Elise – Page 39

The Box Tops | The Letter

(The Box Tops had) “never been in a studio before ‘The Letter,’ but they knocked it out,” (Stereogum). “Producer Dan Penn added in a plane-taking-off noise that he’d pulled from a sound-effects record that he’d checked out of the library. Given all that, ‘The Letter’ should be a sloppy and amateurish record, which wouldn’t necessarily prevent it from being great. But ‘The Letter’ is not that. It’s a two-minute epic.”

Despite being not even 20 years old at the time, frontman Alex Chilton “sounds weary and ravaged. He’s stuck somewhere far away from his baby, and he’s got to go see her right away. We don’t know where he is, why he’s separated from her, or what she wrote in her letter … But Chilton’s voice absolutely pops off of the record, and it’s all the band needs to tell the story. ‘The Letter’ is a tight, hard, compact piece of white-kid soul. (It’s the last #1 song ever to come in under the two-minute mark.) But it sounds big and cinematic anyway, with Chilton’s voice fighting its way through nervous organs and melodramatic strings and horn stabs … There’s nothing lo-fi about the record; even if it was recorded on a low budget, it’s got the sweep of a James Bond theme.”

The track sticks to A minor for most of its length, but jumps up to C# major at 1:33 for its tiny instrumental outro. The horns have made their exit, leaving the strings to lead the fast fade-out.

Brooke Parrott | Persuade Me

“Growing up, (Portland’s Brooke Parrott) played music and wrote stories incessantly, eventually pursuing a degree from Berklee College of Music in Boston,” (BrookeParrott.com). “The years after found Brooke in London, living in a disused pub rumored to be an old haunt of Charles Dickens and Karl Marx, where she wrote songs on a disintegrating grand piano in the parlor. She began working for a small live music startup company that grew up to be a big one, and learned a lot in the process.

When the siren call of the Pacific Northwest became too loud to ignore, Brooke returned and found her place touring and recording music with Portland darlings Loch Lomond. She released a second studio effort, an EP called Buried, that was written between contrasting worlds—part hectic city and suffocating winter in London, part hinterland yurt in the Oregon woods.”

Starting in D minor, Parrott’s 2008 release “Persuade Me” shifts at 0:52 into a chorus in C minor. From 2:24-2:56, an angular bridge built around chromatic bass motion holds sway before a return to the chorus. The final chorus ends by hanging in the air, unresolved.

10cc | I’m Not in Love

In the mid-70s, 10cc was a UK band with a fair amount of know-how about the recording studio and the nascent field of synthesis. But they weren’t prepared for the journey they’d embark on with their single “I’m Not in Love” (1975). Lol Creme, the band’s keyboardist and one of its vocalists, told The Guardian: “I’d become obsessed with tape loops after listening to the Beatles’ ‘Revolution 9.’ Our studio used to do recordings for the Mellotron, a keyboard that played prerecorded notes. Session musicians would come in and do these painstaking recordings for every instrument of an orchestra, one note at a time, so that when they were all played together on a Mellotron it sounded like an orchestra. I was fascinated by this, and wanted to try it with banks and banks of voices.”

Creme continued: “‘The whole process took about a week. It was incredibly tedious. Three or four of us had to sing every note about 14 times, then put echo on it, which gave it that luxurious, velvety harmonic sound. It was beautiful, but Eric (Stewart’s) vocal was what really made the song. That lead voice was actually the guide vocal, from the first take you do just to test everything out. Eric tried to do a better one, but we all agreed that one had the magic … When it was done, we thought: ‘What the hell have we done?’ It was six minutes and 12 seconds long, so we knew we’d never get it on the radio. But, after it appeared on our The Original Soundtrack album, people like Bryan Ferry and Roy Wood were ringing up and going: ‘You’ve got to release this as a single. It’s brilliant.’ When it went to #29, the BBC had to play it … Three weeks later, it was #1 around the world.'”

The intro and verses are written in E major, although the tune doesn’t spend much time on the tonic chord. 3:03 – 3:18 features a late bridge in G major (twice as long on other versions of the song) before the track reverts to E. This “live” version of the track is mimed, right down to “backing vocals” which were actually comprised of Mellotron lines.

Wendy + Lisa | Honeymoon Express

“Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman are an Emmy Award winning musical composing duo based in Los Angeles,” (WendyAndLisa.com). “They both started their careers in one of the most successful rock bands of the 80s, Prince & the Revolution. They continued to work as a duo and released five original albums as well as pursuing a career path in scoring feature films and television. Since 1995’s box office hit Dangerous Minds, Wendy & Lisa have set a successful track record scoring films such as Soul Food, Something New, television series’ Crossing Jordan, Nurse Jackie, Mercy, and the Emmy-nominated NBC series Heroes, Touch, No Tomorrow, and Shades of Blue.

Apart from their composing career, Wendy & Lisa are often sought out for their song writing and collaboration skills. They have collaborated on albums with Joni Mitchell, Sheryl Crow, Eric Clapton, Neil Finn, Seal, and Grace Jones, to name a few.” The now-defunct publication Music + Media described the duo: “(they) remain heavily influenced by Prince … (proving) that not only can they stand on their own two feet, but also how important they are to Prince’s Revolution.”

“Honeymoon Express” was a single from the duo’s 1987 debut album Wendy + Lisa, which cracked the top 100 album charts in the US, the UK, and Holland. The track, a funk-infused romp that clearly shows the influence of The Purple One, depends almost entirely on its compelling groove, syncopated Prince-esque keyboard hooks (most noticeable at 0:18 and 2:14) and roving melodic sensibility, as its harmonic vocabulary is quite limited! The intro and verse are built in E dorian; the pre-chorus lifts up to G dorian (0:45), returning us to E dorian for the chorus at 1:03. The pattern continues from there.

The Spinners | Working My Way Back to You

“The holiday season of 1979 was in full swing when Detroit legends The Spinners released their version of the Four Seasons’ 1966 classic, ‘Working My Way Back to You'” (Rhino Records). “… The Spinners retooled the tune with a symphonic disco-funk groove, and the interpolation of Michael Zager’s ‘Forgive Me Girl.’ Showcasing the booming bass vocals of singer Pervis Jackson, the energetic track was a hit on the holiday airwaves across pop and R&B stations.

As the track rang up those radio spins, ‘Working My Way Back to You’ danced up the charts to peak at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the weeks of March 29, 1980, and April 5, 1980. The song that kept the Spinners from #1? Pink Floyd’s ‘Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2).’ Over on the Hot R&B Songs chart, the tune hit #6 over the week of March 22, 1980. The #1 song on the chart that week: The Whispers with ‘And the Beat Goes On.'”

After the multi-section tune begins to draw to a close, an unexpected and extremely late modulation (up two whole steps, from C major to E major) hits at 3:48. On the final fade-out, the tracks’s energy refuses to recede, but the lead tenor’s vocal line launches into the stratosphere!

Gladys Knight | The Way We Were

For the 1973 film The Way We Were, Barbra Streisand served in the role of leading lady and also a mainstay of the soundtrack. “Marvin Hamlisch came up with the melody; he was asked to write in the minor mode, but instead wrote in the major.” (SuperSeventies.com). “‘If I’d written in a minor mode, it might have told you too much in advance,’ he said, ‘that Streisand and Redford were never going to get together. So, I wrote a melody that was sad, but also had a great deal of hope in it.’ The tune was completed by a husband-and-wife songwriting team, Marilyn and Alan Bergman.

Streisand’s single broke in late November 1973, and reached number one in mid-February 1974. It was her first number one hit, and first single to stay on the charts for more than five months. It earned an Academy Award as the Best Film Song of 1973, Billboard ‘s award as the Top Pop Single of 1974, and a Grammy as Song of the Year.” The powerful ballad served as fodder for covers by a range of performers including Andy Williams, Doris Day, Bing Crosby, Beyoncé, and more.

But the tune’s most memorable cover might have been Gladys Knight’s 1974 version from her album I Feel a Song. Mixing in extensive quotes of “Try to Remember” from Broadway’s The Fantastiks before adding a half-step modulation (3:00) not found in Streisand’s original, Knight leaves her distinctive signature on the tune.

Owsley | Zavelow House

“Power pop. It’s the redheaded stepchild of rock,” (PopMatters). “It started as a quick fix description of those mid-’90s bands who turned their noses up at grunge and preferred the sunny melodies and crunchy guitars of such luminaries as the Beatles, Big Star, the Raspberries, Cheap Trick, and, last but certainly not least, Jellyfish, who may be the first band to be christened with the dreaded power pop moniker … In 1999, power pop very nearly broke into the mainstream, thanks to a number of strong outings from artists such as John Faye Power Trip (whose debut also turned out to be their swan song), Ben Folds Five’s dark but dazzling The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner … Even Nik Kershaw turned in the best record of his career with 15 Minutes, a near flawless guitar pop album, and XTC resurfaced after a self-imposed seven-year exile with the orchestral pop masterpiece Apple Venus Vol. I.

However, those albums all paled in comparison to the 1999 debut of one Will Owsley. After Owsley’s first attempt at rock stardom crashed and burned in the form of the infamously unreleased Semantics album Powerbill (now available as Japanese import), he went on tour supporting Amy Grant and Shania Twain, making enough money in the process to build his own recording studio. He then made an album with his own money and offered it to the labels as is. Eventually, Giant Records bit (and later, bit the dust) and released Owsley, a fantastic collection of new wave- and classic pop-fueled gems that heralded the arrival of a Major New Talent.”

“Zavelow House,” a track from that eponymous debut album, tells a story that’s likely familiar to North Americans who grew up in the suburbs: That One House(TM) — abandoned, growing weeds through cracks in the driveway, windows boarded up. Not surprisingly, the local kids are scared but intrigued, with imaginations working overtime. Built in E major overall, the groove-driven track shifts to A major for an instrumental bridge (2:02 – 2:24) before returning to E. At 3:16, A major returns and holds sway until the final chord drops back into E.

The Chimes | Once in Awhile

Lenny Cocco, the founder and lead vocalist of the New York City-based doo-wop vocal group The Chimes, “was deeply influenced by his parents and motivated by his father, Leonard,” (TheChimesMusic). “A professionally accomplished accordionist, (Leonard) advised Lenny to focus on Tommy Dorsey’s 1937 number one hit, ‘Once In Awhile.’ Lenny arranged the standard to work itself well with his vocal quintet. Standards were their passion!

In 1960, they visited the Brill Building in Manhattan, New York, to record a demo. The engineer during the session introduced them to Andy Leonetti, of TAG Records. Within minutes their lives were changed.” In 1961, the tune reached #11 on the US pop charts and #15 in Canada. “As a result, their major bookings, in the beginning, were in intimate theaters, such as The Howard in Washington, D.C., the Regal in Chicago and the Apollo in Harlem, New York. The intimate theater setting bonded people together like never before … The group made two appearances on ‘American Bandstand’ with Dick Clark” and had several other minor hits during the early 1960s.

The 12/8 tune could easily serve as an example of the doo wop genre as a whole. After beginning in Eb major, there’s a shift to G major for the bridge (1:08 – 1:35) before the track returns to the original key.

Franz Schubert | Der Musensohn, Op. 92/1, D. 764

“Although Franz Schubert died at the age of 31, he left behind a remarkably extensive oeuvre, including around 600 Lieder, sometimes composing as many as seven songs a day.” (Bachtrack) “Five of his Goethe settings … were written on 19th August 1815 alone! His mastery of giving each of his poets an unmistakable musical voice is unsurpassed, and so is the overwhelming number of his settings dealing with death and his longing for finding eternal peace, most famously reflected in his two song cycles Winterreise and Die schöne Müllerin. ‘My compositions spring from my sorrows. Those that give the world the greatest delight were born of my deepest griefs.’”

Der Musenson (The Muses’ Son), Schubert’s setting for a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, was written in 1822. The piece, written in a breakneck 6/8, has been published in various keys suitable for a full range of voices. This edition begins in Ab major and transitions to C major at 0:33, then alternates between the two keys throughout.

Led Zeppelin | The Wanton Song

“With Led Zeppelin, there was no break-in period, no ‘early phase’ where they figured out what kind of band they wanted to be,” (Pitchfork). “They were fully formed from the first repetition of the ‘Good Times Bad Times’ riff, and they powered along through their first half-dozen albums crushing everything in their path. Zep never had their Sgt. Pepper’s, their Exile, their Who’s Next, because every album was more or less that good — for a while, anyway.

This was a band that knew the music it wanted to make and executed it with ruthless precision … Physical Graffiti … found the band inhabiting what Neil Tennant once described (and Tom Ewing fleshed out) as their ‘imperial phase’ … everything they tried during these years somehow worked. Physical Graffiti … (is) Led Zeppelin’s White Album, the one they made when they were at their creative peak and had a million ideas, but were also under a tremendous amount of strain and saw the end starting to come into focus.”

After barreling along in G minor through the first verse, the Physical Graffiti track “The Wanton Song” (1975) next features a multi-key interlude (0:58 – 1:23) before returning to G minor. The surprisingly contrasting interlude is back at 2:03, but this time we land in an F major instrumental section at 2:28. At 3:03, we’re back on the express train of the G minor verse — with a quintessential Zeppelin guitar riff at its heart.