Author: Mod of the Day

Eric Clapton | Layla

British guitarist/vocalist Eric Clapton, “with a band of stellar musicians that included the late Duane Allman, went into Florida’s Criteria Studios to record what would become one of the great classic albums of all time, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs,” (American Songwriter). “With its standout track ‘Layla,’ the album became a timeless record that helped determine the direction of 1970s rock guitar, performed by a band called Derek and the Dominos, as Clapton didn’t want to use his name for the marquee value.

‘Layla’ was a song Clapton wrote, with Dominos drummer Jim Gordon, about his forbidden love for the wife of his close friend George Harrison (she eventually became Clapton’s wife) … The album might have done big business had Clapton been up front about being the big name in the group, but instead, it stalled on the charts. When the edited version of ‘Layla’ was released to radio as a single in 1972, it did fairly well, but by this time Allman was dead and the band had broken up.” But in 1992, “propelled by ‘Layla’ and ‘Tears in Heaven,’ Unplugged became Clapton’s biggest selling-album, as well as one of the biggest-selling live albums in history, with a purported 26 million copies sold. ‘Layla’ won a Grammy, more than two decades after it was originally recorded, for Best Rock Song …”

After the iconic intro states the guitar-driven hook, a surprising downward half-step key change hits as verse 1 begins (0:24). We’re thrown off-kilter by a bar of 2/4 among the track’s overall 4/4 meter at 0:22, immediately preceding the modulation. The key reverts up a half-step for the first chorus, and the pattern continues from there. At 3:11, an instrumental section featuring piano drops a full step as it morphs into a more peaceful major key, taking up the second 50% of the track.

Kooman & Dimond | Blue Horizon (ft. Heidi Blickenstaff)

“This is a song about moving on,” say songwriters Michael Kooman & Christopher Dimond on their blog. “Blue Horizon,” sung here by Broadway actress Heidi Blickenstaff, is featured on Kooman and Dimond’s 2011 studio album. The tune alternates between Bb major (verses) and G major (choruses) throughout.

The Kinks | The Village Green Preservation Society

“A very reflective and nostalgic song written by lead singer Ray Davies, this is about the innocent times in small English towns, where the village green was the community center,” (Songfacts). “The entire album The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society (1968) was based on this theme.”

From Pitchfork‘s review of the album: “The problem facing The Kinks when they released (the album) wasn’t merely the competition– Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland, Led Zeppelin’s debut, and the Rolling Stones’ Beggars’ Banquet offered plenty– but that this subtle, funny, surreal, and at times almost tender record could have been recorded on another planet. During the summer of 1968, stateside fans were hooked on a high-intensity diet that had them jonesing for aggressive, overstated fare like “Street Fighting Man” and “You Shook Me” and “Communication Breakdown.” The disconnect between The Kinks and the rock world’s rapidly narrowing palette could hardly have been more pronounced. Compare the Stones’ bombastic, urban “Sympathy for the Devil” with understated work like “Village Green”, bouncing along like a horse and buggy as Ray Davies paints the landscape: “Out in the country, far from all the soot and noise of the city … Though widely disregarded at the time of its release, The Kinks’ 1968 apex, The Village Green Preservation Society, has had a profound impact on the present state of indie rock.”

A whole-step modulation hits at 1:12.

Robyn | Do You Really Want Me (Show Respect)

“Robyn Is Here (1997) was a generic album in the best sense, proof that this budding newcomer could tackle a bunch of different things without making a big show of it, despite the obviously formidable acrobatics in her voice and the less obviously steeled songcraft, which is as listenable and lightly touched as anything Blige or Brandy themselves has ever done,” (Billboard). “It doesn’t feel like a great album — that smallness to it really is a double-edged sword — but there isn’t a speck of filler on it either … There are also surprising touches, like the (sampled?) Mellotron that cues up the awesome Swedish Top Ten hit ‘Do You Really Want Me (Show Respect),’ like it’s ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ or something.”

Produced by Max Martin, a fellow Swede, just as his production and writing career was breaking wide open via his work with acts such as The Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, and Westlife, “Do You Really Want Me” bears Martin’s trademark sheen, vocal-forward mix, and eminently singable choruses. In fact, the opening notes of each chorus resemble a singsong schoolyard taunt, an effect only magnified by Robyn’s girlish vocal timbre.

After a start in C major, the tune shifts up to Eb major at 3:17, jumping downward to a surprise key change into Db major at 3:36 for a last runthrough of the chorus before the fading outro. Many thanks to our regular contributor Ziyad for this submission!

Bee Gees | Bodyguard

“The Bee Gees made a commercial comeback outside the U.S. with 1987’s E.S.P. and its single, ‘You Win Again,” (AllMusic). One (1989), on the other hand, had an improved chart showing in the U.S., while sales fell off elsewhere. The Bee Gees are remarkable pop craftsmen … say what you will, “One” and “House of Shame” are convincing pop music. ([the single] “One” was a Top Ten comeback hit that topped soft rock radio playlists.) This stuff works as pop for the same reason “I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You” and “You Should Be Dancing” did: the melodies are catchy, the hooks are deathless, and the vocals convey emotion over meaning. It may be weightless, but it’s polished.”

“‘I’m the last man standing. I’ll never be able to understand that as I’m the eldest,'” said Barry Gibb (SmoothRadio.com). All three of his brothers (twins Robin and Maurice of the Bee Gees, and much younger brother Andy) passed away between 1988 and 2012. “‘Nobody ever really know what the three of us felt about each other; only the three of us knew … It was such a unifying thing, the three of us became one person. We all had the same dream. That’s what I miss more than anything else.”

The disco grooves that propelled the Bee Gees to international superstardom were long gone by the time of this 1989 release, but “Bodyguard” features the fraternal vocal trio still firing on all cylinders. At 3:09, a whole-step modulation leads into a short guitar feature before the vocals return. Many thanks to Brazilian contributor Julianna for this submission!

Royksopp | Royksopp Forever

From MotD reader and first-time contributor Max Willard comes the track “Royksopp Forever” (2009) by the Norwegian electronica duo Royksopp.

The duo’s album The Invitable End (2014) was widely considered to be the duo’s swan song; quite a few years of radio silence followed. In a 2022 Billboard interview, the duo describe their return: “The current scene is, luckily, a lot of things. That hasn’t changed for us. Some people look at the scene as music that crosses over, because electronic dance music became pop at some stage in the last 10 years … On the flip side, because it’s so saturated with music, there is a lot of crap as well. I have to be blunt and state the obvious. But as far as electronic music goes, for example, the genre of traditional rock was proclaimed “dead.” Those kinds of statements are so redundant. It’s just not as prominent, but it’s obviously still there. It’s just shifted a bit. Electronic music is now mainstream pop music. It’s just a little shift, but nothing really dies. It just becomes a bit more specialized and disappears and reappears. I like those shifting trends.”

Max’s take: “I think this modulation merits consideration because the entire song builds to the moment of key inflection.” After starting in D minor, the track transitions at 3:10 to a behemoth E major/A minor vamp, repeating onward to the end as it fades and shapeshifts.

Bill Wurtz | Meet Me in September

The Internet Music Genius You’ve Never Heard Of: “(Bill) Wurtz’s content stretches back to the early internet of 2002, and looking at the breadth and depth of his work highlights exactly how ahead of his time he was—and continues to be. Wurtz has become a massive success by melding bipolar shitposts, philosophical reflections on existence and legitimately exciting music with whiplash-inducing animation, (MelMagazine). It’s exactly what the democratizing force of the internet, and platforms like YouTube, was intended to nurture.

‘It’s funny because some of the people who become most famous on the internet aren’t the ones trying to capture that popularity, but ignore it. That’s Bill,’ says Taylor Lorenz, who writes about digital culture for The Atlantic. ‘Absurdist, quirky, lo-fi humor is very mainstream now, but the internet kind of caught up to Bill in a sense. I see him having a long-term dedicated fanbase when the trends pass, too. When you do something so consistently for so long, you create diehard fans. And he’s been true to his art for a long time.’

To watch a Bill Wurtz video is to explore the head of an idiosyncratic man—one who makes you struggle with preconceived notions of what coherent art is supposed to be. Wurtz flashes talent on all sorts of instruments, including piano, bass, drums and his own voice, which is a silky tenor with range and energy. He produces animated videos that sparkle with neon text, dancing stick figures and vaporwave-y transitions. He also wades in Weird Twitter, offering punchlines designed to inspire confused laughs.”

Released today on Youtube, Wurtz’s tune “Meet Me in September” is a 3.5-minute stream-of-consciousness meditation somehow grafted onto a travelogue of the USA, percolating along with consistent energy but never presenting the listener with much of an energetic peak or valley. “I’m greedy, so I’ll make more than my fair share of bad choices” is a representative lyric. Angular syncopations, multi-layered percussion, and ear-catching trills coming from all corners of the instrumentation are all part of the mix. After a start in E major, we shift to F major at 0:56. At 1:33, we’ve fallen back into E major via a short instrumental transition that sounds like a warped slinky making its fitful way down a stairway after it’s been run over by a bicycle. There are more shifts in tonality to follow; listen to it all, then join Wurtz’s growing legion of listeners in asking “WTF was that?”

Gustav Mahler | Symphony #6 in A Minor, Movement 1

From the memoirs of Austro-Bohemian composer Gustav Mahler’s wife Alma (UtahSymphony.org), on the topic of the Sixth Symphony:

“No other work came so directly from [Mahler’s] heart as this one. We both cried . . . So deeply did we feel this music and what it foretold us. The Sixth is his most personal work and is also a prophetic one. In Kindertotenlieder and in the Sixth, he musically anticipated his life. He, too, received three blows from fate, and the last felled him. But at the time, he was cheerful and conscious of the greatness of his work; he was a tree in full leaf and flower.

In this passage from her 1940 memoirs, Alma Mahler suggests that autobiographical meaning informs the content of her husband’s Sixth Symphony, and on many levels, her words ring true. Gustav Mahler did, in fact, suffer “three blows from fate” in 1907: he felt it necessary to resign from his conducting post in Vienna, his eldest child Anna Maria succumbed to scarlet fever, and a doctor discovered the heart defect that would ultimately end the composer’s life. However, none of these incidents had transpired when Mahler penned Symphony no. 6 (in 1906). Alma’s memoirs, therefore, correctly interpret this symphony as something foreshadowing events yet to come.”

After the movement starts in a brooding A minor, 1:53 brings a gentle woodwind chorale, then another wide-ranging section with full orchestra. At 2:54, a surprisingly lighthearted but brief section in F major sounds almost like a passage from a composition for children. The simplicity of the textures doesn’t last, but the tonality does manage to endure for a quite some time before more transitions appear.

The Tubes | Tip of My Tongue

Stylistically, it would be difficult to ask for a rock band more diverse than The Tubes. Over time, they’ve released punk-adjacent rave-ups, guitar-driven straight-ahead rock, keyboard-saturated power ballads, and more. Several prominent producers have worked with the band in the studio, including David Foster and Todd Rundgren.

“In 1983, after the huge success of their previous album The Completion Backward Principle, The Tubes released Outside Inside, another catchy offering, again with David Foster at the helm,” (Fozfan.com). “Foster, who was responsible for making the band’s sound more suitable for rock and pop radio, brought in many of his friends from Toto, plus other session greats like Nathan East and Freddy Washington to help raise the level of  musical sophistication in the Tubes’ sound. The voices of Patti Austin, Bobby Kimball and Bill Champlin were also smart additions to support Fee Waybill’s strong vocals. The overall sound of Outside Inside was a slick mix of rock and funk. It included a series of gems like ‘She’s a Beauty,’ that zoomed to the top of the charts, the powerful ‘No Not Again’ and the classy up-tempo ‘Fantastic Delusion.’

The second single was ‘Tip of My Tongue,’ a tight, funky affair co-written with (Earth, Wind + Fire’s) Maurice White, who also sings some uncredited ad-libs. This song definitely echoes the sound of EWF. Sure, the lyrical content fully belongs to the best Tubes’ tradition, but musically it could have come off any EWF album of those years.” The band has generally written its own material, but “Tip of My Tongue” is an exception. The tune’s allusions to oral sex go a bit beyond the point of double-entendre, which is right down the fairway for the band; much of its material seems to be written with its bull-in-a-china-shop stage shows in mind.

After starting in C# minor, a bridge in F# major (1:50), and a drum/bass break at 2:19 which hammers on C natural with a side order of mixed harmonic signals, “Tip of My Tongue” returns us to F# at 2:34; 2:50 drops us back into C# minor; thereafter, a series of choruses repeat and fade to the end. The horn section is full of swagger throughout, frequently shifting its complex filigree to the last bar.