Kelly Clarkson | Because of You

Released in 2005 as the third single from her second studio album, Breakaway, Kelly Clarkson’s “Because of You” has claimed its place as one of the most iconic 2000s songs of all time. While at first listen one might assume Clarkson’s hard-hitting lyrics were written about an ex-lover, the song was actually inspired by her relationship with her father, who left her and her mother when she was only 6 years old. 

Shockingly, Clarkson had to fight for this song to be released. She wrote the tune before her American Idol debut when she was only 16; when she brought it to the studio, it was quickly shot down by her producers. Clarkson stated in an interview with The Guardian: “The song really is the most depressing one I’ve ever written. I tried to get it on Thankful, and was laughed at and told that I wasn’t a good writer. So then I tried to get it on Breakaway and the label saw the results, people responding to it, and allowed it to become a single. Then took credit for its success, of course.”

The song is one of strength, intensity, and drama, living on in all the edgy glory of its time, residing on many nostalgic playlists for all of those emotional flashback listening sessions and car ride singalongs. The powerful and slightly cheesy key change at 2:51 is quite appropriate! 

Berklee Valencia Summit Sessions | Um Dia Mais

A group of students and faculty at Berklee College of Music’s campus in Valencia Spain collaborated on composing, arranging, recording, and engineering the track “Um Dia Mais” (One More Day).

According to the Youtube video posting, “‘Um Dia Mais’ is a song that combines experiential vignettes from different perspectives on the meaning of ‘a new morning.’ It is a song about hope, opportunity to start over, appreciating your surroundings, and seizing your day. The song was composed, recorded, and mixed during a three-day workshop, Summit Sessions: Ready, Set, Record!, which included a songwriting session led by Berklee faculty Viktorija Pilatovic; a production session led by artist, producer, and composer Magda Giannikou; and a recording session led by Giannikou and engineered by recording and mix engineer/audio technician Pablo Schuller.“

Featuring a 4/4 feel rooted in jazz fusion and infused with Brazilian flourishes, the tune begins in C minor but shifts to E minor for the chorus (1:00) before returning to C minor for the second verse (1:19). 1:56 brings a second chorus in E minor, continuing the pattern. An extended bridge begins at 2:34, initially in E minor but shifting to Bb minor at 2:53. At 3:11, we’ve returned to the E minor chorus, but at 3:30, we dive into an outro: a new 5/8 time signature serves as a compelling backdrop for a brief but wide-ranging keyboard solo; the vocal line, centered largely around one note, hovers and darts like a hummingbird.

John Parr | St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion)

From the 1985 movie soundtrack of the same title, John Parr‘s “St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion)” was co-written by Parr and David Foster. The film starred a group of 20-something actors collectively known in pop culture as “The Brat Pack”: Demi Moore, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, and Andrew McCarthy. The movie focuses on a group of friends as they move into post-college life.

Songfacts reports: “The phrase ‘St. Elmo’s Fire’ refers to the spectral light sometimes seen around a ship’s mast. John Parr didn’t see the movie before he and Foster wrote the song: ‘Fortunately I didn’t see the film, specifically because the phenomenal force of nature known as St. Elmo’s Fire was a metaphor. To me it was the embodiment of a dream, a focus to strive towards as it glows in the sky. In the movie, Rob Lowe pulls out a gas canister and tells Demi Moore not to get too hung up about her problems. He lights the gas and as it ignites he dismisses her plight as no big deal, just like St. Elmo’s Fire. That would have killed it for me.'”

Critical reception of the film was mixed at best. The video echoes the film’s earnest self-congratulation by combining footage from the film, a “club concert” by Parr, a set that’s crumbling and partially on fire, and Parr joining the cast at some sort of event that looks like … a photoshoot? An awkward industry event? It’s anyone’s guess. But the tune hit No. 1 on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart for two weeks in September 1985 and still remains a staple of many 80s playlists. Starting in A major, the chorus shifts to F# major (for the first time at 1:11); the verse reverts to A major. Many thanks to our faithful mod wrangler JB for this submission!

Barbra Streisand | Make Someone Happy

Originally written by Jule Styne (music), Betty Comden and Adolph Green (lyrics) for the 1960 musical Do Re Mi, “Make Someone Happy” subsequently became a jazz standard, and has been recorded by dozens of singers including Perry Como, Aretha Franklin, Judy Garland, and Jamie Cullum among others. Featured here is a live 2009 performance by Barbra Streisand at the Village Vanguard in New York City. Starting in C major, the tune modulates down to B around 3:29 while Streisand is ad-libbing some dialogue and stays there for the final chorus.

Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach | In the Darkest Place

“‘Alfie,’ ‘What the World Needs Now,’ ‘That’s What Friends Are For’ — the list goes on,” reports NPR. “He’s written 73 Top 40 hits, along with musical comedies and other collaborations. He’s won Oscars and the Gershwin Prize. His songs are often poised on the edge between poignancy and joy, or sometimes the reverse.”

Trunkworthy describes 1998’s Painted from Memory, a collaboration between Bacharach and Elvis Costello, as bringing out the best in both songwriters: ” … it makes perfect sense that collaborating with one of (Costello’s) biggest influences would result in one of the most meticulously arranged albums in his entire career … Painted From Memory feels like Elvis deliberately writing from the viewpoint of someone who isn’t him but whom he hopes may be you … the songwriting on this record feels very much in the spirit of professionalism: exercises in manipulation, in putting feelings and words together such that they channel a universality which transcends the limitations of any one person’s experience … The sum of this artistic one + one is more than strictly musical. By coming together when they did, each man underwent a kind of recalibration whereby the sheen of kitsch acquired by Bacharach’s body of work since his ’60s heyday was stripped away, and Costello, then in his mid-40s, shed the last lingering remnants of his image as an angry young man.” The composition process between the songwriters ties the album indelibly to the 1990s: the tunes were written through multiple drafts sent back and forth via transatlantic FAX.

Bacharach’s harmonic sense is enough of a feast for any listener, but he brings more to the table. Early in his career, Bacharach studied composition and orchestration with Darius Milhaud, a French composer known for a melange of jazz and Brazilian sounds combined with more traditional classical structures. Milhaud, a member of the informal yet influential guild of composers (Les Six) bound together by a reverence for Eric Satie, likely had a sizeable influence on Bacharach. Bacharach’s comfort with an orchestral palette is at the forefront with “In the Darkest Place,” including a doleful initial hook featuring bass flute, followed by strings, muted trumpet, oboe, etc.

Largely in A minor, there’s a harmonic fake-out (1:49 – 1:54) which turns out to be only a false hint of a modulation. However, the outro shifts to A major at 3:22.

Michael Buble | Everything

The lead single from Buble’s 2007 album Call Me Irresponsible, “Everything” is a departure from Buble’s typical big-band style — driven by the piano and guitar rather than a horn section. The music is co-written by Alan Chang, a frequent Buble collaborator, and songwriter/author Amy Foster-Gilles (also the daughter of mega-producer David Foster.) Buble’s lyrics were written with his then-girlfriend, actress Emily Blunt, in mind, but have a broader reach as well. “I wrote the song about the great happiness of real love,” Buble said, “but at the same time I was making a statement about the world. We’re living in really crazy times, and I wanted to say that no matter what’s happening, this person in my life is what really makes it worthwhile.”

The music video has over 107 million views on YouTube, and features cameos by Whoopi Goldberg and Bono. A whole step modulation from D to E occurs at 2:29.

Aaron Copland | Appalachian Spring, movement 2

“As the composer recalled at an 81st birthday celebration held at the Library of Congress,” reports NPR, “on the same tiny stage where ‘Appalachian Spring’ premiered in 1944…’I was really putting Martha Graham to music. I had seen her dancing so many times, and I had a sense of her personality as a creative office. I had — really in front of my mind I wasn’t thinking about the Appalachians or even spring. So that I had no title for it. It was a ballet for Martha, was actually the subtitle that I had.’

By the time he received the $500 commission to create his ballet for Martha Graham, Aaron Copland was one of America’s most important composers. Throughout the 1920s and early ’30s, he created work in a modernist style, music that was prickly and angular, frequently utilizing elements of jazz. But by the early ’40s, he moved towards a more populist style, with such pieces as ‘Fanfare for the Common Man,’ ‘Lincoln Portrait’ and ‘Rodeo.'”

In an interview with the BBC, Copland said he made use of folk music was because it was free. “The principal attraction for me in a folk song was that it was an easy way to sound American.” The piece premiered in October 1944. The Graham company toured with the ballet; on 1945’s V-E Day, Copland won a Pulitzer Prize for the work.

Beginning in A major, movement 2 of “Appalachian Spring” transitions to C major at 0:26, but reverts to A major at 0:48. By 1:28, F major is in play, and not for the last time — and the movement touches on other keys as well.

Here’s the entire piece, conducted by the composer in 1980:

Anthem Lights | Love You Like the Movies

Chronic MotD contributor JB, in submitting 2018’s “Love You Like the Movies” by Anthem Lights, notes that the tune features some chatter from the band (including a short debate about whether or not to change keys!)

The quartet is best known for its Christian pop, but this track finds the band inhabiting the pop side of the equation. The key change is at 2:58.

Andrew Ripp | Jericho

“Jericho” was released in August 2020 by Andrew Ripp, an American singer-songwriter specializing in contemporary Christian music. “The story of Jericho has always been super inspiring to me, which is why I wanted to turn it into a song,” Ripp said. “The part that really draws me in is when God says to Joshua, ‘See, I have given you the city.’ It wasn’t the marching around the walls of Jericho that made them fall, it was the moment Joshua believed God over his circumstance that the city became his. Marching was just an exercise in faith and obedience.”

The track debuted at #32 on the Billboard Hot Christian chart, and eventually broke into the top ten. Key change at 2:38.

David Bowie | Word On a Wing

According to Songfacts, “Bowie explained on the VH1 Storytellers series that he penned this song as a prayer to see him through the period when a debilitating coke addiction had him flirting with fascism and black magic. Bowie told the NME that the crunch point came when he was filming the Nicholas Roeg film, The Man Who Fell to Earth. ‘There were days of such psychological terror when making the Roeg film that I nearly started to approach my reborn, born again thing. It was the first time I’d really seriously thought about Christ and God in any depth, and ‘Word on a Wing’ was a protection. It did come as a complete revolt against elements that I found in the film.'” Bowie was reportedly unable to remember having made the 1976 album Station To Station, which featured the track.

“Abandoning any pretense of being a soulman,” opines AllMusic, “yet keeping rhythmic elements of soul, David Bowie positions himself as a cold, clinical crooner and explores a variety of styles … what ties it together is Bowie’s cocaine-induced paranoia and detached musical persona. At its heart, Station to Station is an avant-garde art-rock album … “

“Word on a Wing” is a surprisingly staid mid-tempo track among Bowie’s rangy 400-song catalog. Although the primary chord progression throughout the verses is a straightforward I-IV-V, several shifts in tonality enter the mix (starting at 1:55).