Continuing with Scott Alan‘s music, this is Shoshana Bean (currently starring in Waitress on Broadway) singing “Home” (2008) with an epic key change at 5:42.
There’s a lot of banter at the start of this live video; skip to 2:15 if you want to go straight to the music.
UK songwriter/vocalist/guitarist Dave Stewart, probably best known as half of Eurythmics, has also enjoyed a busy career as a solo rock/pop artist, music producer, and music video director. His solo release “Heart of Stone” (1994) modulates at 1:53. Then, after a guitar solo which might have come from a dream journal, Stewart falls like timber at the downward modulation back to the original key.
Yes, that is legendary funk bassist Bootsy Collins!
Many thanks to MotD fan John Powhida for this submission.
Scott Alan‘s “Never Neverland” (2007), performed here by three-time Tony Award nominee vocalist Stephanie J. Block, alternates between A and F major throughout the song.
“Birdhouse In Your Soul,” a 1989 single from the always-quirky They Might Be Giants, reached #3 on the US Modern Rock Tracks Chart, performed well on college radio, and has been the alternative rock band’s best-performing release to date. The tune bounces back and forth between C major and Eb major throughout (starting at 0:27), with the exception of an early instrumental bridge from 1:24 – 1:43, which plays by its own rulebook.
Also stranger than fiction: the tune was later covered by Broadway stars Kristin Chenoweth and Ellen Greene for the TV series Pushing Daisies (see second video below).
While this tune doesn’t feature a modulation until the instrumental outro, it’s a standout harmonically. A cover of “Bang Bang,” the hit 2014 collaboration by Jessie J, Ariana Grande, and Nicki Minaj, this 2015 live cover features a profoundly re-harmonized arrangement by bandleader and keyboardist Nikko Ielasi. Starting around the 1:00 mark, the energetic new arrangement of the one-chord original version really kicks in — and never lets up.
“Gee, Officer Krupke” is from Leonard Bernstein‘s seminal 1957 musical West Side Story. Eb major is tonicized in the chorus before a return to C major in the verses, and the song modulates briefly to Eb major at 3:46 for the very end.
The Turtles, an American band led by Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman (later known as Flo and Eddie), released “Elenore” in 1968. Unhappy with its record label, the band intentionally delivered a single with off-kilter lyrics. According to the liner notes for the band’s compilation album Solid Zinc: “‘Elenore’ was a parody of ‘Happy Together’…I gave them a very skewed version…with all these bizarre words. It was my feeling that they would listen to how strange and stupid the song was and leave us alone. But they didn’t get the joke.”
Nobody else got the joke, either: the two-and-a-half minute “sunshine pop” single packed a huge punch, shooting into the top 10 in the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia.
Following the same pattern as “Happy Together,” one of the band’s other big singles, the E minor verses transition to E major and back again throughout the tune, starting at 0:43.
From longtime MotD correspondent Carlo Migliaccio, today we feature P.D.Q. Bach’s MotD debut with the 1712 Overture. There are a few modulations throughout the piece, but a definitive one occurs at 4:45 before a return to the original key at 5:28.
1979’s “All of My Love” by Led Zeppelin is a rock ballad co-written by the band’s lead vocalist, Robert Plant, and Zeppelin’s bassist John Paul Jones. The tune was written in honor of Plant’s son, who tragically died of a sudden illness as a pre-schooler. From PopMatters‘ review: “the saddest and most heartfelt Zeppelin song … which hauntingly enough sounds like a foreshadowing of a band on the path to an impending and unforeseeable dissolution.” Indeed, the hugely popular band broke up the very next year in the wake of drummer John Bonham‘s death.
A direct whole-step modulation hits at the 4:25 mark.
“Respect,” originally released by Otis Redding in 1965, was later a huge 1967 hit for Lady Soul, Aretha Franklin. Franklin’s cover became a feminist battle cry as well as one of the best-known American R&B tunes, winning Recording Academy / GRAMMYs, entry into the Grammy Hall, honor by The Library of Congress, a #5 perch on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”, and a place on the “Songs of the Century” list by the The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the National Endowment for the Arts.
The tune modulates on the brief instrumental bridge at 1:17 and is back to its original key at 1:34.
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