“Poison Ivy” is featured on the Jonas Brothers’ 2009 album Lines, Vines and Trying Times. The track, which features a horn section, was partially inspired by the English indie rock band The Zutons. “We were really inspired by the Zutons,” Joe Jonas said in an interview with Rolling Stone. “We heard their new record, You Can Do Anything, when we were in Europe last year and got everyone around us hooked on it.”
The song begins in G and modulates down to Eb at 3:06.
“Bus Stop,” The Hollies’ 1966 hit, “was written by Graham Gouldman, who went on to form the band 10cc, best known for their hit ‘I’m Not In Love,’ (Songfacts). Gouldman was just 19 when he wrote ‘Bus Stop,” but he had already written three Yardbirds songs: ‘For Your Love,’ ‘Heart Full of Soul‘ and ‘Evil Hearted You.’
According to Gouldman, this song’s middle eight was one of the few instances in his songwriting career when he had a sudden inspiration rather than having to resort to hard toil. He explained to Mojo magazine in a 2011 interview: ‘You have to be working to make something happen. Occasionally you can wait for some magic, like McCartney waking up with ‘Yesterday’ already written in his mind, which does happen — it’s like a gift from your own subconscious. Or sometimes, it’s like a tap’s turned on.’ The middle eight section ‘all came to me in one gush, and I couldn’t wait to get home to try it. When that sort of thing happens, it’s really amazing. But that’s rare. Mostly, you have to do the slog.'” The tune reached #5 on the UK Singles chart and was also the band’s first US top ten hit, peaking at #5 on the Billboard charts in September 1966.
After a start in A minor, that lucky middle eight (0:35) shifts to E minor before reverting back to the A minor at 1:03. During that section, the melody shifts from a lower, smaller range to a more emphatic, higher one, while the melody’s compelling syncopation continues throughout. From 1:31 – 1:45, there’s an instrumental interlude which ends in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it piccardy third before the transition into another middle eight.
The Last Ship opened on Broadway in October 2014 and played for 3 months. The score, written by Sting, was nominated for a Tony Award. Sting also briefly stepped into the lead role in New York for the final few weeks of the run.
The story, while original, is inspired by memories from Sting’s childhood in Wallsend, England. “I did everything in my power to escape Wallsend… I became successful, but I owe a debt to that community,” Sting said in an interview on public radio. “This play is me trying to honour that community, trying to pay back what they gave me — a sense of self but also the engine that allowed me to escape. That’s the strange paradox. I love where I come from, I’m glad I escaped, at the same time I need to tell that story as a sort of ‘soul debt’.”
Writing the show also helped Sting emerge from a long period of writer’s block. ““I was writing songs for other characters than me, other sensibilities than mine, a different viewpoint,” he told the New York Times. “And so all of that pent-up stuff, all of those crafts I’d developed as a songwriter, I was suddenly free to explore without much thinking, actually. It just kind of came out as a kind of Tourette’s, a kind of projectile vomiting. It just came out, very quickly.”
“What Say You Meg?” is performed here by Sting. Modulation from E up to F# at 2:49.
“One of the finest Hammond B-3 organ players of his generation, Cory Henry was a child prodigy, playing both piano and organ by the time he was two years old, making his debut at the legendary Apollo Theater when he was only six,” (AllMusic). “He has worked in the studio and toured with countless artists, including Yolanda Adams, Stanley Brown, Israel Houghton, P. Diddy, Kirk Franklin, Kenny Garrett (the 19-year-old Henry became a fixture in Garrett’s touring band for three years), Donnie McClurkin, Boyz II Men, Michael McDonald, Bruce Springsteen, the Roots, and many others. He has also worked as a bandleader and producer as well as an in-demand sideman.
Falling closer to the Art Tatum and Oscar Peterson side of the Hammond organ jazz genre than Jimmy Smith, with maybe a little Billy Preston tossed in, Henry at his best combines the best of both gospel and jazz in his playing … Since 2012, Henry has been a member of the acclaimed experimental jazz and funk ensemble Snarky Puppy, with whom he won a 2014 Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance and a 2015 Grammy for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album. In 2016, Henry released the gospel-infused solo effort The Revival.”
Although best known for his B-3 organ work, this video finds Henry employing a wonderful way to practice piano, varying his phrasing and transitioning through multiple keys as he goes; for the listener, it sounds a lot more like entertainment! The transcription which accompanies the performance was done by Timothy Gondola, who explains his process on his Patreon page: “I am a 27-year old classically-trained pianist, and for the past few years I have been using transcriptions to teach myself jazz. Jazz transcriptions are what enabled me to quickly delve into the foreign jazz world. Through my transcriptions, I am on a mission to help countless pianists and other musicians worldwide who are longing to play the music they enjoy. Transcriptions also create a portal into the mind of the improviser behind the music. They are a holistic learning tool for music players and music listeners alike.”
“Donna Summer’s title as the ‘Queen of Disco’ wasn’t mere hype,” (AllMusic). “Like many of her contemporaries, she was a talented vocalist trained as a powerful gospel belter, but she set herself apart with her songwriting ability, magnetic stage presence, and shrewd choice of studio collaborators, all of which resulted in sustained success. During the ’70s alone, she topped the Billboard club chart 11 times … After (the disco) subgenre was declared dead, Summer was very much part of the evolution of dance music. Through the feminist anthem ‘She Works Hard for the Money’ (1983), she became an MTV star, and she continued to top the club chart with disco-rooted house singles through 2010, 35 years after her breakthrough. Summer died from cancer in 2012 and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame the next year.”
“I Don’t Wanna Get Hurt” was a track from the 1989 album Another Place and Time; Summer hired the UK production team of Stock, Aitken & Waterman for the project. The album produced her last major pop hit with the 1989 Top Ten single “This Time I Know It’s for Real.”
After an intro in C minor, the verse kicks in at 0:17 in A minor. The chorus 0:49 reverts to C minor. The pattern continues from there.
“Undo,” written by Fredrik Kempe, David Kreuger, and Hamed “K-One” Pirouzpanah, was recorded by Swedish singer Sanna Nielsen and selected as Sweden’s entry in the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest. Nielsen later included the track on an EP, also released in 2014.
The song begins in Eb minor and shifts up a half step at 2:21.
“Who could possibly predict that a five-minute recording of a Russian romance song composed in the early 1900s with English lyrics written in the early ’60s, recorded in July 1968 by a green 17-year-old Welsh folk artist, produced by a Beatle, and arranged by a jazz nerd with unlikely instrumentation would result in a Number 2 on the Billboard charts? (MixOnline) Engineer Geoff Emerick says ‘Those Were the Days,’ produced by Paul McCartney and sung by artist Mary Hopkin, appealed to the public because of those unique qualities. ‘It was so different for the time,’ Emerick says. ‘Everyone loved it … Who knows about these things? We were always looking for something different, something spectacular every time we worked.’
(Arranger) Richard Hewson and McCartney spoke about what the producer had in mind for the arrangement, which only amounted to an instrument called the cymbalum. Interestingly, the percussion teacher with whom Hewson had been studying had a cymbalum. ‘It’s a Hungarian instrument that is like a piano without the lid on, hit with hammers,’ Hewson explains … As Emerick recalls, ‘I think we took a day out of the Beatles’ schedule so Paul could do this. We did it in Studio Number 3, Abbey Road.'”
The klezmer-style clarinet and rubato feel of the verse lend the tune its antique feel right off the bat, although the chorus picks up a consistent groove. At 3:12, Hopkin is joined by a children’s choir for a wordless trip through the chorus, followed by a brass-driven mixed-meter interlude which unexpectedly pushes us into the new key at 3:42.
Based on Frances Hodgson Burnett’s 1911 book of the same name, The Secret Garden premiered on Broadway in 1991. The Tony-nominated score, written by Marsha Norman (lyrics) and Lucy Simon (music), is one of the most lush and operatic ever written for the musical theater stage. Simon passed away last week at the age of 82.
“Wick,” which comes in Act II, is sung by Martha and her brother Dickon and reflects his delight at teaching her about nature. The song begins in Bb and emerges into C at 1:36. It then modulates up briefly to E for Martha’s verse at 2:00 before returning to C at 2:19. It then shifts to E at 3:31, where it remains till the end.
“As the title of their crown jewel Sons of Soul (1993) boldly declared, Tony! Toni! Toné! were true descendants of soul and funk music’s golden age from the very start,” (Albumism). “Hailing from the undeniably tough and vibrant streets of Oakland, California, the family trio absorbed the social, cultural, and political climate that defined the Bay Area during its most incendiary era. Above all, the Bay Area was one of the powerhouse cornerstones of funk and soul, where several influential luminaries like Sly & the Family Stone, Larry Graham & Graham Central Station, Tower of Power, and Con Funk Shun laid down their gusty, muscular, and righteous grooves all over the music landscape.
They were a band that were truly rooted in the tradition of yesteryear funk and soul bands, devoting themselves to retaining the beauty of live instrumentation, while utilizing hip-hop technology of the time … By the mid-1990s, the Tonies’ signature touch was felt all over the R&B world … Instead of merely wearing their influences on their sleeve, as they’d done on previous offerings, the trio embodied them organically and proudly on House of Music, making it the most classically overt and sophisticated dip in the revisionist waters of Black pop they pioneered for over a decade.” House of Music didn’t quite equal the success of TTT’s previous album, Sons of Soul, reaching #32 on the Billboard album chart and #10 on the Top R&B Albums chart. The release, the band’s fourth, ended up as its last. “Following a nearly ten-year standing as one of R&B’s most creative vanguards, the Tonies officially called it quits a year after the release … it proved to be the summation of everything the Oakland soul brothers ever sought to accomplish musically … They went out on top and didn’t look back.”
Sounding every bit like a lush early-70s soul ballad with the exception of its updated sound engineering, “Holy Smokes and Gee Whiz” seems to owe even its title to the tradition which brought us The Stylistics’ classic “Betcha By Golly Wow” (1970). After a start in Bb minor, the bridge (3:00) builds to an overflowing fountain of layered vocals that would do Earth, Wind + Fire proud, heralding a whole-step key change to C minor (3:33). A faded ending would likely have made it all complete — but 4:29 brings another whole-step modulation to D minor for an instrumental outro, re-stating the hook but forgoing harmonic resolution.
Ariana Grande recorded the demo for “Pink Champagne” at 17. The track didn’t make the cut for inclusion on Yours Truly (2013), but Grande promised her diehard fans that “when she hit 10 million followers on Twitter she would release the studio version. Upon reaching the magic number on October 1, 2013, Ariana popped the champagne and dropped the song,” (Songfacts).
“Grande wrote the song with Pebe Sebert: ‘I knew Ariana well enough because I feel like it’s all about trying to know the person to know what’s going to be a real look for them,’ she said … ‘She was 17 and portraying this kind of goody-two-shoes on the Nickelodeon series. We didn’t want to go too far from that image at that age … You almost have to have a little movie that you’re writing in your head.'”
After a 30-second spoken intro from Grande, the effervescent, bouncy track unfolds amid Grande’s trademark upper-range ad libs and embellishments. Very close to the tune’s end (3:24), a half-step modulation hits between two choruses. Many thanks to regular contributor Ziyad for this submission!
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