At today’s Biden/Harris Inaugural, pop diva Jennifer Lopez performed a medley of the populist folk anthem “This Land is Your Land” and “America The Beautiful” for a small in-person audience on the Capitol steps, while tens of millions watched worldwide.
The Los Angeles Times reports that JLo “linked the first two verses of Woody Guthrie’s ‘This Land Is Your Land’ with ‘America the Beautiful’ — and threw in a line from her own ‘Let’s Get Loud’ just for good measure … Lopez remade the two American standards — the first a famously fought-over piece of U.S. history.
And she didn’t pass up the opportunity to try to cleanse the spot where insurgents soiled the American dream two weeks ago: Building up to her big finish, Lopez paused to recite the last line of the Pledge of Allegiance — in Spanish. ‘Una nación, bajo Dios, indivisible, con libertad y justicia para todos!‘ she said, her eyes sparkling with pride — ‘One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.'”
As the arrangement returns to “This Land Is Your Land” after “America the Beautiful” (3:00), the key is a half-step lower than the opening rendition of the same tune. The music begins at the 0:40 mark.
“They weren’t British, they weren’t brothers, and their real names weren’t Walker, but Californians Scott Engel, John Maus, and Gary Leeds were briefly huge stars in England (and small ones in their native land) at the peak of the British Invasion,” reports AllMusic. “…They favored orchestrated ballads that were a studied attempt to emulate the success of another brother act who weren’t really brothers: the Righteous Brothers.”
The tune appeared in the recent TV seriesMaster of None in 2017, part of a soundtrack that was nothing if not eclectic. “I Can’t Let it Happen to You” wasn’t a single for the Walker Brothers, but the album track, released in 1967, fit the quirky series perfectly. Pitchfork quotes the show’s music supervisor, Zach Cowie, speaking about the series’ star and co-writer, Aziz Ansari: “‘We’re both record collectors that are kind of always looking for crate-digging kind of deeper stuff. That sort of becomes a sound that unifies the whole series. A lot of it is just mixed up sort of records, and it does fit well with the character.'”
The Righteous Brothers’ influence is strong on this track, complete with a leisurely, behind-the-beat delivery, the lead vocal’s casual approach to pitch, and the spacious, reverb-soaked production. Starting in E major, the tune shifts to F major at 1:55 at the start of a brief instrumental bridge.
In 2013, Mother Jones magazine asked “what happens when highly trained musicians and actors do Broadway and pop culture with a meta twist?” The answer is CDZA, short for Collective Cadenza. CDZA creates “viral videos starring Juilliard-trained musicians, local rock and jazz artists, Broadway singers, and sketch comedians — done in a single Steadicam shot. ‘Our creative process looks like us sitting in an apartment, saying, this would be funny, this would be cool — and then we begin to divide and conquer.’”
The process for 2013’s “Fresh Prince: Google Translated,” according to Joe Sabia, the group’s lead “conceptor”/director: “’One of our main things is producing videos that also serve as a commentary on American culture. Google Translate is something everyone uses, so we put together a song everyone knows and a device everyone knows.’”
This expanded version of the tune is built on the theme from the wildly popular 1990s sitcom Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Featuring a much stronger accompaniment than the original, the entire tune centers around a I minor –> bVII major/I vamp. As the lyrics grow progressively more inane with each pass through Google Translate, the key ascends a half-step at 2:02, 2:27, and 3:09.
“There’s an old cliché that says country music is mostly comprised of three chords and the truth,” reports American Songwriter.“There’s also a generalization that says country music is, on the whole, unremittingly sad. Needless to say, those are broad descriptions that limit the scope of a type of music that encompasses many different musical strategies and is capable of conveying the full range of the emotional spectrum. Yet there is no doubt that “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” the 1980 masterpiece by George Jones, does indeed adhere to those clichés, even as it finds a way to transcend them.
After all, the song is pretty much just three chords. (Technically, there are six, but that’s only because of the key change.) The truth can be found in Jones’ stunning performance, a vocal for the ages. And the song itself, composed by Bobby Braddock and Curly Putman, contains the sadness, which was then amplified to majestic proportions by the production of Billy Sherrill.
All of those disparate elements and unique personalities meshed to create this one-of-a-kind recording from 1980. The accolades for the song were immediate, as it won Grammy, Academy of Country Music, and CMA awards. It continues to amass honors, including selection by the Library of Congress National Recording Preservation Board in 2009 and numerous occasions when it was named greatest country song of all time on various media lists.”
The tune is a classic Country music ballad, but it’s certainly not a spare voice-and-guitar ditty. Rather, given its high production values, strings, and overall polish, it fits squarely in the Countrypolitan category. The modulation arrives at 0:54, early in the long list of the song’s emotional hits. The arrangement continues to escalate, accompanying Jones’ understated singing and simple yet devastating spoken word narrative.
“Glamorously gaudy, a self-made postmodern diva stitched together from elements of Madonna, David Bowie, and Freddie Mercury, Lady Gaga was the first millennial superstar,” reports AllMusic. “Mastering the constant connection of the Internet era, Gaga generated countless mini-sensations with her style, her videos, and her music … Gaga crossed over into the mainstream, ushering out one pop epoch and kick-starting a new one, quickly making such turn-of-the-century stars as Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears seem old-fashioned … repurposing the past (particularly the ’80s) for present use, creating sustainable pop for a digital world.”
“I Wanna Be With You” was first performed in 2013, but wasn’t released as a studio version until 2019. Referencing her hit “Born This Way” in its lyric, the tune starts in D major, then climbs to Eb major at 3:20 after a proper power-ballad drum break.
PopMatters reports “In 1987, Rick Astley positioned himself as Michael McDonald’s Mini-Me. But there was another contender who’d got there before him. If ever someone had both a voice and songwriting style reminiscent of McDonald, it was Robbie Dupree, the singer/songwriter who emerged in 1980. Perhaps that’s unfair; he was also his own man, writing or co-writing the bulk of these two soft-rock-with-a-smooth-jazz-twist albums, originally on Elektra. They’re shiny, expensive-sounding affairs, typical of the final throes of the first singer/songwriter movement. Robbie Dupree was already in his mid-30s when his self-titled debut came out. He did remarkably well to land at #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 with 1980’s frothy ‘Steal Away.'”
After starting in A major, there’s a key change to D major as the bridge hits at 1:44.
The New York Festival of Song reviewed jazz pianist Bill Evans‘ “Danny Boy” in 2018. The album on which it appeared, Time Remembered, was recorded in 1963 but not released for two decades — several years after his death in 1980.
“ … It marks Evans’ return to the recording studio after a year spent grieving the death of Scott LaFaro, his trio bassist, who was killed in a car accident. Evans showed up to the studio alone, played four tunes, and walked out – or so the story goes.
I share the notion with many of you that time is money, but the 11-minute price tag on this song seems like nothing if you’re willing to sit with him as he musically figures out how to breathe again. The space, sparseness, and tender hesitation of every note he plays in the beginning unravel the knots of my heart every time, and in doing so, remind me of why I do what I do.”
Unexpected modulations — which seem nothing short of inevitable after they’ve gone by — are all over this tune.
Chris with MotD co-curator Elise at the piano in 2011 — probably singing “Don’t Cry Out Loud.”
This post originally appeared on MotD on April 8, 2019. We’re bringing it back in expanded form today in honor of Christopher Larkosh, who contributed the tune to us. Chris passed away from a sudden illness at the age of only 56 on December 24th, 2020. He was a MotD fan who contributed multiple tunes to our collection; others are still in the queue, waiting their turn.
May the memory of Chris’ enduring humanitarian spirit, deep understanding of music’s ability to motivate and heal, and pervasive musicality be a comfort to all who knew him.
Elise
MotD fan Christopher Larkosh contributes today’s tune: “Musical geniuses Peter Allen and Carole Bayer Sager put ‘Don’t Cry Out Loud’ in good hands with Melissa Manchester. This is probably why it’s one of my all-time karaoke and piano bar favorites to this day.” A 1978 top ten hit in the US and Canada for Manchester, the tune was later covered by Rita Coolidge and Liza Minelli, among others. The modulation kicks in at 2:35.
In an interview with Scott Holleran, Manchester, a songwriter in her own right, said of the tune: “I remember being friends with Peter Allen and Carole Bayer Sager and hearing (it) as a very quiet song, bringing it to him and saying yes, it’s gorgeous, let’s do it the way Peter did it — as beautiful and quiet. [Then] I showed up in the studio and the cannons blew on this huge version — which turned out beautifully, it turned out as a gift.”
In a 2004 Billboard interview, Manchester expressed uneasiness about the song’s take on grief: “I finally understand what it meant … I [originally] thought it was a brilliant song, but it seemed like the antithesis of everything Carole [Bayer Sager] and I were writing, which was always about self-affirmation and crying out and sharpening your communication skills. But it’s a beautifully crafted song that was all about how in the end you just have to learn to cope — and that’s no easy thing.”
Those of us who knew Chris will remember that he was never one to hide his feelings, either — and we’re all the richer for it.
The Arts Fuse describes The Bad Pilot, the 2019 album by John Powhida International Airport (winners of the 2011 Rock & Roll Rumble and multiple Boston Music Award nominees), as “clearly rooted in the 1970s — but that decade was nothing if not kaleidoscopic … the sound and feel of everything from Philly soul to new wave, hard rock, funk, and progressive rock.” JPIA’s recent release “Michael 3 O’Clock” continues that trend, incorporating kaleidoscopic effects on the video in addition to the melange of styles on the track.
Powhida relates some of the tune’s backstory: “I saw Michael Quercio and the 3 O’Clock Band open for REM. A direct quote from him to a heckler: ‘REM will be out in a second. Suck on this, honey.’ Trailblazers of the Paisley Underground scene with The Bangles and others … Prince was a fan and held his hand in a meeting, then signed them to Paisley Park.” AllMusic details that The 3 O’Clock “incorporated the chiming guitars of the Byrds and the Beatles into their pop songs with a psychedelic bent, and the clothes to match.” While this track centers the sheen of Philly Soul, it’s appropriately completed by a gilded paisley frame, including the filigree of Peter Moore’s artful backup vocal and string arrangement.
The ballads of the Philly Soul canon certainly never shied away from melancholy. Instead, they stared the emotion down bravely while featuring ecstatically gorgeous arrangements and harmonies — providing incentive for the listener to stick around instead of running back to bubble-gum pop. Meanwhile, Powhida has the guts to stare down his influences and a potentially pivotal missed connection while taking us along for the ride. A capsule review on Powhida’s Bandcamp page lauds the tune’s mix of “admiration, resentment, and a little heartbreak” — not bad for a four-minute narrative.
After the tune opens with a guitar hook over a mysterious suspended chord, the groove starts the track in earnest at 0:09 in an uncomplicated A major. The verse then shifts to a second section in C major at 0:37. The chorus, in E minor, admittedly owes a huge melodic debt to the chorus of The Stylistics’ “You Are Everything,” but mixes in plenty of Powhida’s trademark wit — so clever that Quercio reportedly couldn’t stay mad for long, even after being artfully skewered:
SuperCaliforniaFragileDiva what goes on inside your head? / PsychoRelicDandyLiar Michael 3 o’Clock it’s time for bed
Verse 2 and Chorus 2 continue the pattern, followed by a beautifully contrasting bridge, starting with a surprising palate-cleansing sidebar (C major) at 1:56, then a jump to C# minor at 1:59. At 2:44, JPo delivers one final double-sided homage before his pitch glissandos downward like an anchor falling to the bottom of a pond — making the modulation upward to E minor for the final wall-of-sound choruses all the more massive. After a minor-key echo of The Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love” at the start of the outro, we somehow end this unlikely travelogue where we began, shifting back to A major and a reprise of the opening hook at 3:51.
A native of Recife, Brazil’s fifth-largest city, guitarist and vocalist Nando Lauria is perhaps known for his wordless vocals on many tracks from the Pat Metheny Group. The Chicago Tribune describes Lauria’s work as “meld(ing) the Afro-Latin sensibilities of his native Brazil with American contemporary jazz to soothing effect.” AllMusic outlines Lauria’s sound: “Rather than blazing, polyrhythmic compositions, Lauria performs romantic, hypnotic numbers. He doesn’t downplay his ethnic heritage, but the rhythms are subdued rather than bubbling, aggressive, or intense … a tight balance between electric and acoustic instrumentation and modern and vintage arrangements, with a contemporary outlook.”
The track was released on Narada Records, which Billboard describes as “an independent New Age music label … (which) evolved through an expansion of formats to include world music, jazz, Celtic music, new flamenco, acoustic guitar, and piano genre releases.” Narada started in 1979 as a mail-order business, expanding in the 1990s to include Jazz and World divisions in addition to New Age.
“Gloria” (1992) is essentially a short multi-movement piece. The first section, centered around acoustic guitar, doesn’t introduce the melody until 1:09. This intro presents less of a specifically Christmas-y mood than a gentle scene of winter wonder. At 2:30, the track is built on the contemporary Latin text for the Catholic mass Gloria segment, performed a cappella by a multi-tracked Lauria. At 3:52, the acoustic guitar returns to accompany the vocals. 4:09, 5:05, and 5:16 bring more changes, re-visiting and expanding upon previous melodic and harmonic ideas while adding and subtracting groove elements. There are several modulations, with the first substantial shift at 2:27.
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