TV series Master of None in 2017, part of a soundtrack that was nothing if not eclectic. “I Can’t Let it Happen to You” wasn’t a single for the Walker Brothers, but the album track, released in 1967, fit the quirky series perfectly. Pitchfork quotes the show’s music supervisor, Zach Cowie, speaking about the series’ star and co-writer, Aziz Ansari: “‘We’re both record collectors that are kind of always looking for crate-digging kind of deeper stuff. That sort of becomes a sound that unifies the whole series. A lot of it is just mixed up sort of records, and it does fit well with the character.'”

The Righteous Brothers’ influence is strong on this track, complete with a leisurely, behind-the-beat delivery, the lead vocal’s casual approach to pitch, and the spacious, reverb-soaked production. Starting in E major, the tune shifts to F major at 1:55 at the start of a brief instrumental bridge.

Fresh Prince: Google Translated

In 2013, Mother Jones magazine asked “what happens when highly trained musicians and actors do Broadway and pop culture with a meta twist?” The answer is CDZA, short for Collective Cadenza. CDZA creates “viral videos starring Juilliard-trained musicians, local rock and jazz artists, Broadway singers, and sketch comedians — done in a single Steadicam shot. ‘Our creative process looks like us sitting in an apartment, saying, this would be funny, this would be cool — and then we begin to divide and conquer.’”

The process for 2013’s “Fresh Prince: Google Translated,” according to Joe Sabia, the group’s lead “conceptor”/director: “’One of our main things is producing videos that also serve as a commentary on American culture. Google Translate is something everyone uses, so we put together a song everyone knows and a device everyone knows.’”

This expanded version of the tune is built on the theme from the wildly popular 1990s sitcom Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Featuring a much stronger accompaniment than the original, the entire tune centers around a I minor –> bVII major/I vamp. As the lyrics grow progressively more inane with each pass through Google Translate, the key ascends a half-step at 2:02, 2:27, and 3:09.

Al Jarreau | We’re In This Love Together

The first of three singles released from the 1981 album Breakin’ Away, “We’re In This Love Together” is one of Al Jarreau‘s most successful tunes. It reached the #15 spot on the Billboard Hot 100, and the #6 and #1 spots on the Adult Contemporary charts in the US and Canada respectively. Key change at 2:04.

George Jones | He Stopped Loving Her Today

“There’s an old cliché that says country music is mostly comprised of three chords and the truth,” reports American Songwriter. “There’s also a generalization that says country music is, on the whole, unremittingly sad. Needless to say, those are broad descriptions that limit the scope of a type of music that encompasses many different musical strategies and is capable of conveying the full range of the emotional spectrum. Yet there is no doubt that “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” the 1980 masterpiece by George Jones, does indeed adhere to those clichés, even as it finds a way to transcend them.

After all, the song is pretty much just three chords. (Technically, there are six, but that’s only because of the key change.) The truth can be found in Jones’ stunning performance, a vocal for the ages. And the song itself, composed by Bobby Braddock and Curly Putman, contains the sadness, which was then amplified to majestic proportions by the production of Billy Sherrill.

All of those disparate elements and unique personalities meshed to create this one-of-a-kind recording from 1980. The accolades for the song were immediate, as it won Grammy, Academy of Country Music, and CMA awards. It continues to amass honors, including selection by the Library of Congress National Recording Preservation Board in 2009 and numerous occasions when it was named greatest country song of all time on various media lists.”

The tune is a classic Country music ballad, but it’s certainly not a spare voice-and-guitar ditty. Rather, given its high production values, strings, and overall polish, it fits squarely in the Countrypolitan category. The modulation arrives at 0:54, early in the long list of the song’s emotional hits. The arrangement continues to escalate, accompanying Jones’ understated singing and simple yet devastating spoken word narrative.

Stevie Wonder | You Are The Sunshine Of My Life

Hailed by Rolling Stone as one of the 500 greatest songs of all time, Stevie Wonder‘s “You Are The Sunshine Of My Life” was featured on his 1972 album Talking Book. The track was awarded Best Male Pop Vocal Performance at the Grammy’s, and nominated for both Record and Song of the Year; it also was Wonder’s third song to hit the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Key change at 2:09.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart | Deis Irae (from the Requiem Mass in D Minor, 1791)

The Requiem Mass in D minor (K. 626) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was left unfinished at the composer’s death on December 5, 1791. A completion by Franz Xaver Süssmayr was delivered to Count Franz von Walsegg in 1792; von Walsegg had commissioned the piece for a requiem Mass to commemorate the February 14 anniversary of his wife’s death. The lyrics of “Dies Irae” (Day of Wrath) are derived from a thirteenth century Latin hymn.

Süssmayr must have completed a great deal of this movement; as Classic FM reports, “In July 1791 an ‘unknown, gray stranger’ turned up at the composer’s door saying he represented someone who wanted a Requiem from Mozart on the understanding that he not seek to learn the identity of his patron.

Spooked by the commission, Mozart threw himself obsessively into the work. But it was all too much. He was only able to complete the Requiem and Kyrie movements, and managed to sketch the voice parts and bass lines for the Dies Irae through to the Hostias.”

There are several short sections: D minor, F major, C minor, and finally returning to D minor. Many thanks to regular contributor JB for this submission!

Theme from “Jeopardy!”

Alex Trebek, the beloved host of the game show Jeopardy! for 35 years, announced in 2019 that he had been diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer. He continued to work throughout his treatment, often in excruciating pain. “I’m not afraid of dying,” he said. “I’ve lived a good life, a full life, and I’m nearing the end of that life. If it happens, why should I be afraid of that?”

Trebek taped his final episode on October 29, 2020, and passed away at age 80 on November 8. In honor of the airing of that episode tonight, we are bringing back our 2012 post of the Jeopardy! theme song. Key change about halfway through.

Lady Gaga | I Wanna Be With You

“Glamorously gaudy, a self-made postmodern diva stitched together from elements of Madonna, David Bowie, and Freddie Mercury, Lady Gaga was the first millennial superstar,” reports AllMusic. “Mastering the constant connection of the Internet era, Gaga generated countless mini-sensations with her style, her videos, and her music … Gaga crossed over into the mainstream, ushering out one pop epoch and kick-starting a new one, quickly making such turn-of-the-century stars as Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears seem old-fashioned … repurposing the past (particularly the ’80s) for present use, creating sustainable pop for a digital world.”

“I Wanna Be With You” was first performed in 2013, but wasn’t released as a studio version until 2019. Referencing her hit “Born This Way” in its lyric, the tune starts in D major, then climbs to Eb major at 3:20 after a proper power-ballad drum break.