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Lou Reed | Perfect Day

“Lou Reed’s low-key, optimistic, and earnest ballad about spending a casual, but perfect day with his partner is arguably his most enduring,” (GoldRadioUK). “Given the nature of rock ‘n’ roll artists at the time, and his previous outlandish experimentalism with The Velvet Underground, ‘Perfect Day’ was a bit of an anomaly for Reed. With the media, Reed was notoriously obnoxious, obtuse, and twisted journalists in circles as to not reveal the true meaning behind his words.

Featuring on his David Bowie-produced 1972 album Transformer … Reed wrote the lyrics to ‘Perfect Day,’ the slow, piano-based balled which details a typically amorous day out with his partner … The song’s lyrics flit between seemingly simple, conventional devotion to his partner in ‘Oh, it’s such a perfect day, I’m glad I spent it with you,’ to Reed’s true feelings about himself: ‘You made me forget myself. I thought I was someone else, someone good.'”

After a verse in Bb minor, the chorus brings a shift to Bb major between 0:51 and 1:18; the pattern continues from there. The placement of this humble, earnest ballad as a double-A-side single with “Walk on the Wild Side,” the uptempo oddball love letter to the NYC world surrounding Andy Warhol’s Factory, likely caused more than a few cases of whiplash among listeners.

XTC | Sgt. Rock (Is Going to Help Me)

“For decades, British art-rock chameleons XTC occupied an awkward space in the musical landscape; underappreciated songwriting geniuses too quirky for mainstream success but not edgy enough for alternative acceptance,” (LouderSound). “Slowly, over the years, this opinion changed. Dozens of artists began to list them among their songwriting inspirations, and their music became accepted as some of the most influential and innovative in rock’s history. Now, thanks to a glut of glorious sounding remasters courtesy of prog posterboy Steven Wilson, along with recent Sky documentary XTC: This Is Pop, XTC and their catalogue of incredible music have been propelled back into the public eye.”

“Sgt. Rock (Is Going to Help Me)” was included on XTC’s best-of compilation Waxworks (1982) and otherwise available only as a single. Andy Partridge, XTC’s lead vocalist and a principal songwriter, provided this capsule review for the album: “Spooky, unreal, dripping and unstable. The thrills and horrors of modern life in three-minute scenarios,” (Chalkhills.org). “Sgt. Rock” doesn’t inspire any affection from Partridge: ” … All the instruments in the track mesh nicely enough, but the lyrical sentiment, oh dear. It was supposed to be ironic, you know, nerdy comic fan imagines two-dimensional hero can help him with his unsuccessful chat-up technique. It did not work.”

But even a throwaway track, by XTC’s standards, still made for catchy college/indie radio material. The stiff guitar-driven swing somehow fits the mockingly martial lyrics. The track begins in F major but shifts to a bridge in Ab major between 2:10 and 2:27. The performers are miming to the studio track, not playing live, in this Top of the Pops-style performance.

USA for Africa | We Are The World

“We Are The World” was written by Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson as a benefit for African famine relief. Richie and Jackson, along with producer Quincy Jones, assembled a supergroup of singers, including Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Bob Dylan, Cyndi Lauper and many others, to record the track in January 1985. It quickly became the fastest selling pop single in US History, and raised over $80 million. Last month, Netflix released The Greatest Night In Pop, a documentary chronicling how the recording session came together and including footage from the studio.

The tune begins in E and modulates to F at 4:03.

Laura Mvula | I’m Still Waiting

“The word ‘comeback’ is overused, but in Laura Mvula‘s case, it really does hold true,” (NME). “Though her impressive second album, 2016’s The Dreaming Room, earned her MOBO (the UK’s Musician of Black Origin award) and Mercury Prize nominations plus an Ivor Novello award, she was unceremoniously dropped by RCA Records six months after it came out. The supremely talented Birmingham-born musician later revealed that she received the bad news in a forwarded seven-line email.

Having dusted herself off – writing the music for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2017 production of Antony & Cleopatra must have helped – Mvula is back on a new label, Atlantic, with an overhauled sound. Where her 2013 debut Sing to the Moon largely blended soul with orchestral pop and The Dreaming Room introduced a touch of funk and disco to the mix, Mvula has called Pink Noise (2021) an album ‘made with warm sunset tones of the ’80s’. She isn’t overselling it.”

“I’m Still Waiting,” was first a #1 UK hit released by Diana Ross on her 1971 album Everything is Everything. Mvula’s cover starts in C major; the second half of the first verse features an unprepared modulation at 0:18, settling into Eb major at for the duration. With an accompaniment full of sighing pauses and comprised only of keyboards and feathery layers of backing vocals, the focus falls all that more squarely on the storytelling of Mvula’s poised lead vocal.

Ross’ original, in Eb major, features no key changes and a gentle but more consistent groove throughout.

Toby Keith | Whiskey Girl

“Whiskey Girl,” written by country singer/songwriters Toby Keith and Scotty Emerick, is featured on Keith’s 2003 album Shock’n Y’all. The album hit #1 on the Billboard Country chart, and sold over four million copies. “She’s just the epitome of a redneck girl who ain’t into wine and beer or tequila,” Emerick said, discussing his inspiration for the tune. “It’s not strong enough for her. She didn’t do anything but sip on whiskey … We wanted to make her sound like a really good-looking gal who’s also kind of rough — but not some slobbering binge drinker!”

Toby Keith passed away last week at age 62.

The intro to the track is in E minor, and it shifts up to F for the verse at 0:26. A modulation to G sets up the chorus at 0:57. There is a brief return to F for the second verse at 1:48, and a final arrival in G at 2:20.

Franz Liszt | Sonata in B minor

“Franz Liszt’s Sonata in B minor (1854) is arguably his finest composition and one of the greatest piano sonatas ever written,” (PianoStreet). “Many place it alongside Schumann’s Fantasy Op. 17 as “the two 19th-century masterpieces” of the piano literature.

Although Liszt performed it for his enthusiastic disciples in Weimar, the work failed to impress Brahms or Clara Schumann. Robert Schumann, to whom it was dedicated, was already incarcerated in the asylum in Endenich by the time of the Sonata´s arrival in his home in Düsseldorf. The Sonata drew an enthusiastic compliment from Richard Wagner … It has now been more than 150 years after the Sonata’s public premiere and no musicologist, music theorist or classical music fan can deny its influence, craft, and original power. The work also represents one of the most successful solutions of the problems of the sonata form to come out of the 19th century.”

The four movements of the Sonata are blurred together; between the first and second movements, a chord is sustained over the bar line, or the nominal demarcation between the movements, followed by a very unexpected chord progression. The transition to a surprising new key center is the result, starting around the 12:00 mark in the first video below. The second video, by Polychoron Productions, provides a detailed discussion of the modulation.

The Lemon Twigs | They Don’t Know How to Fall In Place

“Child actors turned gifted multi-instrumentalists, Long Island brothers Brian and Michael D’Addario formed The Lemon Twigs in their mid-teens,” (LouderSound). “Flamboyantly dressed purveyors of Baroque pop, power-pop and glam, they swap duties across guitars, drums, lead vocals, and more … Todd Rundgren, Justin Hawkins (The Darkness) and My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way are among their fans.”

“Musical pastiche can be dangerous,” (The Guardian). “When you go beyond having influences to embodying those influences, artists can easily slip into self-parody. You need spectacularly good songs to pull it off … The songwriting never dips below classic … in an age of copyright lawsuits, there are still so many new and perfect songs waiting to be written. In love with the past but making the present so bright, the Lemon Twigs are, in the end, timeless.”

“They Don’t Know How to Fall In Place,” from the duo’s fifth album A Dream is All We Know (2024), settles into F major for its first verse. At 0:35, we’re led through a rapid cascade which finally gravitates to the terra firma of B major. 1:03 brings an emphatic C7 chord, dropping us back into the next verse in F major. The bridge brings some more harmonic shifts before returning us to the main form.

My Own Best Friend (from “Chicago”)

This week on MotD we are recognizing the legendary Chita Rivera, a dancer/singer/actress who passed away last week. The first Latino American to ever receive a Kennedy Center Honor, Rivera also won three Tony Awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Rivera had a long association with the songwriting duo Kander & Ebb, starring in Kiss of the Spider Woman, The Rink, The Visit, and most famously, Chicago as the vaudeville singer Velma Kelly opposite Gwen Verdon’s Roxie Hart. Both were nominated for Tony Awards for their performances. “My Own Best Friend” is sung by Velma and Roxie at the end of the first act as they realize there is no one they can count on but themselves. The track starts in Ab and features a common tone modulation up to A at 1:53.

Brandy Clark | Daughter

“Brandy Clark is one of the names most identified with queer country music,” (CountryQueer.com). “An openly lesbian major-label country artist who sits comfortably in the top tier of Nashville’s finest songwriters, Clark has co-penned radio hits for years, like the groundbreaking ‘Follow Your Arrow’ for Kacey Musgraves, boldly asserting freedom of sexual preference. And Clark has famously channeled other marginalized characters in her own releases. Her influence within mainstream country music has rippled far beyond what’s suggested by mere name recognition.”

“Low-key and wry, Clark is a meticulous songwriter who made hits for Reba McEntire, Miranda Lambert, LeAnn Rimes and Kacey Musgraves before she put her own name on an album (NPR Tiny Desk Concerts) … But when Clark steps in front of a mic and turns on the charm, her humor pulls the audience right into every single joke … In anyone else’s hands, (‘Daughter’) might have been a bitter revenge fantasy, but Clark’s gently swooping verses and puckered choruses sketch the bemused, from-the-front-porch distance of wronged party who knows that fate is likely to do more damage to a cad than a key would ever do to his car’s glossy paint job.” Clark garnered “eleven (Grammy) nods in previous years. She was up for six trophies at the 2024 Grammy Awards (American Songwriter) … (her) impressive range as an artist landed her in three categories — Americana, country, and theater.” This week, she finally took home her first Grammy.

“Daughter,” from Clark’s 2016 release Big Day in a Small Town, makes great use of her sharp observational wit and top-drawer songcraft. The tune is built in G major overall; a transitional pre-chorus at 0:31 hides all the seams while leading us to a chorus in Bb major in 0:41. At 1:08, the next verse returns in G major and the cycle continues. There are three tunes included in this Tiny Desk concert; “Daughter” is the first, but all of them are worth a listen!

Spanish Rose (from “Bye Bye Birdie”)

One of her Tony-nominated roles was her turn as Rose Alvarez in the 1960 Broadway production of Bye Bye Birdie. “Spanish Rose” comes near the end of the show, and there are modulations throughout. The tune begins in C and successively modulates up by half steps, ultimately landing in Eb.