Yusuf / Cat Stevens | Land of Free Love + Goodbye

One of the most prominent singer/songwriters of the 1970s, UK native Cat Stevens (now known as Yusuf) had many hits in the first half of that decade, releasing more than one album a year during a brief period. Just as his popularity started to wane a bit, Stevens released Numbers” … subtitled A Pythagorean Theory Tale … based on a fictional planet in a far-off galaxy named Polygor,” (from the liner notes).

“Numbers (1975) sits in a peculiar position in Cat’s back catalogue – the last real attempt at making something ‘new’ and different’ in his ‘first’ career, the last album started from scratch before his conversion to Islam and, most interestingly of all, the only real half-concept/story album in his back catalogue,” (AlansAlbumArchives). “Even when concept albums were all the range at Cat’s peak (1970-73) Cat never made an album like this one, based on one rounded theme (his songs almost always share the same theme but are separate discussions of each topic and sub-topic – he never again takes us on a half-hour journey somewhere like this again).”

After an intro in F# major, the verse tumbles into D major (0:16). At 2:25, an instrumental outro turns around a few times before landing us in B major.

The Tubes | Let’s Make Some Noise

“… I was happy to hear the band cash in on their talent,” (Propography.com). (The band’s 1981 album) “The Completion Backward Principle benefits from good packaging (the band re-envisioned as a business, which wasn’t much of a stretch at this point) and great production from David Foster, who also co-wrote many of the songs. It isn’t a concept album … just a collection of songs that seem to take their inspiration from a bad day of TV programming (are you getting the sense they were watching too much television?): serial killers, giant women, amnesia.

Is The Completion Backward Principle a sellout? The answer probably depends on who you ask. Capitol didn’t bring in David Foster to make another convoluted concept album, yet The Tubes weren’t ready to become Toto 2.0 just yet. That said, lampooning the business side of the music business doesn’t change the fact that The Completion Backward Principle is (good) product.”

The album’s closing track, “Let’s Make Some Noise,” represents the glossiest New Wave/pop edge of the veteran band’s broad sonic range. The synth-heavy arrangement also makes good use of the band’s strong vocal firepower, with nearly all the personnel pitching in on backing vocals behind frontman Fee Waybill’s lead. After an intro and verse in D major, the verse shifts to C# minor (0:43). The pattern holds for verse 2 and chorus 2. At 2:04, the chorus shifts up a whole step to D# minor.

for Eric

This second video shows the band in the full simulated corporate regalia which was the centerpiece of the album’s concept. Album promotion via simulated industrial film(?) Why not?

Backstreet Boys | Never Gone

“Never Gone” is the final track on the Backstreet Boys’ eponymous 2005 album. The record marked a transition for the group from a teen pop style into a more pop/rock, contemporary sound, and is the first album of theirs to exclusively use live instruments. It debuted at #3 on the Billboard 200 chart, and has sold over 3 million copies worldwide.

The intro of the track is in D minor but quickly transitions to F, the relative major, when the vocals enter. There is a modulation up a whole step to G following the brief bridge at 2:43.

Paul Winter + Friends | Dawnwalker

After a start as a jazz musician, saxophonist Paul Winter founded the Paul Winter Consort, “one of the earliest exponents of world music, combining elements from various African, Asian, and South American cultures with jazz,” (AllMusic). “… Winter became increasingly involved with environmental issues. He participated in activities with the Greenpeace organization, and worked towards a successful integration of music and nature … Since 1980, Winter has headed a non-profit group dedicated to increasing public awareness of music’s relationship to spiritual and environmental health. He continues to perform in support of his organization, frequently in settings conducive to the production of (and interaction with) ambient sound, such as the Grand Canyon, or New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine … With help from some of the finest Irish musicians extant, Paul Winter presents Celtic Solstice (1999), his sonic love letter to the Celtic musical tradition …”

“Davy Spillane, one of Ireland’s premier players of uilleann pipes (also called Irish pipes) and low whistles, bringing a modern sensibility to musical instruments that have their roots in traditions that are hundreds of years old,” (Encyclopedia.com). “After playing with the groundbreaking Irish folk-rock band Moving Hearts, Spillane went on to a successful career as a soloist and accompanist with pop stars such as Elvis Costello, Kate Bush, and Van Morrison. He has also composed and played music for film and stage productions, including the hit musical Riverdance. An accomplished pipemaker as well as a musician, Spillane constructed all of the instruments he plays, and makes them to order for musicians around the world.” In 2000, Spillane helped Winter win a Grammy Award for Best New Age Album for Celtic Solstice.

Starting in E minor and led by Spillane’s haunting uilleann pipe melody, the piece reaches a common-tone modulation to A major at 2:25 with a switch to Winter’s soprano saxophone. We then move through various keys of the moment before returning to the initial melody, key, and keening uilleann pipe lead at 4:14. A final drone in D major ends the piece at 6:23. The rich pipe organ of New York City’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine stunningly underpins the stark melodic timbres and spacious phrasing.

Barbra Streisand & Bryan Adams | I Finally Found Someone

“I Finally Found Someone,” written by Barbra Streisand, Bryan Adams, Marvin Hamlisch and Robert John Lange, was featured in the 1996 film The Mirror Has Two Faces.

Streisand, who directed and starred in the picture, said in an interview with The Los Angeles Times that “I wrote the love theme, the main love theme, then Marvin wrote a bridge to it, and that was going to be our song. Then David Foster [who produced the track] had the idea that I should sing the duet with Bryan Adams. Bryan played our track and heard me humming and fell in love with this little theme that I wrote, and then he and his producer Mutt Lange wrote a counter melody based on the track that I sent him. And they wrote the lyrics. So that’s how that happened. I don’t think his record company wanted him to sing with me…because I’m more traditional, and I haven’t had a hit since I don’t know when.”

The song was nominated for an Oscar and reached #8 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It was included on Streisand’s 2002 compilation album Duets. Streisand’s long-awaited memoir, My Name is Barbra, was released last week.

The track contains many modulations. It begins in B and shifts down to Ab at 0:42, and then further down to F for the chorus at 1:10. The second verse moves up to C at 1:58, and then jumps up a tritone to F# for the chorus at 2:26, where it stays until the end.

Frédéric Chopin | Nocturne in G Major, Op. 37 #2

“Chopin composed 21 nocturnes, 18 of which were published during his lifetime,” (The Guardian). “They span almost his entire creative career – the earliest were written in the late 1820s, when the composer was still in his teens, the last in 1846, three years before his death. That period also coincided with massive advances in the technology of the piano itself; the instruments that Beethoven and Schubert wrote for – the kind that Chopin would have known in his youth – were very different in their tonal capabilities and power from those that he was able to play and compose on in the last decade of his life.

In some significant respects, Chopin’s development as a composer, and the steady refinement of his musical language, are inseparable from the increasing expressive power that the steady advancement in piano technology offered him through his career. Together with the mazurkas, the other miniature form that he made his own, the nocturnes provide a musical chronology of that development.”

“Chopin’s Nocturne in G (1839) is written like a barcarolle, a song of the Venetian gondoliers. In the left hand you’ll hear the gentle rocking motion of the boat,” (VermontPublic.org). “The music shifts and the key changes just like the scenery passing by. The boat comes to a rest and we hear a melody, like the gondolier singing a simple, repetitive song.”

After the piece begins in G major, at the 0:18 mark we’ve clearly launched into new harmonic territory, with many additional shifts throughout. However, the piece manages to come to its final resting point by returning to the key of G major.

Joyful, Joyful (from “Sister Act 2”)

“It’s been (31) years since we watched nightclub lounge singer Deloris Van Cartier turn into Sister Mary Clarence to avoid getting killed in Sister Act,” (ABC News). “Whoopi Goldberg’s character was put in protective custody, inside a rundown San Francisco convent, to avoid her gangster boyfriend’s goons after she witnessed a killing. There, she became the director of the church’s choir, taking the nuns from meek singers to a chorus so beautiful they sang for the Pope.

Sister Act burst into theaters at a time when movie soundtracks were stand-alone bodies of work. And this 1992 film was no different. It set the tone for other movie soundtracks that we’d also memorize later that year, including The Bodyguard, Aladdin, and Boomerang.“

“Joyful, Joyful,” from the 1993 sequel Sister Act 2, based on “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s 9th symphony, moves through several sections. The first section, featuring Lauryn Hill, states the rubato melody in Db major; at 1:29, the St. Francis Choir picks up the tempo into full-on contemporary gospel (E major, later rising to F major at 3:05).

Reba McEntire | What If It’s You

“What If It’s You,” written by Robert Ellis Orrall and Cathy Majeski, is the third track on American country singer Reba McEntire’s eponymous 1996 album. The album reached the #1 spot on the Billboard Country chart, and is McEntire’s first record to feature her regular touring band instead of session musicians.

The ballad begins in E and modulates up a step to F for the final chorus at 3:07.

Paul Young | Sordid

Let’s first establish that we’re not referring to THAT Paul Young (the vocalist with the multiple 80s pop hits — also from the UK).

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, we’ve landed in trad/folk world. “Paul (Young) has been a busy member of the Northern folk scene for a number of years now,” (Aluinn Ceiligh Band’s website). “Formerly a member of the well-known group Black Beard’s Tea-Party, he joined Aluinn shortly after their formation in 2011 and has been playing with them ever since. He also runs his own York-based band The New Fox Band. As adept on melodeon as he is on fiddle, Paul also has a busy teaching practice.” Young’s own website flips the script, emphasizing his melodeon work over the fiddle. Overall, Young’s web presence is very slim indeed, aside from his extensive Youtube videos.

Regular contributor JB adds: “In addition to stellar technique, Young is a pretty gifted songwriter.  All 30 tunes in the video are his original compositions, and while there are a few clunkers, most of the tunes manage to pull off a really difficult straddle: They sound sufficiently ‘trad-adjacent’ that they could be seamlessly mixed into a set with tunes that were written 200 years ago, but are also more harmonically adventurous than 95% of trad tunes.”

After starting in A minor, Young’s “Sordid” shifts to A major at 41:26, then back to minor at 41:42, alternating onward from there. (Our apologies for the oddly huge numbers on the timeslates, but this tune is merely a small part of a much larger compilation video featuring Young’s work).

Voctave | Goodnight My Someone

“Goodnight My Someone” is from Meredith Willson’s classic 1957 musical The Music Man. The song is our first glimpse in Marian Paroo’s desire to find love. MotD favorite Voctave featured a cover of it on their lullaby album, Goodnight, My Someone, which was released last year.

The track, which features soprano Kate Lott, begins in C and gorgeously modulates up a third to E leading into the last A section at 2:03.