“In a career spanning over 50 years, Engelbert has generated sales in excess of 140 million records, including 64 gold albums and 35 platinum, four Grammy nominations, a Golden Globe, and stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Las Vegas Walk of Fame, and Leicester Walk of Fame,” (artist website).
“He has performed for the Queen four times, several presidents and many heads of state. He has recorded everything from the most romantic ballads to movie theme songs, disco, rock, and even gospel … Engelbert exploded on to the music scene with The Beatles and the Rolling Stones … He became great friends with Elvis and the two legends often performed each other’s songs.”
1968’s “Man Without Love” by the UK native, the title track of an album of the same name shifts keys several times: up a half-step at 0:34, back down a half step to the original key at 1:26, then back up a half step again at 2:21 for the balance of the tune. The album reached high points of #3 in the UK and #12 that year.
” … ‘Somehow, Someway’ … is soulful, uplifting and hopeful, impassioned and achingly expressive; this song aches in all the right ways – all because of Price’s radiant voice, his soul-stirring lyrics, magnificent instrumental work, and the talent he’s surrounded himself with.
‘(It’s) a song that feels confessional to me,’ Price tells Atwood Magazine. ‘It feels like me confessing that I often feel lost, out of control, at the end of my rope, and like an imposter. It feels uncomfortable, because I really do struggle with opening up about my emotions and being vulnerable. But the weight we carry around feels a lot lighter when we become strong enough to face our darkness/demons/trauma…whatever you choose to call it … head on. When we actually look at it, it can become less scary. That’s what this song is to me. It’s about freeing myself from myself, realizing that I am not broken, and to continue moving forward no matter what.”
After a gentle intro apparently played on a long-untuned piano, the 2022 track begins in earnest at 0:55. Following a grand pause, the tune returns a half-step higher at 3:36. The track has won wide acclaim for Price, a Toronto native.
“The first few #1 hits of 1975 were so overwhelmingly bland and narcotized and nostalgia-driven that it’s amazing, in retrospect, that something as loud and rude and noisy as the Ohio Players’ ‘Fire’ was able to break through,” (Stereogum). “‘Fire’ is literally noisy; it opens with the roar-whine of a fire engine’s siren, something that has probably caused at least a few thousand radio-listening commuters to instinctively jerk their cars over to the sides of the road over the decades. There’s nothing remotely mellow about ‘Fire.’ There’s barely any melody, even. Instead, it’s a horny and unrelenting vamp, a funk attack of towering proportions.
… ‘Fire’ hit #1 at the dawn of the disco age, and yet it’s not a disco song at all. You could definitely dance to it, and it probably got club play, but it’s a whole different sort of groove. It’s a grimy, sweaty beast of a song. And in the context of the otherwise-antiseptic early-1975 pop charts, I can only just imagine how exciting it must’ve sounded.”
At the 1:50 mark, the iconic half-step key change hits — not least because because of the tune’s one-chord harmonic vocabulary within each of the two keys!
“’Falling in love is so bittersweet,’ Whitney Houston wails. ‘This love is strong. Why do I feel weak?’ But falling in love doesn’t sound bittersweet, and Whitney Houston doesn’t sound the slightest bit weak,” (Stereogum). “Instead, she sounds like an volcano of joy, an unstoppable natural force of pure exhilaration. At least on paper, ‘How Will I Know’ (1985), Houston’s second chart-topper, is a song about uncertainty — about feeling your way around in the dark, trying to understand if someone else feels the same way you do. But that’s not how Houston sings it. Instead, Houston sings ‘How Will I Know’ as if she can barely contain the excitement that comes along with that uncertainty. She sings it like she already knows.
… Houston just goes off on this thing. It’s amazing to behold. Houston sells the emotion of the song, sounding like she’s utterly caught up in this dazzling, exciting, world-ending crush. She also nails every little melodic turn … But even in the context of a song as fast and bubbly as this one, you can still hear the power and control in her voice. There’s a lot of gospel in her delivery, in the unearthly joyous yelps and whoops and out-of-nowhere high notes. (There’s a whole lot of gospel in those backing vocals, too.) And while Houston never fully cuts loose on ‘How Will I Know,’ she also keeps her abilities in full view. You can hear that voice bursting its way out of the song, ready to dive and curl and soar. The biggest note — the ‘how will I knoooooow‘ just as the sax solo kicks in — is enough to give a motherfucker goosebumps.”
After a start in Gb major, the bridge consistently builds via a repetitive short melody fragment (“If he loves me / If he loves me not”) layered over harmonies that shift with each iteration of the lyric (3:07 – 3:31). As the sax solo kicks in, there’s a massive downward jump to Eb major — but there’s no accompanying deflation in energy, as Whitney’s vocal moves decisively up at that point, not down. In the closing bars, however, the return of the chorus clearly demonstrates the lower key.
“Who here remembers Tommy Tutone’s ‘867-5309’? The 1982 radio staple once gripped the nation, and gave away the digits of the fetching Jenny, last name unknown … Spencer Potter, the New Jersey owner of (201) 867-5309, auctioned off the telephone number, along with his DJ company, netting $186,853.09 on eBay. ‘This is really, in my opinion, one of the last cultural remnants of 80s pop,’ Potter told CNN, ‘other than the mullet.’ Potter said he received over 100,000 phone calls a year from overzealous fans.
… Why is the song so valuable? ‘The sound of the number has a certain hypnotic quality, and I’m not sure what it is. It must be something in the number itself,” Tutone told the Wall Street Journal.” (American Songwriter).
Built in a noticeably de-tuned G minor overall, the tune’s short bridge (1:59 – 2:13) shifts to the closely related key of D minor.
“This was Heart’s first single under their new contract with Capitol Records,” (Songfacts). “It marked a turnaround for the band, which after a triumphant run of hits in the ’70s got off to a rough start in the ’80s with a decline in sales and little airplay for their new material on radio or MTV … It was written by Brian Allen and Sheron Alton of the Canadian band Toronto, along with Jim Vallance, who co-wrote many of Bryan Adams’ hits. The song was written for Toronto but they didn’t record it. The demo found its way to Heart, which turned it into their first Top 10 US hit since their cover of ‘Tell It Like It Is’ in 1980. Their next two singles did even better: ‘Never’ hit #4 and ‘These Dreams’ went to #1.
The video was directed by David Mallet, who was known for avante-garde videos like David Bowie’s ‘Ashes To Ashes’ and Queen’s ‘Radio Ga Ga’ … It was the first Heart video to get significant airplay on MTV (and) was the first Heart song to chart in the UK, where it reached #14.”
Built in D minor overall, the 1985 track features a very late shift to the parallel D major at 3:12.
Parisian pianist and composer Charles-Valentin Alkan “wrote his Grand Sonata ‘The Four Ages’ after he returned to performing in 1844 after a six-year hiatus.” (Musical Musings). “The work was published in 1847. Alkan lived in an apartment in Paris, the Square d’Orléans for about ten years and was a neighbor to Chopin. They became close friends, and he became acquainted with many other artists that lived in Paris at the time, including Franz Liszt.
The work is in four movements, with each one portraying the ages of a man. Alkan wrote a preface to the published work where he expressed his intentions with the titles and structure of the sonata:
The first piece is a scherzo, the second an allegro, the third and the fourth an andante and a largo, but each of them corresponds, in my case, to a particular moment of existence, to a particular disposition of the imagination. Why should I not point it out?”
The second movement corresponds to the age of 30; perhaps not surprisingly, it goes through several transformations and shifts along the way. Starting in D-sharp minor, it shifts to B major, G-sharp minor, and finally F-sharp major (quite a list of relatively rare keys!). We won’t timeslate the changes, because in order to fully experience this piece, your full attention will be required — and the video provides a full score! Make sure you’ve packed a lunch and have had some coffee first.
“Ari Shagal’s … bold, brash, electrifying album, To Each! channels Laura Nyro, Donald Fagen, jazz in general, Broadway, and a lot more,” (Soundstage Experience). Songwriter Ari Shagal “proves to be a triple-threat performer, singer, and composer/arranger.
Though there are up- and down-tempo songs on this set, it’s full of swagger and confidence — the same feelings I get from a Steely Dan album. Shagal’s music is chic, cool, and invigorating, even when it’s the blues. It goes down easy while leaving a lasting impression.”
“Limerent Buzz,” a track from 2014’s To Each! by the Shagal-led band The Summarily Dismissed, starts in Bb major, but shifts to Db major for all but the tail end of its chorus, first heard between 0:50-1:14). At 1:21, we return to the original key for the next verse; the pattern continues from there.
“The self-produced Wake of the Flood … originally came out in October 1973,” (Americana Highways). “… when you compare Wake of the Flood with the group’s most recent previous studio efforts, 1970’s Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty, those earlier LPs found the group forsaking extended psychedelic jams and improvisation in favor of succinct, country-flavored rock statements that relied heavily on vocals and acoustic instruments.
You’d never describe Wake of the Flood that way, which is not to say that it takes off in a wholly new direction. Yes, there are horns and there’s also more jazz influence as well as funk and ragtime, but the album is less of a reinvention than a vinyl presentation of the sort of music the Dead had been performing in concert for years. It also retains some elements of earlier studio albums.”
“Let Me Sing Your Blues Away,” the second track on Wake of the Flood, features an consistent level of intensity throughout, which seems to be one of the band’s trademarks. There are no buildups, no quiet bridges, no intense shout choruses … rather, an eternal “now” for which the band was well known. But a more unusual quality of the track is its frequency of unconventional, generally unprepared key changes. After a start in Bb major, there’s a cavalcade of unceremonious keys of the moment starting at 0:50 leading into a section in A major at 1:15, B major at 1:30, C# major at 1:45, and some frequently shifting key of the moment connective tissue leading to a return to Bb major at 1:56. Finally, here’s a shift to G major at 2:21 and a chromatic lead-in back to Bb major at 2:47.
“Philadelphia coffee shop waitress Angie Falco (Donna Pescow) starts a romance with customer Bradley Benson (Robert Hays), a pediatrician,” (ABC.fandom.com). “While she assumes he is a struggling young doctor, he reveals that he is actually rebelling against his wealthy family, presumably residents in the Main Line region of the city’s suburbs. The other Falco family members are Angie’s mother Theresa (Doris Roberts) and her younger sister Marie (Debralee Scott).
… Angie and Brad later marry, merging their two very different families: the blue-blooded Bensons and the urban Italian-American Falcos … Angie premiered on February 2, 1979 (and ran for) two seasons and 36 episodes.”
The show’s theme song, “Different Worlds,” was performed by Maureen McGovern. Written by Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox, the tune was released by McGovern as a single from her eponymous fourth studio album in June 1979. The track peaked at #18 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was #1 for two weeks on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart. Starting in C major, the tune shifts to Eb major at 0:25, wearing its late-disco era on its sleeve. Many more key changes follow — more than anyone could reasonably expect from a 90-second opening theme!
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