Sting | Fortress Around Your Heart

For his first solo album after his groundbreaking work with the Police, The Dream of the Blue Turtles (1985), Sting formed a new band. Rolling Stone reports that the group included “young jazz hotshots from Weather Report (drummer Omar Hakim) and the Miles Davis group (bassist Darryl Jones), plus saxophonist Branford Marsalis and keyboardist Kenny Kirkland. These aren’t the usual sleepy gang of veteran sidemen; they never bothered to learn pop-jazz clichés, but they know their Jimi Hendrix, Chic, Herbie Hancock and Led Zeppelin, along with their Duke Ellington … Sting still writes short, modal melody lines … if you listen to the way verses and phrases end, there are new twists, surprising extended chords by way of Steely Dan, Weather Report and Ellington … (with) delicate-to-martial dynamics.”

In Musician magazine, Sting explained: “‘Fortress’ is about appeasement, about trying to bridge the gaps between individuals. The central image is a minefield that you’ve laid around this other person to try and protect them. Then you realize that you have to walk back through it.”

The verses leave a light footprint in terms of feel, belying difficult subject matter and complex harmonies. Three keys are touched on during the verse (0:45 – 1:22) before the tune opens up into the relatively straightforward chorus. Calling it “one of the most complex pop songs ever,” Rick Beato dissects the tune’s physiology in detail here (1:57 – 8:13).

Carmen Ruby Floyd | Unexpected Blessing

Actress and singer Carmen Ruby Floyd has appeared in the Broadway productions of Avenue Q, the jazz revue After Midnight, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, Chicago, and Hello, Dolly!, where she served as a cover for the title role under Bette Midler, Bernadette Peters, and Donna Murphy. “Ellington’s lyric-free but gorgeous “Creole Love Call” is delivered by Carmen Ruby Floyd with hypnotic simplicity,” critic Charles Isherwood wrote in his review of After Midnight in the New York Times. “Her voice taking flight in tandem with swooning melody, which seems to glimmer visibly in the air before you.” 

In addition to her theatre work, Floyd has performed with Gladys Knight, Toni Braxton, Babyface, Fantasia, Hugh Jackman, among others, and most recently toured with her mentor Vanessa Williams.

Earlier this year, Floyd released her first EP featuring “Unexpected Blessing.” Key change at 3:25.

Alice Coltrane | Walk With Me

Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda was a versatile musician and composer. An adept harpist, pianist, organist and vocalist, she had an extraordinary career spanning many genres and six decades. According to the biography on her official website, “Her interest in music blossomed in early childhood. By the age of nine, she played organ during services at Mount Olive Baptist Church.” She collaborated with the likes of Carlos Santana, Charlie Haden, and John Coltrane, the last of whom she married in 1965.

After her husband’s death in 1967, she embarked on a solo musical career, which merged with her quest for spiritual enlightenment. Her religious exploration took her to India, whose musical influences manifest in much of her work. Her albums display her virtuosity, and a mastery of a wide array of musical genres. Coltrane’s biography on AllMusic – authored by Chris Kelsey – remarks that her first seven albums “wove together the strains of her musical thinking: modal jazz, gospel hymns, blues, Hindi devotional music, and 20th century classical sonorities.”

From the late 70s to the early 2000s, Alice Coltrane stepped back from music, focusing instead on the creation and operation of the Vedantic Center outside of Los Angeles, though her biography states that she continued to play music regularly for services at the Center. She died in 2007 after returning to the recording studio for her final album in 2004. That album, entitled Translinear Light, features the tune “Walk With Me.” Coltrane displays her talent for arrangement as she weaves the melody of a gospel hymn (“I Want Jesus to Walk With Me”) throughout. The piece begins with some brief noodling around Bb minor before the hymn’s theme emerges at 0:30. She then explores the primary melody, pausing momentarily to meditate on a few motifs and ideas. The first modulation occurs at 2:14, launching into a joyful bridge, firmly rooted in the relative major. Coltrane’s soaring improvisations move effortlessly between gospel and jazz, evoking feelings of praise and spiritual elation. She brings it back home to Bb minor with a modulation beginning at 4:55, after which she weaves the original melody around meditative contemplation once again, through to the piece’s end.

Donald Fagen | The Nightfly

“Donald Fagen‘s solo debut established him as a more grounded, autobiographical writer away from Steely Dan. It also launched a trilogy of albums that wouldn’t conclude for decades,” notes Ultimate Classic Rock. “The Nightfly, released on Oct. 1, 1982, uses an overnight stint by a DJ at the fictional WJAZ to transport listeners back to a moment in time from Fagen’s youth at the turn of the ’60s. ‘I used to live 50 miles outside New York City in one of those rows of prefab houses. It was a bland environment. One of my only escapes was late-night radio shows that were broadcast from Manhattan – jazz and rhythm and blues. To me, the DJs were romantic and colorful figures and the whole hipster culture of black lifestyles seemed much more vital to a kid living in the suburbs, as I was.’

Fagen was searching ‘for some alternatives to the style of life in the 50s – the political climate, the sexual repression, the fact that the technological advances of the period didn’t seem to have a guiding humanistic philosophy behind them. A lot of kids were looking for alternatives, and it’s amazing how many of us found them in jazz, in other kinds of black music, in science fiction and in the sort of hip ideas and attitudes we could pick up on the light-night radio talk shows from New York City. More and more of us started looking, until the whole thing sort of exploded and you had the 60’s.'”

The album’s jazz pedigree might have a more obvious presence on its other tracks, based solely on instrumentation or arranging (for instance, the close-harmony vocals on the ballad “Maxine,” where Fagen’s multi-tracked vocals behave like an exquisitely phrased big band saxophone section.) But the adventurous harmonies and storytelling on “The Nightfly” make it an appropriate fulcrum for this album, somehow constructing an updated niche for the treasured audio iconography of jazz. Among other impressive chart positions worldwide, the album was certified platinum in both the US and the UK.

After starting in G major, the track shifts into a high-strung bridge (beginning at 3:20 in B major, but featuring multiple short excursions just about everywhere else), then returns to G major at 4:10.

Jonas Brothers | Fly with Me

“Fly with Me” is featured on the Jonas Brothers‘ 2009 album Lines, Vines, and Trying Times, their last record before a three-year hiatus. The track served as the closing credits music for 2009 film Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, and appeared briefly on the Billboard Hot 100 chart upon its release.

The song begins in C and modulates to D major at 2:51, where it remains until the end.

U2 | Gloria

Pitchfork reports: “In the early 1980s, U2 had earned critical respect and a swelling fanbase but, despite a UK #1 album, were far from superstardom … U2 weren’t yet an arena band but they carried themselves like one. What’s more, they actually sounded better the bigger and brasher and bolder their music got.”

Released just months after the game-changing debut of MTV, the video for 1981’s “Gloria” combines a vast outdoor location, sweeping cinematography, and the happy involvement of the band’s fans from the margins. AllMusic describes the tune as a clear point in the band’s development, “marry(ing) the message, melody, and sound together.”

Starting in Eb minor, there’s a big shift at the outro (3:06) to Bb major.

Brian McKnight | Back at One

“Back at One,” featured on Brian McKnight‘s eponymously named 1999 studio album, is one of the 16-time Grammy-nominated singer’s most successful singles. A Top 10 hit in New Zealand and Canada, the track reached the #2 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US, and also placed on the Adult Contemporary and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop charts. Key change at 3:00.

Labrinth | Jealous

“There isn’t a lot in contemporary music that Labrinth can’t do,” declares AllMusic. “The London-based artist is a singer, rapper, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and producer who has enjoyed success as a solo artist while also working alongside such stars as the Weeknd, Ed Sheeran, and Sia. Although he has released only two solo albums, Electronic Earth (2012) and Imagination & the Misfit Kid (2019), he has regularly appeared near or at the top of the U.K. singles chart since the dawn of the 2010s.”

In 2014’s “Jealous,” C major is challenged by its relative minor over the first verses and choruses, but there’s a huge shift at the bridge (3:20) as the protagonist’s hopelessness becomes ever more clear. Focusing on that bridge, pianist / composer / music educator Mark Shilansky writes:

“The Gbo (3:20) sounds like a pivot chord. It’s like a #VIo chord in A minor, but then it vacillates back and forth with F7b9 and Gbo again, so it sounds like it’s V7/V in the key of Eb, the V of Bb.” Paraphrasing a comment from one of his Berklee faculty colleagues: “a dim7 chord can resolve four different ways; it’s usually best analyzed in relation to the chord it resolves to.”

Mark continues: “Then it kind of abandons function and jumps to Ab (3:30), the IV in the key of Eb. There is some voice leading to which you could attribute this progression: A moving to Ab; the C and Eb staying the same; the Gb moving to G (even though some of this movement is octave-displaced). And then he’s pretty firmly in Eb for the rest of the tune. It’s a pretty risky modulation and it barely works, but if it does I think it’s because of the voice-leading. I’ve never seen a modulation like it. I would have resolved the Gbo7 to something else before I tiptoed into Eb. But maybe because it’s so ambiguous, it forms prosody with the desperation of the lyrics — like the narrator himself is lost.”

Cheryl Lynn | What’s On Your Mind

1981 saw the release of the album In the Night by disco royalty Cheryl Lynn. The Second Disc notes that ” … with Latin-tinged, layered percussion and melodic bass runs from Miller supporting Lynn’s stratospheric range, it’s a fast-paced and ever-danceable Lynn/George Dream original with vocal acrobatics reminiscent of ‘Got To Be Real.'” The aforementioned Miller is Marcus, the legendary jazz and funk bassist who’s gone on to build one of the most multi-faceted resumes in contemporary music.

The dance genre known as Post-Disco was heavily influenced by funk. Mixmag reports: ” … the term Disco has morphed into a catch-all term for dance music before House … but there was a very important bridge that connected the dots between US and Europe, man and machine. In 1979, disco (had filtered) its way into TV, advertising, comics and even music from Ethel Merman. The backlash was quick and punishing; the implicitly homophobic and racist ‘Disco Sucks’ rally at Chicago’s Comiskey Park that year all but killed the sound in mainstream America. Disco was forced back underground … a period where there were no rules and music was open to all sorts of influences.”

While the tune begins and ends in E minor, there are shifts in tonality throughout:

0:00 Intro and Chorus

0:32 Verse

1:05 Chorus

1:21 Verse

1:55 Transition/Bridge Section A; 2:09, Section B; 2:18, Section C

2:26 Chorus, Break, Chorus …

Many thanks to our resolute stringer JB for yet another great submission!

Chick Corea + Gary Burton | Crystal Silence

Longtime collaborators Chick Corea and Gary Burton, pianist and vibraphonist respectively, released their jazz duo album Crystal Silence in 1972. (A follow-up album, New Crystal Silence, was released in 2008.) Allmusic called the record “a sublime indication of what two master improvisers can do given quality raw material… Improvised music is rarely this coherent and melodic.”

Corea, a titanic pianist in the history of jazz music, is known for helping introduce the jazz fusion genre as a member of Miles Davis’s band in the 1960s. A 60-time Grammy nominated performer and 23-time winner, the 79 year old Corea passed away on February 11, 2021 from a rare form of cancer.

While this performance by Corea and Burton doesn’t directly modulate, the interplay and improvisation between the two push at the boundaries of the A minor tonality throughout, reflecting the innovative spirit Corea championed throughout his career.