Elise – Page 48

Culture Club | Miss Me Blind

“For a time England’s biggest pop sensation, heralded in America as leaders of a second British Invasion, Culture Club capitalized on Boy George’s outrageous nightlife cross-dressing and aimed-to-shock intelligence to slip their mushy mainstream soul-pop into respectable homes the world over,” (Trouser Press). “Phenomenology aside, the foursome never sounded anywhere near as bizarre as they originally appeared …

Dropping the silly “white boy” crypto-sociology that threads through the first album, Colour by Numbers gets right to the business at hand, which is the creation of irresistible pop hits in a variety of molds. And in that regard, the album is a real success … prominently features singer Helen Terry, who provides a powerful foil to George’s smooth crooning.”

One of the band’s most successful singles was 1984’s “Miss Me Blind,” a soul-inflected, danceable pop hit. With songwriting credits split among all four members of the band, the track hit #5 on the US Hot 100 and #6 on the Canadian pop charts. Built in G minor overall, the early bridge (2:14 – 2:30) shifts to E minor before returning to the original key. Culture Club seemed to largely avoid over-indulgence in synthesized textures, instead maintaining a focus on the human voice (both George’s and Terry’s). As a result, many of the band’s tunes seem a bit less dated than others of the same vintage.

Billie Holiday | Easy Living

“A tender ballad, ‘Easy Living’ has forthright lyrics that declare just how wonderful life can be when living for someone you love,” (MusicTales). “The songwriting team of Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin wrote ‘Easy Living’ in 1937 for the film of the same name which was well-reviewed and is best characterized as a screwball comedy classic. Their partnership was a productive one, producing a number of hits in the 1930s, and lasted until Rainger’s tragic death in a plane crash in 1942.

Upon the film’s release, the song did not garner much public attention due to the fact that (it was) an instrumental track. That same year, however, Billie Holiday did a vocal cover of the song with Teddy Wilson’s Orchestra, and their version stayed in the charts for two weeks, peaking at 15th position. It is with her that ‘Easy Living’ is associated with to this day.” Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Chet Baker, and Wardell Gray also covered the tune, contributing to its status as a jazz standard.

Perhaps as a nod to its original status as an instrumental, Holiday’s version features a sizeable instrumental intro which encompasses both melody and solos and spans the entire form of the tune. The AABA form is built in G# major for the A sections and E major for B section (0:53 – 1:14). Holiday’s iconic vocal adds to the mix at 1:36.

Archie Bell + the Drells | I Could Dance All Night

“While their funky Texas (and later Philadelphia) sound was often overshadowed by the music coming from Detroit and Memphis, (Archie Bell + the Drells’) contribution to the musical landscape of the time was significant … ” (SoulTracks).

In 1968, the band’s release ‘Tighten Up,’ … (reminiscent of the sound James Brown was popularizing at the time) … turned into an international smash.” Later, the band worked with “songwriters Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff and became the an important foundation for Gamble & Huff’s fledgling production empire and, later, their Philadelphia International Records label. ” After a string of hits, “The Drells broke up in the early 80s, but Bell continued on as a solo artist and then with a reconstituted set of Drells, playing the oldies circuit. By the mid-90s, Bell was solo again, singing his classic hits at venues in the U.S. and internationally.”

1975’s “I Could Dance All Night” is a good example of tunes that became popular during the Hustle dance craze, a prominent dance style within the Disco era. At 1:53, the groove falls away, returning as the key elevates by a whole step.

Many thanks to MotD regular Rob Penttinen for this submission!

For reference, here’s the band’s 1968 sadly modulation-free tune “Tighten Up” in a trippy-looking live performance. The backup singers didn’t have a chance to hit even one note, but still should have received overtime pay for the dance moves alone!

Vicki Lawrence | The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia

This multi-verse tune tells quite the complex story, like any good murder ballad. But this one managed to also become a chart-topping pop hit in 1973. It was “a lot of story to cram into less than four minutes, still making room for a chorus and for some instrumental flourishes,” (Stereogum). “It’s probably too much story for a two-hour movie. It’s too convoluted, too full of arbitrary plot twists … And yet the country songwriter Bobby Russell — the same guy who wrote Bobby Goldsboro’s execrable ‘Honey’ — still jammed all that into ‘The Night The Lights Went Down In Georgia,’ and the song still made it to #1.”

Russell offered the tune to Cher, but “Cher’s husband Sonny Bono thought the song was too dark, too potentially offensive. So Russell’s wife recorded it, instead. Vicki Lawrence, who was married to Russell at the time, wasn’t a singer — or, in any case, that wasn’t how she was known. Instead, she was a funny lady on TV. And other than that brief flirtation with pop stardom, that’s what she remained … Vicki Lawrence was 18 when she joined the cast of The Carol Burnett Show.

As storytelling, ‘The Night The Lights Went Down In Georgia’ is cluttered but evocative. As a piece of music, it’s pretty much the same way. It’s one of those songs where the verses work better than the chorus. The verses are all tingly suspense: prickly electric piano line, spare acoustic guitar, drums and shakers that pulse like heartbeats. On the chorus, everything explodes into hammy melodrama. Taken all together, the song’s combination of studio craftsmanship and thirsty attention-grabbing dynamics are basically early-’70s pop writ small, good ideas and bad ideas in a constant push-pull. It’s easy to hear how the song caught America’s collective ear, and it’s just as easy to figure out why Lawrence basically abandoned her music career afterward.”

Starting in Bb minor, the chorus shifts to F major at 0:59 before reverting to the original key for the next verse at 1:21. The pattern continues from there. This live performance, 22 years after the original release, apparently features a live vocal from Lawrence.

Theme from “Pee Wee’s Playhouse”

Paul Ruebens, a one-of-a-kind actor and comedian and creator of the 80s hit television show Pee Wee’s Playhouse, passed away over the weekend. “Pee-wee’s Playhouse debuted in September of 1986 and ran five seasons and 45 episodes,” (80sXChange.com). “It aired on Saturday mornings on CBS as one of the few live-action shows among mostly cartoons. (It featured) the iconic Pee Wee Herman character alongside all of his friends and neighbors. Pee-Wee’s Playhouse was designed as an educational yet entertaining and artistic show for children, but the show quickly acquired a dual audience of kids and adults.

… One of the musicians who provided music for the show was Mark Mothersbaugh from Devo who most remember for their biggest hit “Whip It”. Since Devo, Mothersbaugh has developed a successful career writing musical scores for film and television and that really started after he worked on Pee-wee’s Playhouse. In film, he went on to work frequently with filmmaker Wes Anderson, scoring four of his feature films … Mothersbaugh was tasked with writing the opening theme song for Pee-wee’s Playhouse … (the theme) introduces us to most of the other characters and really sets the tone for the fun, colorful show … The opening prelude theme is an interpretation of Les Baxter’s ‘Quiet Village’. The Pee-wee’s Playhouse theme song was actually performed by Cyndi Lauper imitating Betty Boop” with a side order of Edith Bunker. Lauper was credited as Ellen Shaw.

The frenetic theme bounces along, following a classic (if sped up) songwriting template during its 90-second length. After a few verses, a bridge unfurls at 0:43, leading into a half-step key change at 1:06 for the final verse and ending tag.

Aretha Franklin | Freeway of Love

“Freeway of Love” (1988) “was written by Narada Michael Walden and Jeffrey Cohen,” (Songfacts). “Walden is the guy you call when you need to produce a diva: he has written and produced hits for Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, and Diana Ross. When we asked him about the one song that had the greatest impact on his career, he told us it was ‘Freeway of Love’ by Aretha Franklin … This is one of the most famous driving songs of all time,” but Franklin wasn’t a driver!

“Aretha Franklin has an astonishing 20 #1 R&B hits – more than any other artist – and this song was the last of them. It was also a huge pop hit and revitalized her career. When she recorded her Who’s Zoomin’ Who? album, she hadn’t been in a studio in two years, and hadn’t had a Top 10 on the Hot 100 since ‘Until You Come Back to Me (That’s What I’m Gonna Do)’ in 1973.” Bruce Springsteen’s saxophone player Clarence Clemons played on this track, which was also produced by Walden. The tune won Grammy Awards for Best R&B Song and Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, as well as reaching #3 on the US pop charts and topping the Hot Black Singles chart for five weeks.

Spin‘s Armond White put the track into context within Franklin’s long career: ” … a highway of life song, proclaiming Aretha’s longevity … confirms her as the mother/master of much that is current. She’s still the Queen of Soul.” A whole-step modulation holds off until 3:40 — nearly the end of the tune.

Commodores | Sweet Love

“R&B purists have often argued that the Commodores did their most essential work before 1977,” (AllMusic). “It was in 1977 that they crossed over to the pop/adult contemporary audience in a major way with ‘Easy,’ and subsequent hits like 1978’s ‘Three Times a Lady’ and 1979’s ‘Still’ (both of which reached number one on Billboard’s pop singles charts) certainly weren’t the work of R&B snobs.

… the song that 1975’s Movin’ On is best remembered for is the laid-back, gospel-drenched hit ‘Sweet Love.’ Written by Richie, ‘Sweet Love’ is one of those secular soul tunes that isn’t really gospel but borders on it; when Richie belts out the lyrics, ‘You got to keep on searching/harder/day by day,’ you feel like you’re in the front row during an AME church service. And even though Movin’ On is an LP that R&B purists rave about (rightly so), you can’t say that it was ignored by pop audiences — ‘Sweet Love’ was a number two R&B hit, but it also reached number five on Billboard’s pop singles chart.”

The mid-tempo track features soft, shimmeringly delicate sections — but also passages with the saturated sound of a full compliment of horns and strings joining the band’s regular instrumentation. A powerhouse whole-step key change hits at 3:49.

Fee Waybill | Tall, Dark and Harmless

“Wild, wacky, weird and wonderful are just a few words that would appropriately fit but still fall short of fully describing the unclassifiable theatrical rock enigma and fabulous freak show known as The Tubes,” (ChicagoConcertReviews.com). “The San Francisco-based band started in the 1970s by turning underground upside down with cult favorites ‘Don’t Touch Me There’ and ‘White Punks On Dope,’ accompanied by technologically-advanced productions, outrageous characters, over the top costumes and comedy that all seemed to jump straight out of a scene from The Rocky Horror Picture Show crossed with a Saturday Night Live sketch.”

After many years with the band, Waybill decided to go solo. “It was the good, bad and the ugly of David Foster. He was a brilliant producer and a brilliant arranger, but he wanted to make hits. When we did the first album with him, he put me together with [Toto’s] Steve Lukather and we all wrote ‘Talk To Ya Later,’ which was a big hit. Then we wrote ‘She’s a Beauty’ on the second album and that was an even bigger hit. He wanted big hits on the radio and that’s what the record company wanted, but it kind of flew in the face of a band that had been together 15 years and he’s telling us, ‘no, I want to do this. I want to do that. I want to do a whole side of just hits with Lukather and Fee.’ The band couldn’t handle it and I understand it.”

Waybill released several solo albums, including 1996’s Don’t Be Scared of These Hands. “Tall Dark and Harmless” features all of the harmonic complexity and layered textures of later Tubes material. The uptempo rocker features a buzzing, ascending chromatic guitar line on the chorus — as complex as the repeated one-note title line is simple. Overall, the architecture of the tune is ever-changing: after an intro in E major, 0:17 features multiple two-chord pairs (suggesting several keys, none of which is E major). At 0:49, a pre-chorus leads back into the static E major of the chorus.

Livingston Taylor | I Will Be In Love With You

“Livingston Taylor picked up his first guitar at the age of 13, which began a more than 50-year career that has encompassed performance, songwriting, and teaching,” (Taylor’s website). “Born in Boston and raised in North Carolina, Livingston is the fourth child in a very musical family that includes Alex, James, Kate, and Hugh. Livingston recorded his first record at the age of 19 and has continued to create beautifully crafted, introspective, original songs as well as sparkling interpretations of the classic songbook that have earned him enthusiastic listeners worldwide.”

Taylor has released several Top 40 hits, including “I Will Be in Love with You” (1978). He’s collaborated and toured with a wide range of artists, including Joni Mitchell, Linda Ronstadt, Fleetwood Mac, Jimmy Buffett, and Jethro Tull. “For over three decades, Livingston taught at the Berklee College of Music, where he created a course on Stage Performance.” Taylor’s former students at Berklee include Charlie Puth, John Mayer, Gavin McGraw, Susan Tedesci, and many others.

“I Will Be In Love With You,” which reached #30 on the Pop chart and #15 on the Adult Contemporary chart, clearly presents Taylor’s phrasing and musical vocabulary as parallels to those of his big brother James. At a distance, his vocal timbre is also much like his brother’s — but upon more careful listening, it’s easier to differentiate. The tune alternates throughout between C major and D major; the first unadorned modulation hits during the intro (0:19) and others follow at 1:58 and 2:11. All of the sections with vocals are in D major.

Ennio Morricone | Se Telefonando (feat. Mina)

“(Morricone’s) film scores alone spanned jazz, lushly romantic orchestrations, supremely freaked-out psychedelic rock and all points in between; outside of cinema, he worked in everything from 60s Europop to avant-garde modern classical …The most celebrated of Morricone’s diversions into pop music, at least in Italy, ‘Se Telefonando’ is a perfect example of what Anglophone pop audiences missed by snootily ignoring anything not sung in English: a fantastic, epic ballad fit to take on anything that came from Bacharach and David’s pens in the same era, complete with very Morricone-esque idiosyncrasies,” (The Guardian). “Its chorus melody was apparently influenced by the sound of a French police siren, and its bass notes are augmented by the sound of trombones.”

“One of the most beloved and iconic performers in Italian history, vocalist Mina was a fixture on the pop music scene in the ’60s and ’70s … “(AllMusic). “Her lush and powerful voice put a distinctive mark on her music, which frequently jumped genres, from Italian pop and R&B to bossa nova, jazz, and even disco … she was a trailblazing figure who challenged social mores and became a symbol for female empowerment, pushing boundaries with her liberated image and unapologetic lyrics. Into the 21st century, her prolific and genre-shifting output kept her atop the charts with over a dozen number one albums and multiple hit singles.”

“Se Telefonando” (1966) starts in F# major, its verse building gradually. The short chorus is heard for the first time in F# as well, but a common-tone modulation to A# hits at 1:19 for a re-statement of the chorus as the tune climbs to its highest point. At 1:49, the track returns to its original key with another chorus, only to climb back to A# at 2:14 with yet another chorus. We gradually realize there will be no subsequent verse as the tune fades!