Composer Jacob Yandura and lyricist/bookwriter Rebekah Greer Melocik adapted the 2015 HBO documentary How To Dance in Ohio into a musical of the same name, which premiered on Broadway late last year. The story follows a group of autistic teenagers as they prepare to attend their first spring formal. It was the first Broadway show to cast autistic characters with autistic actors. A UK production is planned for next year.
“Building Momentum” comes near the end of the show. It begins in Ab, shifts up to A at 1:04, and modulates again to Bb at 2:05.
A classic which has somehow hidden in plain sight for many years! “‘The Girl from Ipanema’ shot 24-year-old Astrud Gilberto to worldwide fame in 1964 … The full-length album version of the song opens with Gilberto strumming his guitar and singing in Portuguese; then comes a verse in English written by Norman Gimbel and sung by João Gilberto’s then wife, Astrud Gilberto,” (Financial Times). “She had never sung professionally before, but it was her untrained, beguiling voice that made the song (along with Getz’s breathy sax solo). A shortened version of the song, featuring only Astrud’s voice, was released as a single and was a worldwide hit, and came to define an entire genre, bossa nova, blending Brazilian samba with jazz and blues.
By the time the song won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in 1965, bossa nova was in decline in Brazil. The light, frivolous sound was eclipsed by more politically charged tropicalia music that responded to the country’s slide into dictatorship. In the US, however, bossa nova appealed to jazz singers such as Frank Sinatra … Ella Fitzgerald, and Nancy Wilson before her, also sent the tan and tall figure walking, but this time as a boy … Girl or boy, the track is one of the most recorded songs in history.”
Initially in F major, the tune’s 16-bar bridge (first heard from 0:43 – 1:13) goes to Gb major, then Gb minor before transitioning back to F major for the final A section.
Jackie DeShannon was the first to record “Needles and Pins,” credited to Jack Nitzsche and Sonny Bono, in 1963. She has claimed co-authorship of the song. But the song’s big hit was scored by the British Invasion group The Searchers, released early the next year. That was their second UK #1, after “Sweets For My Sweet” from 1963. In the US, the song reached a respectable #13 on the Billboard charts. Later in 1964, their cover of The Clovers’ “Love Potion No. 9” became their best-charting song in America (#3).
According to Songfacts, “two 6-string guitars are playing in unison on the intro — it sounds like a 12-string guitar because an engineer accidentally left the echo switch on but liked the result.”
After the bridge, the third verse (1:24) lands a third up from the starting key.
Third Reprise, a band founded by Daniel Rudin to cover musical theatre showtunes, recently released a funk arrangement of “Somewhere That’s Green” from the 1986 musical Little Shop of Horrors by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman. “The key to Third Reprise’s early success,” the group’s website says, “has been pairing the virtuosic, luminous artistry of the best singers and instrumentalists in NYC with a highly specific body of songs that mean a lot to people, while never losing the joy and sense of humor that’s core to the concept of a musical theater cover band.”
Sarah Hyland and Andrew Barth Feldman are currently playing the leads in a revival of the show running Off-Broadway in New York. The track starts in C and shifts up to Eb for the second verse at 0:40. There is another modulation up a step to F at 1:32.
After a wait of too many years, MotD is happy to finally feature a tune by a legendary band whose name likely created more than a few promotion challenges: “After many tours of duty backing the rockabilly legend Ronnie Hawkins and providing the muscle behind Bob Dylan’s move towards electric rock, the four Canadians and one Arkansan comprising the Band were pedigreed to a legendary extent even before making their first album,” (Pitchfork). “By the time they issued the twinned masterpieces Music From Big Pink in 1968 and The Band in 1969, their polymathic command of multiple genres, and self-conscious embrace of traditional American folk, country, bluegrass, and zydeco had established them as the thinking fan’s alternative to the diminishing returns of psychedelia and the counterculture … For critics, audiences and no-lesser peers than the Beatles, they had come to represent authenticity personified. So. How do you follow that up?
The answer came in the form of Stage Fright (1970), a charming, loose-limbed collection that elides the chore of living up to the previous records by basically not even trying. If their first two LPs inspired the Beatles and Stones to return to basics, Stage Fright connotes an entirely different sphere of influence: it’s a nonpareil boogie album, whose in-the-pocket playing establishes the Band as the equal of groovemaster peers like Booker T. and the Meters and sets a predicate for followers like Little Feat and NRBQ … What Stage Fright lacks in history lessons it makes up for in palpable joy. They would never seem so happy again.”
The album’s title track shows off the group’s unique songwriting sense; at times it’s often difficult to predict what might be coming next in terms of either overall form or harmonic progressions. G major holds sway overall, but between 1:47 and 2:41, there’s a clear shift in emphasis to the tune’s relative minor, E minor.
“Take Me As I Am” is from the 1990 Broadway musical Jekyll & Hyde, featuring a score by Frank Wildhord (music), Leslie Bricusse and Steve Cuden (lyrics). Wildhorn in particular is known for his ballads, most of which include a dramatic key change or two. This tune begins in Bb major and shifts up to B at 2:12.
In the midst of rock’s mid-60s domination of the pop music charts, Frank Sinatra’s treacly 1966 rendition of “Strangers in the Night” was a major hit. The music was written by Bert Kaempfert, with English lyrics by Charles Singleton and Eddie Snyder. In the US, the song reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and on the Easy Listening chart. The same-named album containing the single, with arrangements by long-time collaborator Nelson Riddle, was also a US #1 release. That album also contained “Summer Wind,” another Sinatra staple, though that song fared less well as a single.
Sinatra disliked the song, and wasn’t shy about mentioning it. See this dedicated Sinatra fan page for some of his very colorful commentary about the tune!
The scat-singing that starts at 2:20 gave rise to innumerable sophomoric bathroom graffiti quoting Sinatra’s do-be-do-be-do and the pithy wisdom of various philosophers.
There’s a whole-step modulation, from F major to G major, for the final verse at 2:01. According to the Wikipedia page for the song, referencing The Billboard Book of Number One Adult Contemporary Hits, Sinatra had trouble nailing the modulation, so the two sections were recorded separately and spliced together.
“Brown Girl in the Ring” is a traditional Jamaican children’s song that became an international recognized when it was recorded by the Euro-Caribbean group Boney M. in 1978. The track was originally released as the B-side to “Rivers of Babylon,” (the group’s #1 hit at the time) but crept its way up the charts and spent nine weeks in the UK Top 10.
The disco and reggae-infused tune begins in Db and modulates up to D at 2:19.
“Joe Jackson is known for vibrant, emotional hits like ‘Is She Really Going Out with Him?,’ ‘Breaking Us in Two,’ and the new wave-ish ‘Steppin’ Out,’ the latter two songs from his 1982 hit album Night and Day,” (American Songwriter). “That seminal release also includes a piano-driven, violin-laced ballad that didn’t manage to get quite as much attention but was way ahead of its time.
… It has been said that the Night and Day album (1982) was a tribute to Cole Porter and his view of New York, and that ‘Real Men’ was referencing the city’s gay culture (which became more prominent in the wake of the six-day Stonewall Uprising in 1969) … Jackson’s debut single and video for Night and Day, ‘Real Men’ did not chart in America and barely charted in the UK, but it managed to go Top 10 in Australia and Top 20 in the Netherlands. The album fared well, becoming one of two Jackson releases to sell half a million copies.”
Built in E minor overall, the somber verses transition to soaring wordless choruses in B major (first heard from 1:04 – 1:26). The tune’s lyrics were edgy at the time — and remain so. But Jackson’s use of “the other F-word” is likely without malice, given his longtime status as an openly bisexual man. There’s plenty of broader commentary on gender overall: Now it’s all changed / It’s got to change more is a line which wouldn’t have been out of place in a Women’s Studies textbook of the era.
“While just about every critic and fan has a favorite Roches album that was inexplicably ignored, most will probably agree that Speak (1989) was the one that really should have gone gold,” (AllMusic). “All of the ingredients for a huge album are here: emotional yet accessible songs, radio-friendly folk-pop arrangements, and the sisters’ usual mind-blowing vocal pyrotechnics … this album doesn’t have a dud track from end to end. Sure, fans of their early work will find ‘I Love My Mom’ a bit too conventional and poppy … The jazzy backups are well handled and subtle throughout the album, and it’s a classic. Alas, like all Roches albums, it was critically acclaimed but ignored by the public.”
At 0:40, the approach to the second verse gets a touch of The Roches’ trademark oddity factor with a time hiccup — the first of several extra 2/4 measures throughout. After a start in A major, the tune shifts up a whole step to B major at 2:39 in the middle of an instrumental bridge (2:19 – 2:43). Many thanks to regular contributor Rob P. for this great catch!
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