The Zombies were part of the early 1960s British Invasion with top hits like “She’s Not There” (Billboard #2, 1964), and “Tell Her No” (Billboard #6, 1965). Their last hit recording was “Time of the Season” (Billboard #3, 1968), which appeared on the album Odessey and Oracle. The title of the album was an unintentional misspelling by the artist who created the LP cover art. Oh, well. Despite that orthographic sin, AllMusic calls the album “one of the flukiest (and best) albums of the 1960s.”
The song here, “This Will Be Our Year”, is taken from that album. It was written by bassist Chris White, one of two principal songwriters in the group, along with keyboard ace Rod Argent. It’s a neat, concise slice of British pop, featuring Argent’s piano, and the vocals of Colin Blunstone. There’s an half-step modulation from A to Bb at 0:59.
The inclusion of Kate Bush’s distinctive mid-80s track “Running Up That Hill” in the streaming video hit Stranger Things might be the most prominent digital-age revival of a decades-old song — but it was hardly the first. “Proving that essentially all of pop history is now fair game for a TikTok revival, one of the biggest-growing streaming hits of 2022 now belongs to Nixon-era one-hit wonder Edison Lighthouse, with their bubblegum smash ‘Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes),'” (Billboard) … “The song, which reached #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1970, has seen an explosion in its streaming consumption after the song started getting adapted into a TikTok meme of users posting clips and photos of themselves to accompany the song’s lyrics … ” Streams were up by 1,490% and the song also moved onto Spotify’s daily US top 200 chart, just outside the top 100.
“’Love Grows’ marked one of just two Hot 100 appearances for the British pop/rock quartet Edison Lighthouse — the other coming in early 1971 with the No. 72-peaking ‘It’s Up to You Petula.’ The group’s frontman, Tony Burrows, was perhaps the most prolific bubblegum singer of his era,” scoring hits under his own name as well as an anonymous vocalist for the groups White Plains, Brotherhood of Man (‘United We Stand,’ 1970), The Pipkins, and First Class (“Beach Baby,” 1974). “He also provided backing vocals on a pair of early Elton John classics ‘Levon’ and ‘Tiny Dancer.'”
In spring 2020, jazz pianist Brad Mehldau released a suite of tunes inspired by the opening months of the COVID-19 crisis. “Locked down in the Netherlands, (he) decided to compose a 12-part cycle that reflects his response to our new normal,” (Downbeat). “Don’t come looking for Mehldau’s long, lustrous improvisations—or even short ones, though there might be some light embellishments here and there. This is a composer’s work. If its bite-size pieces are easily digestible, so are its penetrating melodies. Like the thinned-out harmonies, they emphasize the isolation at the heart of both the work and the context. Well, that and the pure strangeness … Billy Joel’s “New York State Of Mind” and Jerome Kern’s “Look For The Silver Lining” find new reservoirs of heartbreak.”
On his Bandcamp page, Mehldau released these liner notes for the Suite: ” … a musical snapshot of life the last month in the world in which we’ve all found ourselves. I’ve tried to portray on the piano some experiences and feelings that are both new and common to many of us. I’ve pointed to some of the strong feelings that have arisen the past month or more … a bittersweet gut pain that has hit me several times out of the blue when I think back on how things were even just a few months ago, and how long ago and for away that seems now … Billy Joel’s ‘New York State of Mind,’ a song I’ve loved since I was nine years old, is a love letter to a city that I’ve called home for years and that I’m away from now. I know lots of people there and miss them terribly and I know how much that great city hurts right now.”
Like Joel’s original, Mehldau’s cover grows most sentimental during its softly stated middle section. Although the tune is in C major overall, the midsection (1:10 – 1:43) is a parade of ii-V progressions through multiple keys whose eventual destination is back home to the original key. During the piece’s closing bars, a distant echo of the iconic main theme of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” somehow boosts the NYC quotient even further.
Michael Lucke’s wonderful transcription of Mehldau’s solo is featured on this video.
“Freedom ’90” was the second single from George Michael’s 1990 album Listen Without Prejudice. The album attempted to accomplish the nearly impossible task of following up on Faith, Michael’s global smash 1987 album that produced multiple hit singles and was among the top 50 best-selling albums of the 1980s.
Billboard’s review of the track included some colorful prose: “Platinum pop star waxes both cynical and philosophical on this well-worded stab at his early days of fame.” From The Daily Vault: “Its catchy chorus and uptempo, jangling instrumentation, coupled with his signature soaring vocals, make this confessional a striking example of Michael’s newfound independence.” From Music and Media: “… a stirring Bo Diddley beat, a gospel approach, and a great piano riff are the main features of this addictive hit candidate.”
Completely independent of radio airplay: the focus on a pantheon of the world’s top supermodels at the height of their own careers, rather than Michael singing to the camera, sent the video into the highest strata of popularity. The fact that all of the cover art iconography of Faith — the leather jacket, the jukebox, and the blonde hollow-body guitar — ends up spectacularly reduced to ashes didn’t hurt, either.
Beginning in a slightly uptuned C major, the verse is followed by some relatively delicate syncopation of the vocal line during the C minor pre-chorus (1:46). At 2:07, C major comes roaring back for the monstrously huge sing-along chorus. 3:30 brings another minor pre-chorus; at 4:52, a minor bridge also provides a contrasting lead-up to the chorus.
“Lost In Your Eyes” is featured on American singer Debbie Gibson’s second studio album, Electric Youth, released in 1989. The song, which Gibson wrote and produced, was her most successful single and sat atop the Billboard Hot 100 chart for three weeks. Writing for the former British music newspaper Record Mirror, critic Betty Page said, “Golden larynxed Debs hits us with the big moodsome ballad, proving that she’s shaping up to be the Barry Manilow of the Nineties.”
British guitarist/vocalist Eric Clapton, “with a band of stellar musicians that included the late Duane Allman, went into Florida’s Criteria Studios to record what would become one of the great classic albums of all time, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs,” (American Songwriter). “With its standout track ‘Layla,’ the album became a timeless record that helped determine the direction of 1970s rock guitar, performed by a band called Derek and the Dominos, as Clapton didn’t want to use his name for the marquee value.
‘Layla’ was a song Clapton wrote, with Dominos drummer Jim Gordon, about his forbidden love for the wife of his close friend George Harrison (she eventually became Clapton’s wife) … The album might have done big business had Clapton been up front about being the big name in the group, but instead, it stalled on the charts. When the edited version of ‘Layla’ was released to radio as a single in 1972, it did fairly well, but by this time Allman was dead and the band had broken up.” But in 1992, “propelled by ‘Layla’ and ‘Tears in Heaven,’ Unplugged became Clapton’s biggest selling-album, as well as one of the biggest-selling live albums in history, with a purported 26 million copies sold. ‘Layla’ won a Grammy, more than two decades after it was originally recorded, for Best Rock Song …”
After the iconic intro states the guitar-driven hook, a surprising downward half-step key change hits as verse 1 begins (0:24). We’re thrown off-kilter by a bar of 2/4 among the track’s overall 4/4 meter at 0:22, immediately preceding the modulation. The key reverts up a half-step for the first chorus, and the pattern continues from there. At 3:11, an instrumental section featuring piano drops a full step as it morphs into a more peaceful major key, taking up the second 50% of the track.
“This is a song about moving on,” say songwriters Michael Kooman & Christopher Dimond on their blog. “Blue Horizon,” sung here by Broadway actress Heidi Blickenstaff, is featured on Kooman and Dimond’s 2011 studio album. The tune alternates between Bb major (verses) and G major (choruses) throughout.
“A very reflective and nostalgic song written by lead singer Ray Davies, this is about the innocent times in small English towns, where the village green was the community center,” (Songfacts). “The entire album The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society (1968) was based on this theme.”
From Pitchfork‘s review of the album: “The problem facing The Kinks when they released (the album) wasn’t merely the competition– Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland, Led Zeppelin’s debut, and the Rolling Stones’ Beggars’ Banquet offered plenty– but that this subtle, funny, surreal, and at times almost tender record could have been recorded on another planet. During the summer of 1968, stateside fans were hooked on a high-intensity diet that had them jonesing for aggressive, overstated fare like “Street Fighting Man” and “You Shook Me” and “Communication Breakdown.” The disconnect between The Kinks and the rock world’s rapidly narrowing palette could hardly have been more pronounced. Compare the Stones’ bombastic, urban “Sympathy for the Devil” with understated work like “Village Green”, bouncing along like a horse and buggy as Ray Davies paints the landscape: “Out in the country, far from all the soot and noise of the city … Though widely disregarded at the time of its release, The Kinks’ 1968 apex, The Village Green Preservation Society, has had a profound impact on the present state of indie rock.”
“Robyn Is Here (1997) was a generic album in the best sense, proof that this budding newcomer could tackle a bunch of different things without making a big show of it, despite the obviously formidable acrobatics in her voice and the less obviously steeled songcraft, which is as listenable and lightly touched as anything Blige or Brandy themselves has ever done,” (Billboard). “It doesn’t feel like a great album — that smallness to it really is a double-edged sword — but there isn’t a speck of filler on it either … There are also surprising touches, like the (sampled?) Mellotron that cues up the awesome Swedish Top Ten hit ‘Do You Really Want Me (Show Respect),’ like it’s ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ or something.”
Produced by Max Martin, a fellow Swede, just as his production and writing career was breaking wide open via his work with acts such as The Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, and Westlife, “Do You Really Want Me” bears Martin’s trademark sheen, vocal-forward mix, and eminently singable choruses. In fact, the opening notes of each chorus resemble a singsong schoolyard taunt, an effect only magnified by Robyn’s girlish vocal timbre.
After a start in C major, the tune shifts up to Eb major at 3:17, jumping downward to a surprise key change into Db major at 3:36 for a last runthrough of the chorus before the fading outro. Many thanks to our regular contributor Ziyad for this submission!
“The Bee Gees made a commercial comeback outside the U.S. with 1987’s E.S.P. and its single, ‘You Win Again,” (AllMusic). One (1989), on the other hand, had an improved chart showing in the U.S., while sales fell off elsewhere. The Bee Gees are remarkable pop craftsmen … say what you will, “One” and “House of Shame” are convincing pop music. ([the single] “One” was a Top Ten comeback hit that topped soft rock radio playlists.) This stuff works as pop for the same reason “I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You” and “You Should Be Dancing” did: the melodies are catchy, the hooks are deathless, and the vocals convey emotion over meaning. It may be weightless, but it’s polished.”
“‘I’m the last man standing. I’ll never be able to understand that as I’m the eldest,'” said Barry Gibb (SmoothRadio.com). All three of his brothers (twins Robin and Maurice of the Bee Gees, and much younger brother Andy) passed away between 1988 and 2012. “‘Nobody ever really know what the three of us felt about each other; only the three of us knew … It was such a unifying thing, the three of us became one person. We all had the same dream. That’s what I miss more than anything else.”
The disco grooves that propelled the Bee Gees to international superstardom were long gone by the time of this 1989 release, but “Bodyguard” features the fraternal vocal trio still firing on all cylinders. At 3:09, a whole-step modulation leads into a short guitar feature before the vocals return. Many thanks to Brazilian contributor Julianna for this submission!
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