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.”

Jacob Collier | Summer Rain

“Now five albums into his career, it’s clear Jacob Collier is a once-in-a-generation musician,” (Undertone). “For anyone that’s been following him since he broke out via harmonically complex a capella covers on YouTube, that’s old news. In reality, it was clear from that very first album – Hideaway, toured solo with Jacob jumping around stage from drums to keys to double bass with the help of a loop pedal – that Collier isn’t like your average singer-songwriter, not even your average jazz musician. He plays everything brilliantly and effortlessly, all with Herculean powers of humility, and has an immense grasp of musical harmony in all its nuances. His insatiable urge to learn new instruments is matched by his appetite for a dizzying array of genres and a rare respect for music in all its nebulous forms: Djesse Vol. 4 (2024) has everything from choral ambience to cinematic pop and oppressive death metal – and that’s just track one. As a result, Djesse Vol. 4 is in turns awe-inspiringly virtuosic and discombobulating, as has Collier’s entire career up to this point.

‘Summer Rain’ is the pick of the ballads, Collier showcasing the depths of his lovesick tenderness before a soaring, delightfully uncomplicated finale that evokes Coldplay in ‘Fix You’ mode. It’s more proof that when Collier can successfully harness his immense talents into developing a single strong idea – like the Hulk trying not to smash everything he holds – the result can be stunning.”

Collier is joined by mandolinist/vocalist Chris Thile (best known for his work with Punch Brothers and Nickel Creek) and singer/songwriter/guitarist Madison Cunningham on vocals. Beginning in D major, the tune runs along a largely uncomplicated course for its first three-plus minutes. At 3:30, a bridge shifts to D minor before dropping into an unexpected C minor (3:58). By 4:29, the tonality has been pulled gradually back to its ultimate resting place — a return to D major.

Many thanks to Ellie D. for submitting this memorable track to MotD — hopefully not her last!

Hall + Oates | Love You Like a Brother

Psychologists say that contempt is the #1 indicator of a future divorce. For anyone wondering why Hall and Oates (the best-selling pop duo of all time) broke up a few years ago, here’s an excerpt from an Popdose interview (September 2009):

“Me (interviewer): You two have been making music together for nearly 40 years. What do you consider to be the secret to your success?

Oates: Well, Daryl and I have a healthy balance of give and—

Hall: (interrupting) Take one-fourth of John and three-fourths of me and you’ve got the winning formula. We’re the Beatles of the post-Woodstock generation, no question. It was the same with them in their day: three-fourths Lennon and McCartney, one-fourth George, and one-fourth Ringo.” …

The interview continued along these lines, with Oates walking out at one point. You do the math.

In any case, “Love You Like a Brother” from 1977’s No Goodbyes, was clearly released during better times. The intro (0:00 – 0:16), in D minor, repeats as an interlude (1:20 – 1:32). But the majority of the tune is in G major.