Michael Biggins | Ding Dong Merrily on High

This week we will be featuring guest submissions, kicking off with our newest masthead contributor JB, who provided the write-up below:

Even though it sounds like a modern commercial jingle, the melody of Ding Dong Merrily on High is at least 500 years old, and the current lyrics are nearly 100 years old. 

While there have been many recordings of this tune over the years — including the iconic Wiggles version from A Wiggly Wiggly Christmas — it’s a safe bet that none of them has had more modulations than Michael Biggins’ version. There are key changes at 1:04 and 1:27, a full mode change from 1:50-2:14, and multiple keys-of-the-moment and other harmonic tensions sprinkled throughout.

Biggins was named the 2021 Young Traditional Musician of the Year by BBC Radio Scotland, the first pianist ever to win this prestigious award.  One of the reasons that the award had, in the past, always recognized pipers, fiddlers, and other players of melody instruments is that the piano is generally relagated to the role of a rhythm instrument in Scottish trad, playing simple boom-chuck accompaniment to support the melody players.  This role delineation is still honored in the video, where Biggins plays all the virtuosic tracks on the accordion (generally a melody instrument in Scottish trad), while keeping the piano track well below his pay grade.

Cee Lo Green | What Christmas Means to Me

Written by Allen Story, Anna Gordy Gaye and George Gordy, and first recorded by Stevie Wonder in 1967, “What Christmas Means To Me” has been covered by dozens of artists over the years. Green included the song on his 2012 Christmas album Cee Lo Green’s Magic Moment, and it reached the #23 spot on the R&B charts in the United States. The tune modulates from Bb up to B at 1:41.

Rob Thomas (feat. Ingrid Michaelson) | Christmas Time

“Christmas Time” is featured on Rob Thomas’s first holiday album, Something About Christmas Time, released earlier this year. “Every year, I want to do a Christmas album, and every year, it’s too late because I always think about it at Christmas,” said Thomas in an interview with ABC Audio.

“When everything started to shut down in the beginning of 2020, I was home and I had that summer to make a record. I wasn’t on the road and it wasn’t making a solo record. I wasn’t making a Matchbox [Twenty] record. And so it was the only summer that I’d ever had where there was that kind of a time.

“I knew that I didn’t want to do a lot of the traditional Christmas covers,” he adds, noting that he preferred “songs that I grew up with and the artists that I grew up listening to.”

The track, which features vocalist Ingrid Michaelson singing with Thomas, was originally written and recorded by Canadian singer Bryan Adams in 1985. It quickly became his most successful and popular Christmas tune, and is still played on Canadian radio during the holidays.

Beginning in B major, the tune modulates up a whole step to Db at 2:38.

Rick Derringer | Don’t Ever Say Goodbye

“Rick Derringer was just 17 when his band The McCoys recorded the #1 hit ‘Hang On Sloopy’ in the summer of 1965, knocking ‘Yesterday’ by The Beatles out of the top spot.” He’s worked with Alice Cooper, Richie Havens, Todd Rundgren, Steely Dan, Cyndi Lauper, Barbra Streisand, and more.

In the mid-80s, Derringer’s work with ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic was central to Yankovic’s success, resulting in several Grammy awards. Derringer produced Yankovic’s Michael Jackson parodies, including the #1 hit ‘Eat It.'”

“Don’t Ever Say Goodbye,” from Derringer’s 1979 album Guitars and Women (produced by Todd Rundgren), features a whole step key change at 2:23.

Roy Ayers | Searchin’

According to the website of R&B/jazz vibraphonist/vocalist Roy Ayers, he’s known as “the Godfather of Neo-Soul. He continues to bridge the gap between generations of music lovers. In the 60s he was an award-winning jazz vibraphonist and transformed into a popular R&B band leader in the 70s/80s.”

Although he started performing in the late 1940s and was a part of the acid jazz sound of the 1970s with his band Ubiquity, he’s been prominently sampled by Dr. Dre, J. Cole, Tyler the Creator, Jill Scott and more, “earning him a vaunted place among music producers and DJs,” (LA Times). Again from his own website: “Today, (Ayers) is an iconic figure still in great demand with music industry heavyweights, including Mary J. Blige, Erykah Badu, 50 Cent, A Tribe Called Quest, Tupac and Ice Cube. Many of Ayers’ songs have been frequently sampled and remixed by DJs worldwide.”

“Searchin'” (1976) starts in E minor but shifts to G minor for its choruses (for the first time from 0:46 – 1:25) before reverting to the original key.

Stephen Sondheim | Losing My Mind (from “Follies”), feat. Marin Mazzie

In honor of Stephen Sondheim, who passed away today, here’s a reprise of a post we made in February 2018:

Oscar Hammerstein, a mentor of Sondheim’s, “taught him that in writing lyrics ‘the whole point is to underwrite not overwrite, because music is so rich an art itself.'”

In his hands? Rich indeed. His innovative harmonies and textures aside, “Sondheim raised the status of the musical, which had often been considered comforting and unadventurous family entertainment, and used it to explore adult relationships in all their complexity,” (The Guardian). Andrew Lloyd Webber: “The musical theatre giant of our times, an inspiration not just to two but to three generations, [whose] contribution to theatre will never be equalled.”

Fellow musical theatre composer Jason Robert Brown remembers: “I was 16 years old when I played Charley in Merrily We Roll Along at my summer camp in upstate New York. I suspect that everything I know about how to craft musical theater scores comes from having spent those four weeks inside that show, getting to know it as an actor, as a pianist, and as a young writer having stumbled upon the keys to a creative life I didn’t know was possible … Aspiring to work at that level is the most delightfully impossible task I could have ever set for myself. I hope I never get all the way there,” (Buzzfeed).

Here’s the inimitable, much-missed Marin Mazzie singing “Losing My Mind” from Sondheim’s Follies (1970). This performance is just exquisite; the key change at about 3:00 is a highlight.

The Supremes | Here Comes the Sunrise

Clifton Davis, known for writing “Never Can Say Goodbye” for the Jackson 5, wrote “Here Comes The Sunrise” for the newly Diana Ross-less (-free?) Supremes, released on their 1971 album Touch (The Diana Ross Project). ” … a nice song, a mid-tempo pop number with just the right amount of bounce; the Billboard review of Touch called this song a ‘chart possibility,’ and it’s easy to imagine it getting some radio play …

“Touch received strong reviews from critics; Billboard raved, ‘The trio really has its act together, and are sounding more exciting than ever,’ and Rolling Stone called the album ‘an unqualified success and the final proof that the Supremes will continue without Diana Ross.’ Indeed, the trio sounds extremely confident, tackling an eclectic group of songs with great skill; lead singer (Jean) Terrell, in particular, turns in some of the finest work of her Motown career, shaking off any bit of lingering hesitancy and attacking each song with impressive versatility and vocal elasticity.  Touch falls just shy of being a perfect album, but it’s close … Touch certainly deserved more success than it eventually found, and stands up today as a smart, satisfying artistic statement.”

After a start in G major, an early bridge (1:01) leads to a short instrumental interlude (1:24 – 1:29) featuring unexpected brass syncopations over a patch of sumptuous harmonies, dropping us into G# major for the balance of the tune.

The Belle Stars | Iko Iko

“Offering a self-contained, funkier alternative to early Bananarama, London’s seven-woman Belle Stars played and sang neo-soul and dance-rock,” (TrouserPress). The music “provoke(s) a good time largely through the band’s own evident enjoyment.”

Kent, a MotD regular, submits “Iko Iko” by the UK band The Belle Stars. “It’s been recorded many times, charting three times on the Billboard Hot 100, but only twice in the Top 40. The Dixie Cups’ 1964 version may be the oldest one recognized by most, as it was recorded as a percussive version of a song one member remembered her grandmother singing, not realizing that it had been written in the 1950s as ‘Jack-a-Mo.’ Dr. John recorded another version in 1972, which missed the top 40, but the best chart success came in 1989 when the version by The Belle Stars was featured in the movie Rain Man, scenes of which appear in the video.” The Belle Stars’ 1983 version, which became a top 40 US hit, modulates rather gently from F to F# (1:23); the entire harmonic structure drops away, leaving only the groove still running, and then re-enters in the new key.

Adele | Love Is a Game

“Early in the [2021] press cycle for her fourth LP, Adele referred to 30 as her most personal album yet,” (Pitchfork). “It’s hard to imagine something more personal than the empathy bombs that Adele typically drops, but she did not lie about 30 … Here, she’s telling a more unexpected story about love: What it means to inflict that pain on your family, to rebuild yourself from scratch, and—big exhale—to try to love again … she’s taking cues from newer visionaries like Jazmine Sullivan and Frank Ocean as much as her diva elders … her vocals are more playful: Motown-style background vox are modulated to a chirp on “Cry Your Heart Out” and “Love Is a Game,” in a kind of remix of her usual retro homage.”

“‘Cry your heart out, it’ll clean your face,’ Adele admonishes herself … It’s a record in which Adele ugly-cries, then wipes off her streaked makeup, sloughing off layers of dead skin in the process,” (The Guardian).

“Love is a Game,” drenched with strings and saturated with layers of background vocals, is a Motown/R&B pastiche of the highest order. After a start in Db major, the bridge wraps up at 4:15 — with a transition to Eb as the drum kit stunt-stumbles over an odd-metered measure before settling into a new chorus at 4:22.

Berklee Indian Ensemble | For Whom the Bell Tolls (Metallica)

Berklee describes its Indian Ensemble: “What started out as a class at Berklee College of Music in 2011 has become one of the hippest global acts to emerge from Boston … Founded by Indian Berklee alumna and faculty member Annette Philip ’09, the ensemble provides an open and inclusive creative space for musicians from all over the world to explore, study, interpret, and create music influenced by the rich and varied mosaic that is Indian music today.” The Ensemble has garnered more than 200 million YouTube views, at one point comprising over 50% of Berklee’s total. “‘Indian music wasn’t being taught in Berklee as formally as other genres, so we founded this ensemble … The idea is to nurture the next generation of musicians from India and given them a pathway into the global music scene. We have people from 44 countries in this ensemble,'” Philip explained in an India Today interview.

From the 2019 video’s description: “In December 2018, the Berklee India Exchange team got an unusual request: to reimagine and interpret a Metallica classic of our choice. The Berklee Indian Ensemble has always been known to experiment, but this one took us by surprise. The brainchild of Mirek Vana, the Metallica Project at Berklee is a Boston Conservatory at Berklee and Berklee College of Music collaboration featuring a contemporary dance reimagination of Metallica’s songs, arranged, recorded, and performed in four different musical styles, the fourth being Indian music … ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ felt like a natural fit, and soon, a new version came to life.”

After starting in E minor, there’s a shift to a quieter instrumental interlude in C# minor (3:40 – 3:57) before the original key returns.