Elise – Page 3

Tracey Ullman | Move Over Darling

“More often than not, when TV personalities dip their toe in the pop pool, it’s meant as a brief detour from the day job, with little expectation of prolonged success.” (Record Collector). “Comedienne Ullman bucked the trend with some style, going as far as chalking up her label Stiff Record’s only US Top 10 hit. That came with her carbon cope of Kirsty MacColl’s ‘They Don’t Know.” Her UK stats stretch to half a dozen hit singles and an album that hung around the charts for close to six months.

Ullman excelled at aping bygone girl pop sounds, be it the Shangri Las, Sandy Shaw, or Blondie … a strong of memorable videos clearly boosted her music profile, but that’s taking nothing away from Tracey’s own ability to inhabit the material with wit and radio-friendly pizazz.”

“Move Over Darling” (1983), originally recorded in 1963 by Doris Day for a movie of the same name, begins in A major, shifts up a half step at 1:02, and then drops another raise of a half step at 1:37.

Paul Mauriat | Love is Blue

“Love is Blue,” originally composed by Andre Popp and Pierre Cour, started off its life as Luxembourg’s entry in the 1967 Eurovision Song Contest,” (Stereogum). Several versions charted over the years, “but the version of the song that really hit … was the one that French easy listening composer Paul Mauriat released the following year.”

MotD regular contributor JB calls Paul Mauriat’s “Love is Blue” (1968) “… a perfect encapsulation of the zeitgeist of the mid-60s. At the same time that the Rolling Stones were recording truly transgressive stuff like ‘Under My Thumb,’ there were still large and enthusiastic audiences for weekly variety shows like Lawrence Welk and The Grand Ole Opry. Mauriat’s arrangement manages to simultaneously include both a beautiful harpsichord melody and cheesy strings and horns.”

Starting in A minor, the tune’s progresses through two verses before reaching the chorus, which shifts to A major at 0:54 after a dynamic huge buildup previewing the major key at 0:51. The pattern continues from there.

The Jaggerz | The Rapper

“From the ‘Club Naturale’ in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, to Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, the homegrown band The Jaggerz paved their way to success … Among the band’s accolades, the Jaggerz received a gold record for having the number one song in the country,” (TribLive). “With sales exceeding 5 million copies, ‘The Rapper’ found itself being blasted all over the country.” The Jaggerz have performed with artists including The Beach Boys, The Temptations, The Supremes, The Dells, Tommy James, and B.J. Thomas and released four albums.

After a nominal start in A major, the entire verse of “The Rapper” (1970) is constructed from major chords (A, B, D, and E), so it’s essentially a parade of keys of the moment. From 0:35-0:51, there’s a shift to F# major for the chorus before a return to the next verse’s cavalcade of keys.

Ross Miller | The Drunken Man from Kalabakan

“Ross hails from Linlithgow, West Lothian in central Scotland,” (artist website). “He is a member of the world famous Red Hot Chili Pipers. A world champion piper, Ross began piping aged 7 and was the Pipe Major of the National Youth Pipe Band of Scotland. He is currently a member of the Grade 1 Inveraray and District Pipe Band.

He graduated with a First Class Honours Degree in Traditional Music – Piping from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in 2017. Ross was a finalist in the 2019 BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year competition. Ross has performed in many countries such as: New Zealand, Australia, USA, Ghana, Russia, and all over central Europe, as well as appearing on BBC Hogmanay Live and performing solo on the roof of Murrayfield Stadium. In 2021, Ross performed along with a group of pipers on the soundtrack of the OSCAR & BAFTA award winning film Dune.“

“The Drunken Man from Kalabakan” (2025), combining traditional and rock influences, starts in Bb minor. At 1:18, accompanied by a completely new groove, the track shifts to Eb major via a common-tone modulation.

Please click the image below to access the track.

The Slim Kings | We’ll Be Alright

“Hailing from the most acclaimed corners of the music industry, Brooklyn-based supergroup The Slim Kings — comprised of iconic drummer Liberty DeVitto (Billy Joel), renowned singer/guitarist MSB (40+ syncs), and top R&B session bassist Andy Attanasio (Black Thought) — come together with a vintage soul sound that takes you on a journey,” (Rough Trade).

“With fans like Jimmy lovine and Mark Ronson, and producers like Nick Movshon (Bruno Mars) and Steve Jordan (The Rolling Stones) – it’s music for people who just love music. With a recent boom on TikTok and a full length album, SUPERLOVE … The Slim Kings are proof that good vibes are contagious.”

2025’s “We’ll Be Alright” features a sepia-toned soul sound overlaid with a small side order of psychedelic wah pedal. The track starts in an E minor which briefly steps out of line here and there. At 2:25, a primarily instrumental bridge pivots us into F minor at 2:39.

Charlie Rich | A Very Special Love Song

“Charlie Rich did not start his career in country music,” (Saving Country Music). “After leaving the Air Force in 1956, he purchased a 500-acre farm in West Memphis, Arkansas, and would drive over the Mississippi River bridge at night to play piano in jazz and R&B outfits in Memphis clubs. Eventually he ended up at Sun Studios in Memphis as a studio musician. Sam Phillips didn’t see him as a performer though, chiding that Rich was too jazzy. At one point, Sam Phillips handed Charlie Rich a stack of Jerry Lee Lewis records and told him, ‘Come back when you get that bad.’

For years Charlie Rich struggled as a performer since he wasn’t dirty enough for rockabilly or country, and not distinctive enough to make it in the world of pop. But when the Countrypolitan sound became all the rage in country music, it gave Charlie Rich an opening. Where some more hard country artists struggled to perfect the more genteel Countrypolitan approach, Charlie Rich’s balladeer style and smoothness fit the era perfectly.”

Though it didn’t reach the popular heights of his biggest single, “Behind Closed Doors,” 1974’s “A Very Special Love Song” is among Rich’s best-known tracks. After starting in C major, the tune features a bridge in Bb, running between 1:16 – 1:44. After the bridge, the original key returns.

Jonatha Brooke | Landmine

“Jonatha Brooke started off as one half of The Story, with Jennifer Kimball,” (Tuesday Morning 3 a.m.) “The duo made lovely, complex acoustic pop music, but the best songs were Brooke’s, so it was no surprise that when she went solo with Plumb, she made a perfect pop record … It was her fourth album, 10 Cent Wings, however, that truly established her as a formidable songwriting voice. It’s one of those records on which each song, as it’s playing, is your favorite. It takes retrospection to find a standout track.

MCA Records had no idea what to do with an album this good … 10 Cent Wings languished unpromoted, a common story with an increasingly common result: Brooke bailed on major labels all together. (in 2000) she followed Aimee Mann, another literate pop songwriter with a history of uncooperative record companies, into the realm of independent distribution … Despite how difficult it must have been to watch an album like 10 Cent Wings wither on the vine, Jonatha Brooke has delivered on her own confidence. She’s proven throughout her career that if one group of songs doesn’t bring her the recognition she deserves, she can always write more that are just as good. That’s something no label executive could ever do.”

“Landmine,” a doleful track from 1997’s 10 Cent Wings, begins in D minor. The chorus shifts to D major at 0:46. But not before travelling through a short pre-chorus in E minor (0:31 – 0:46) featuring little more than a tritone bass line (’nuff said) and vocal melody. Starting at 1:21, the pattern repeats. Even when chorus’ sunnier tonality arrives, the lyrics are still downcast:

Was it that you wanted that I didn’t understand
The boomerang of expectation’s back to bite the hand

And I give my love to you
And you / You walk away too soon

Taylor Swift | The Life of a Showgirl (feat. Sabrina Carpenter)

Life of a Showgirl (2025) “is the 12th full-length studio album from, I guess, the biggest songwriter on the planet, Ms. Taylor Swift,” (The Needle Drop). “What can be said about Taylor Swift that has not been said a million, bajillion times already, or would even be widely agreed upon by everybody.

Continually, I find the strangest thing about Taylor to be that there is just so little agreement on her despite her immense fame and exposure. She’s almost like a Rorschach test for pop fans at this point … because not only are there just such vastly different reads of her and her music in terms of if it’s good, if it’s not, if it’s deep, if it’s shallow, so on and so forth, but often many of these takes say more about the person giving them than Taylor herself.”

Featuring her intermittent touring companion Sabrina Carpenter, “Life of a Showgirl” starts in G major. The second verse, a Sabrina Carpenter feature, shifts up to C major (1:19), but the next chorus reverts to the original key at 1:46.

Keven Eknes | Falls

“Keven Eknes is a Norwegian guitarist and composer based in Los Angeles, CA,” (artist website). “He is developing his first full-length instrumental album, Dark Canyon, created in collaboration with keyboardist and producer Alex Argento, following earlier solo releases.

… As a touring and session guitarist, Keven has performed and recorded with Jonathan Cain (Journey), Engelbert Humperdinck, Jesse McCartney, Leslie Odom Jr., among others. He was part of the house band for NBC’s American Song Contest, performing with artists including Michael Bolton, and has worked extensively with the Deadline Hollywood Orchestra on projects featuring artists and composers such as Mark Ronson, Diane Warren, Jaeil Jung, Brian Tyler, and Bear McCreary.”

Eknes’ 2014 track “Falls” is largely built in A minor. From the first bars, its lyrical melody soars above a peaceful 12/8 feel. A chorus arrives at 1:38 — initially in Bb major. But after a shift in the groove and a falling chromatic bass line, the section eventually ends on a sustained D major chord, fading to the 2:11 mark. Next is a soft-spoken dialogue among drums, bass, and guitar. At 3:04, the cycle repeats, with the guitar melody augmented and developed along the way. A blistering bridge in E minor hits at 4:13, shifting over to A major at 4:48. 5:20 brings a gentle restatement of the theme, starting in A minor but concluding in D major.

Duran Duran | The Reflex

“All too often, transformative acts don’t score their first #1 singles until the party is almost over,” (Stereogum). “Duran Duran may have been the peak early-MTV group, the band whose flashy and pouty and colorful visual presence came to stand in for a generational shift in pop-music tastes. Perhaps because of that radical newness, it took a little while for American radio to embrace Duran Duran — or, at least, to embrace them tightly enough that one of their singles finally fought its way to #1. By the time that happened, Duran Duran had already started to bloat, and the giddy charge of their best records had begun to dissipate … already well into their tax-exile phase, spending too much money to overthink their drum sounds and to wonder whether they really wanted to cause any more teenybopper mob scenes …

Readers of this column have informed me that Birmingham, the town that birthed Black Sabbath and Electric Light Orchestra and Dexys Midnight Runners, is not, in fact, a Northern town, that it’s really a Midlands town. But wherever Birmingham exists on the English map, it’s not a particularly glamorous place. Thankfully, nobody told Duran Duran … ” (The band’s third studio album, 1984’s Seven and the Ragged Tiger), “isn’t breezily, gloriously ridiculous, the way that Rio was. Instead, it was ridiculous in some of the wrong ways.”

“The Reflex” begins in G minor, shifting to D major for the chorus (first heard from 1:22 – 1:51. Well, D major … more or less, since at several points during the section, there’s a prominent F major chord. In fact, F major is the final chord of the chorus, functioning as a bVII to the G minor verse as the bass line walks chromatically back up into its original key. As Stereogum summed it up: “… grand, ultra-produced, too big to fail.”