In 1979, British-American singer-songwriter Rupert Holmes had a hit with “Escape (The Piña Colada song),” a Billboard #1, and a top song of the ’70s. But a decade earlier, he was working as a session musician on a planned release by the Cuff Links, a pop band with sugary hits like 1969’s “Tracy”. The Cuff Links’ singer was Ron Dante, also the voice of The Archies. Due to contractual restrictions, Dante was pulled from the project; Holmes released one of the tracks they’d been working on, 1970’s “Jennifer Tompkins,” under the name “The Street People.” That release made it to #36 on Billboard‘s Hot 100.
The lyrics tell the hard-luck tale of the song’s eponymous subject, offering an odd contrast with the sprightly musical track. Despite a running time of only 1:50, the song packs a satisfying series of modulations. The first half-step mod comes at 0:34. There’s a whole step mod at 1:18, followed by half-steps at 1:26, 1:34, and at 1:42 during the fade out.
Author: Mod of the Day
Stray Kids | Gone Away
“Gone Away” is featured 2021 album Noeasy, the second studio release by the South Korean boy band Stray Kids. Explaning the meaning of the title, band leader Bang Chen, who serves as a vocalist, rapper, dancer, and producer, said, “it [Noeasy] means that we want to leave a loud impact on the world with our music.” The album was widely recognized as one of the best K-pop releases of 2021. Writing for The Lantern, a student-run newspaper at Ohio State University, Chloe McGowan said,”Stray Kids fully utilizes the individual talent of each member on this album as they continue to push boundaries and expectations for K-pop while testing the limits and creative devices of their own sound.”
“Gone Away” begins in Db and dramatically shifts up a half step to D at 3:15
Astral Drive | Love, Light + Happiness
After performing with, producing, and/or writing for The Jam, Paul McCartney, XTC, Duran Duran, The Cure, Thompson Twins, Sting, Hot Chocolate, Cyndi Lauper, Natalie Imbruglia, Pixie Lott, and Bryan Adams, what does one do for an encore?
“After decades of making records, hits and misses for other artists, Phil Thornalley began making his own under the Astral Drive moniker in 2017, a combination of seventies recording techniques, impromptu jam sessions (with himself) and starry-eyed idealism,” (The Progressive Aspect) … Thornalley seems to have enjoyed the broader focus allowed by working for himself: “In my days as a songwriter-for-hire, I could happily contrive a tune at the drop of a hat, imagining the artist’s voice and sensibilities as I made choices about melody or chords. But for my own music I have the freedom to allow the songs to bubble up from the unconscious. Perhaps that’s a more natural and organic route than writing in a caffeinated sweat, hoping to deliver something for an impatient platinum-selling artist.”
Astral Drive’s 2021 single “Love, Light and Happiness” opens in A minor with a deceptively simple five-step ascending melodic run (the tonic to the fifth degree of the scale). Via a common tone, the melody lofts right over the border of the A minor tonality and makes an ecstatic landing in the anthemic chorus (an F# minor/E minor vamp) at 0:55. F/G provides some sleight of hand for the transition back into the A minor verse (1:18 – 1:24).
Bull | Disco Living
Silent Radio UK explains that the York, UK-based band Bull “were formed in 2011 by vocalist and songwriter Tom Beer and guitarist Dan Lucas with a mission to simply make the music they wanted to listen to, inspired by their ’90s heroes such as Pavement, Yo La Tengo and the Pixies.” DIY reviewed “Disco Living,” the band’s 2020 single: One of the band members ” … walked past one mansion which was under construction and it had a facade of the completed house on the front with the extremely bold tag line, Discover Effortless Living. I thought this was really funny so I wrote the song with that as the opening line, kind of about that and how absurd it all was.”
The video is based almost entirely on advertising “air dancers” and human approximations of same. The band is almost completely upstaged by the funkier-than-average air dancers, occasionally joining in via window-within-window footage of them having absolutely no fun at all. “It’s everyone’s favorite slogan / It’s a ‘Food Coffee Food Cocktails Party!’ / Help me forget all my problems / Or I’ll pay someone to solve them.”
The very early whole-step key change kicks in gradually (0:55 – 1:03), leaving the listener a bit disoriented. It feels like the tempo should have also increased, as if someone turned up the playback speed on a vinyl record. But the the tempo remains the same — and the party continues from there.
Michael Callen | Love Don’t Need A Reason
“Love Don’t A Reason” was written by Michael Callen, Peter Allen, and Marsha Malamet, and first performed at an AIDS Walk in New York City in 1987. Each of the composers subsequently recorded it for their own albums, and the song was also included in the 1998 musical The Boy From Oz. Callen’s cover, from his 1988 debut album Purple Heart, is featured here. The track begins in E and modulates up a whole step to F# at 2:43.
The Zombies | This Will Be Our Year
The Zombies were part of the early 1960s British Invasion with top hits like “She’s Not There” (Billboard #2, 1964), and “Tell Her No” (Billboard #6, 1965). Their last hit recording was “Time of the Season” (Billboard #3, 1968), which appeared on the album Odessey and Oracle. The title of the album was an unintentional misspelling by the artist who created the LP cover art. Oh, well. Despite that orthographic sin, AllMusic calls the album “one of the flukiest (and best) albums of the 1960s.”
The song here, “This Will Be Our Year”, is taken from that album. It was written by bassist Chris White, one of two principal songwriters in the group, along with keyboard ace Rod Argent. It’s a neat, concise slice of British pop, featuring Argent’s piano, and the vocals of Colin Blunstone. There’s an half-step modulation from A to Bb at 0:59.
Edison Lighthouse | Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes
The inclusion of Kate Bush’s distinctive mid-80s track “Running Up That Hill” in the streaming video hit Stranger Things might be the most prominent digital-age revival of a decades-old song — but it was hardly the first. “Proving that essentially all of pop history is now fair game for a TikTok revival, one of the biggest-growing streaming hits of 2022 now belongs to Nixon-era one-hit wonder Edison Lighthouse, with their bubblegum smash ‘Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes),'” (Billboard) … “The song, which reached #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1970, has seen an explosion in its streaming consumption after the song started getting adapted into a TikTok meme of users posting clips and photos of themselves to accompany the song’s lyrics … ” Streams were up by 1,490% and the song also moved onto Spotify’s daily US top 200 chart, just outside the top 100.
“’Love Grows’ marked one of just two Hot 100 appearances for the British pop/rock quartet Edison Lighthouse — the other coming in early 1971 with the No. 72-peaking ‘It’s Up to You Petula.’ The group’s frontman, Tony Burrows, was perhaps the most prolific bubblegum singer of his era,” scoring hits under his own name as well as an anonymous vocalist for the groups White Plains, Brotherhood of Man (‘United We Stand,’ 1970), The Pipkins, and First Class (“Beach Baby,” 1974). “He also provided backing vocals on a pair of early Elton John classics ‘Levon’ and ‘Tiny Dancer.'”
The track shifts up a half-step at 1:57.
Brad Mehldau | New York State of Mind
In spring 2020, jazz pianist Brad Mehldau released a suite of tunes inspired by the opening months of the COVID-19 crisis. “Locked down in the Netherlands, (he) decided to compose a 12-part cycle that reflects his response to our new normal,” (Downbeat). “Don’t come looking for Mehldau’s long, lustrous improvisations—or even short ones, though there might be some light embellishments here and there. This is a composer’s work. If its bite-size pieces are easily digestible, so are its penetrating melodies. Like the thinned-out harmonies, they emphasize the isolation at the heart of both the work and the context. Well, that and the pure strangeness … Billy Joel’s “New York State Of Mind” and Jerome Kern’s “Look For The Silver Lining” find new reservoirs of heartbreak.”
On his Bandcamp page, Mehldau released these liner notes for the Suite: ” … a musical snapshot of life the last month in the world in which we’ve all found ourselves. I’ve tried to portray on the piano some experiences and feelings that are both new and common to many of us. I’ve pointed to some of the strong feelings that have arisen the past month or more … a bittersweet gut pain that has hit me several times out of the blue when I think back on how things were even just a few months ago, and how long ago and for away that seems now … Billy Joel’s ‘New York State of Mind,’ a song I’ve loved since I was nine years old, is a love letter to a city that I’ve called home for years and that I’m away from now. I know lots of people there and miss them terribly and I know how much that great city hurts right now.”
Like Joel’s original, Mehldau’s cover grows most sentimental during its softly stated middle section. Although the tune is in C major overall, the midsection (1:10 – 1:43) is a parade of ii-V progressions through multiple keys whose eventual destination is back home to the original key. During the piece’s closing bars, a distant echo of the iconic main theme of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” somehow boosts the NYC quotient even further.
Michael Lucke’s wonderful transcription of Mehldau’s solo is featured on this video.
George Michael | Freedom ’90
“Freedom ’90” was the second single from George Michael’s 1990 album Listen Without Prejudice. The album attempted to accomplish the nearly impossible task of following up on Faith, Michael’s global smash 1987 album that produced multiple hit singles and was among the top 50 best-selling albums of the 1980s.
Billboard’s review of the track included some colorful prose: “Platinum pop star waxes both cynical and philosophical on this well-worded stab at his early days of fame.” From The Daily Vault: “Its catchy chorus and uptempo, jangling instrumentation, coupled with his signature soaring vocals, make this confessional a striking example of Michael’s newfound independence.” From Music and Media: “… a stirring Bo Diddley beat, a gospel approach, and a great piano riff are the main features of this addictive hit candidate.”
Completely independent of radio airplay: the focus on a pantheon of the world’s top supermodels at the height of their own careers, rather than Michael singing to the camera, sent the video into the highest strata of popularity. The fact that all of the cover art iconography of Faith — the leather jacket, the jukebox, and the blonde hollow-body guitar — ends up spectacularly reduced to ashes didn’t hurt, either.
Beginning in a slightly uptuned C major, the verse is followed by some relatively delicate syncopation of the vocal line during the C minor pre-chorus (1:46). At 2:07, C major comes roaring back for the monstrously huge sing-along chorus. 3:30 brings another minor pre-chorus; at 4:52, a minor bridge also provides a contrasting lead-up to the chorus.
Debbie Gibson | Lost In Your Eyes
“Lost In Your Eyes” is featured on American singer Debbie Gibson’s second studio album, Electric Youth, released in 1989. The song, which Gibson wrote and produced, was her most successful single and sat atop the Billboard Hot 100 chart for three weeks. Writing for the former British music newspaper Record Mirror, critic Betty Page said, “Golden larynxed Debs hits us with the big moodsome ballad, proving that she’s shaping up to be the Barry Manilow of the Nineties.”
The track begins in C and modulates to D at 2:14.
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