Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66‘s “smash formula,” according to AllMusic, was “cover versions of pop/rock hits backed by lavish strings, a simplified bossa nova rhythm, and the leader’s piano comping.” The group’s covers of the Beatles’ “Fool on the Hill” and Simon and Garfunkel’s “Scarborough Fair” reached #6 and #16 on the US pop charts, respectively. “Even though he had become thoroughly embedded in the consciousness of mainstream America, Mendes still managed to have it three ways: exposing first-class tunes from little-known Brazilian talent, garnering commercial hits, and also making some fine records.”
The San Diego Union Tribune quotes Mendes speaking about his introduction to the USA: “… the idea was to bring a band from Brazil that represented what Brazilian music is — the vitality, the romance, the rhythms, the sensuality. I was not thinking to put a label on it, but to bring Brazilian music to the world.”
The energetic “Lapinha” (1968) alternates between D major and D minor until the groove drops out for a huge shift to Eb major late in the game (2:27).
säje is a Grammy-nominated, jazz-inflected “vocal supergroup,” according to its website. “Born out of close friendship and incredibly deep admiration, these world-renowned artists, composers, and arrangers have come together to explore, create, and celebrate the music that moves them. As individuals, each artist has crafted their own notable solo career, and now are delighted to bring their collective voices to this union, traversing a vast array of compelling original material, beloved jazz standards, and contemporary re-imaginings (Alina Engibaryan, YEBBA, Johnny Cash, etc)”. säje received their first Grammy nomination in 2020, for their first composition “Desert Song” in the Best Arrangement Instruments and Vocals category. “The union of säje is rooted in the tradition of joy, curiosity, lush harmony, heart-felt expression, and profound sisterhood.”
The quartet’s cover of “Can’t Help It” was released in 2020. The track was originally intended for Stevie Wonder’s monumental Songs in the Key of Life (1976). It was co-written by Wonder and Susaye Greene, a singer and songwriter who was the final member to join The Supremes after Mary Wilson’s departure. Although Greene was a background singer for Wonder on Songs, the tune didn’t make it onto the album; it was instead featured on Michael Jackson’s 1979 album Off the Wall, Jackson’s first release with Quincy Jones as producer.
Unlike the original, with its textbook smooth funk feel aimed at the pop charts, säje‘s cover is full of unexpected percussion kicks, bass line flourishes, and the unpredictable magnetism of tightly clustered vocal lines. Sean Jones‘ trumpet solo further testifies to the ensemble’s jazz-centered pedigree. Forbes’ recent profile quotes säje member Johnaye Kendrick: “’We’re taught, as you’re coming up [as an artist], It’s a male-dominated field, you have to be one of the boys, and know how to hang, and what to say, and all of that … I didn’t think to immerse myself and surround myself with women … It’s amazing to be surrounded by powerful women with endless ideas and the desire to uplift; it has changed our lives.’”
The tune begins in Ab major, travels through a transition starting at 2:53, then dives downward to Gb major in a glissando-led modulation at 3:15, delivered as easily as a sigh. At 3:39, we’ve reverted to the original key. All is wrapped in the most polished of 2020-style socially distanced video packaging, leaving us waiting for the energy of a synchronous performance from this extraordinary ensemble, new in so many ways.
Jazz Times calls pianist/composer/arranger Christian Jacob “a post-bop modernist touched by the souls of Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett.” Jacob’s website outlines his multi-faceted resume: “Multi-Grammy nominated pianist and arranger Christian Jacob first gained widespread exposure as music director for Maynard Ferguson and later as leader of the Christian Jacob Trio and co-leader of the Tierney Sutton Band. Christian is also the musical director for both Broadway legend Betty Buckley and American icon Jack Jones.”
A French native, Jacob “fell in love with classical music at age 4 and discovered jazz at age 9.” After winning top honors at the Paris Conservatory, Jacob continued his studies at Berklee College of Music in Boston. Jacob went on to teach at Berklee, tour with Maynard Ferguson, and win an accolade from The Japan Times as one of the best-selling foreign jazz pianists in the Japanese market. He is a multi-time Grammy nominee for his work with vocalist Tierney Sutton, drummer Ray Brinker, and bassists Trey Henry and Kevin Axt.
As an arranger, Jacob received a Grammy nomination as an arranger with The Phil Norman Tentet; his arrangements have been performed by John Scofield, Billy Cobham, Charlie Haden, Phil Woods, Joe Lovano, Ron Carter, Gary Burton, the Swiss Youth Jazz Orchestra, and the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra. In 2016, he composed the score for director Clint Eastwood’s film Sully; the next year, Eastwood again hired Jacob to score The 15:17 to Paris.
Jacob’s composition “Little Eyes” was recorded in a live 2007 trio performance in Japan. Jacob recounts the performance: “In 2007 I was invited to tour and record in Japan. I always loved Japanese audiences, and to make this recording special, I chose four Japanese melodies that every Japanese person would recognize, and arranged them for trio. They were the highlight of the tour … I was happy to bring my two longtime partners: Trey Henry on bass and Ray Brinker on drums.” The tune begins simply and peacefully in G major. But after a restless transition through several keys of the moment (1:30 – 1:49), we land in G minor. The cycle begins again at 2:05.
1960s British blues artists such as Peter Green, Eric Clapton, John Mayall, etc. took a quintessentially American style of music and mirrored it back across the pond with a new twist. In the 21st century, the US boy band pop formula which peaked in the late 90s and early 2000s is alive and well: it’s now served to us from the deep inside the corporate fortresses of South Korean K-Pop.
K-Pop royalty BTS (also known as Bangtan Boys) has won a nearly universal planetary fanbase. Perhaps fueled by the novelty of its English lyrics, the video for the August 2020 single “Dynamite” has amassed a staggering 1.26 billion views on YouTube, certainly a record for any tune we’ve featured to date! Vox reports: “In 2018, they became the first South Korean band in history to debut an album at No. 1 on the US Billboard 200 chart, as well as the first to have a single land at No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100.” They have collaborated with the likes of the Chainsmokers, Nicki Minaj, Ed Sheeran, and Halsey.
K-Pop is big business, and BTS is at the apex of the genre’s multiple groups (both male and female). SBS News reports that in 2019, BTS was worth more than $4.65 billion US dollars to South Korea’s economy each year, or 0.3% percent of the country’s GDP.
“Earth, Wind & Fire were one of the most musically accomplished, critically acclaimed, and commercially popular funk bands of the ’70s,” proclaims AllMusic. “…EWF’s all-encompassing musical vision used funk as its foundation, but also incorporated jazz, smooth soul, gospel, pop, rock & roll, psychedelia, blues, folk, African music, and, later on, disco … More than just versatility for its own sake, EWF’s eclecticism was part of a broader concept informed by a cosmic, mystical spirituality and an uplifting positivity the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the early days of Sly & the Family Stone … at their best, Earth, Wind & Fire seemingly took all that came before them and wrapped it up into one dizzying, spectacular package.”
After several chart-topping albums in the late 70s, in particular the late-70s smashes All ‘n All (triple platinum) and I Am (double platinum), the band released Faces in 1980. “You,” Faces’ fourth single, reached #10 on the Billboard Hot R&B Singles chart and #30 on the Adult Contemporary Songs chart. Like “After the Love Has Gone,” EWF’s quintessential power ballad, “You” was co-written by David Foster.
After starting in G major, 1:13 brings the chorus in E minor; halfway through the chorus (1:27), the tonality folds in on itself and we’ve landed in G# minor. At 1:45, verse two starts, but we’re now elevated up a whole step (A major) relative to the first verse — likely unnoticed due to the overall harmonic sleight of hand! A 2:40, the chorus arrives again, this time to stay: it morphs into an extended outro. The outro centers around three two-chord pairs (F# minor/B minor; A# minor/D# minor; and D minor/G minor), all compellingly connected by half-steps. The three sets, repeating and fading to the end, essentially form a gigantic hemiola effect over the 4/4 time. Many thanks to our faithful mod sender-inner JB for this tune!
“Denis” was a Top 10 hit for doo-wop group Randy & The Rainbows in 1963 as “Denise.” Blondie, fronted by lead vocalist Debbie Harry, covered it in 1977 on Plastic Letters, its sophomore release.
MixOnline reports: “'(It) sounded like a hit from the minute they started playing it,’ engineer/producer Rob Freeman says. ‘Debbie’s voice was bubbly … and cut right through the rhythm tracks. She had that little growl that would come in every now and then.'” Harry “also played with the lyrics of the song. The band had changed their version from Denise to Denis, French for Dennis, so that Harry could sing ‘You’re my king’ and ‘I’m so lucky ’cause I found a boy like you’ in French.”
This punchy two-minute pop tune went to #2 in the UK, #1 in Belgium and the Netherlands, and top 20 in several other countries. The single didn’t perform well in the US, although the album sold very well. The band was well on its way to becoming “the most commercially successful band to emerge from the New York punk/new wave community of the late ’70s” (AllMusic). The half-step modulation is at 1:05.
According to the Grove Dictionary of Music, “Salomon Jadassohn was born to a Jewish family living in Breslau, the capital of the Prussian province of Silesia. This was a generation after the emancipation of the Jews in Central European German-speaking lands and during a time of relative tolerance.” Jadassohn attended Leipzig Conservatory in 1848, just a few years after it had been founded by Felix Mendelssohn. Jadassohn studied privately with pianist and composer Franz Liszt.
MusicWeb International reports that Jadassohn “later taught at the (Leipzig) Conservatory; his list of pupils reads like a Who’s Who of notable composers including Grieg, Delius and Busoni … As a composer he was prolific, having four symphonies, two piano concertos and a substantial assemblage of chamber works to his name.”
“Elegie,” a movement from the “Serenade for Flute and Piano,” Op. 108 (1890), straddles the line between G minor and Bb major throughout, then transitions to G major between 1:28 and 1:48.
AllMusic describes the cult status of UK band XTC: “(Its) lack of commercial success isn’t because their music isn’t accessible — their bright, occasionally melancholy melodies flow with more grace than most bands. It has more to do with the group constantly being out of step with the times. However, the band has left behind a remarkably rich and varied series of albums that make a convincing argument that XTC is the great lost pop band. ‘Senses Working Overtime’ (1981) showed … a bemusing, distinctive take on catchy guitar music. There’s enough hints of ringing sixties guitar and clever wordplay to keep Beatles obsessives happy, say, but this is definitely the sound of a band on its own path.”
The fact that XTC’s style has been categorized with terms as varied as pop, art rock, new wave, rock, post-punk, art-punk, and progressive pop suggests that promoting their music was anything but straightforward. Lead singer Andy Partridge also suffered from severe stage fright, leading the band to experience difficulties with touring. According to Record Collector, both the album (English Settlement) and the single were the band’s highest-charting UK successes, peaking at #5 and #10, respectively.
After a reserved intro and verse in G# minor, clanging guitars announce the pre-chorus at 0:36 — a resounding all-major progression centered around plenty of compound chords. At 0:48, an E major chorus arrives, later proclaiming that thechurchbells softly chime … hardly! Next up is a multi-section, multi-key bridge, which starts boisterously in A major at 2:35, charged with yet more compound chords and a schoolyard taunt of a vocal hook at 3:23. By 3:38, we’ve somehow been hoisted into F major — but making use of its rapidly expanding songcraft, XTC skillfully hides the tune’s seams.
Duncan Sheik is perhaps best known for his 1996 hit “Barely Breathing” and a cerebral, meticulous style AllMusic describes as “Adult Alternative.” He went on to write the music for the 2006 Broadway smash hit Spring Awakening. A few years later, Sheik continued his writing for musical theatre with Whisper House (2010), featuring a book and additional lyrics by Kyle Jarrow.
Playbill reports: “‘It’s set in and around an isolated lighthouse in Maine during World War II,’ Duncan Sheik says. ‘There’s a young boy named Christopher whose father was shot down over the Pacific by the Japanese. His distraught mother has been taken to a sanitarium, and he has been sent to live with his Aunt Lily, who is not so great with children, to use a bit of [an] understatement.’
Also at the lighthouse is a Japanese servant named Yasujiro. ‘Christopher,’ Sheik says, ‘is incredibly mistrustful of Yasujiro because his father was killed by the Japanese, and he begins to suspect that the servant may be a spy. In the middle of it all, it appears that the lighthouse may be haunted by ghosts — all of whom were members of a band playing on a ship that went down in 1912.’ … Because the ghosts’ ship sank in 1912, the Titanic comes to mind. Is there a connection? ‘Not really,’ Sheik says, and laughs. ‘I guarantee that Celine Dion will not be singing this material.'”
Set in an off-kilter G major where inverted voicings are more the rule than the exception, the chorus begins at 1:27 with a prominent E major chord, whose G# third degree (further underlined by G# in the bass) briefly but profoundly displaces the original key. This small harmonic collision provides energy to a track so ethereal that it might have otherwise floated away entirely.
Def Leppard released the 1987 album Hysteria after the 1983 album Pyromania boosted the band’s popularity throughout North America and Europe in the wake of several more modest album releases. Given the sustained heavy rotation of its other singles (“Photograph,” “Bringin’ On the Heartbreak,” “Pour Some Sugar on Me,” etc.), it’s surprising that “Love Bites” was the UK band’s only US #1 pop hit.
Songfacts details that “Def Leppard guitarist Phil Collen … said of this song, ‘It was just a standard rock ballad but it had something else going for it. Lyrically, it kind of painted a picture, and in a song you always want to do that, paint a picture. On a dark desert highway, the first line of Hotel California, great song, it just paints an image for you straight off the bat and that’s the sign of a really good song. It takes you right there.” The emphasis on multi-layered vocals and glossy textures is the work of producer Mutt Lange, who stole the show with his trademark arena-friendly sound — just as he did with his 1990s chart-topping production of his then-wife, country star Shania Twain.
Starting in F major, the pre-chorus shifts to Eb major at 1:07; verse 2 brings a return to F major at 1:59 — with both keys placing ample emphasis on their respective relative minors.
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