Jonas Brothers | Pom Poms

“Pom Poms” was the lead single for the planned 2013 album “V,” which would have been the fifth studio album for the Jonas Brothers. The band broke up prior to the album coming out, but ultimately released six songs intended for the record.

Ironically, “Pom Poms” was one of the last songs they recorded. “It’s one of those things I feel like most artists do. They make the whole record and sort of find out the different palette of the tones they have for it and then sort of feel like they are missing a piece and that’s where we were kind of at when we wrote ‘Pom Poms,’ said Nick Jonas in an interview. “We had a lot of songs that were a bit darker in tone and we needed a brighter song and something that was really just fun and this song just kind of happened. It was toward the end. From the minute we finished it, we felt it was the right song to lead with.”

The song starts in G# minor and shifts up a step at 2:46

Jean-Baptiste “Toots” Thielemans | Undecided

Jean-Baptiste “Toots” Thielemans, “the Belgian-American musician who cut a singular path as a jazz harmonica player … began his professional career as a guitar player (and added the ability to whistle a line above it), but inspired by the mid-20th century innovations of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, he returned to the chromatic harmonica and developed a bebop-influenced technique on it,” (NPR). “He performed and recorded widely with his bebop heroes and many other stars of postwar jazz, and his tune ‘Bluesette’ quickly became a jazz standard. His work also graces many film and television scores.”

Later in his career, “Thielemans became a first-call studio musician for top arrangers like Quincy Jones. His harmonica graced the theme song for Sesame Street and the score for the movie Midnight Cowboy. And that’s his whistling in the commercial jingle for Old Spice toiletries. Jazz remained his first love; even toward the end of his career, he would begin every morning with practice on the complex changes to John Coltrane’s ‘Giant Steps.’ … He was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in the U.S., and a baron by the king of Belgium. He only retired from performing at the age of 92.” He passed away in 2016 at the age of 94.

His performance on “Undecided,” a 1939 standard by Charles Shavers, would have been remarkable for any other harmonica player — but it was utterly routine for Thielemans. His technique on the instrument broke through to entirely new levels of speed and agility. The groove drops out for a break just before the half-step modulation at 1:18. As if that weren’t enough, the second half of the video showcases Toots’ famous guitar-and-whistling skills!

Phoebe Katis | Make Believe

Thanks to MotD contributor Carlo Migliaccio for this submission!

Phoebe Katis is a British artist whose work spans from folk to funk. She released her debut album, Honesty, in 2019, which despite Covid time dilation making it feel like centuries ago, is far more recent than the extent of her career would suggest. Across the four albums that she has now produced, her music runs the gamut from intimate ballads such as “Songbird” (Sweet Reunion, 2022) to the raucous bop that is “Touches” (Honesty, 2019). She has displayed that musical versatility not just through solo music, but also through collaborations with Scary Pockets, Vulfpeck, and Cory Wong, the last of whom produced several of her albums and accompanied her on many recordings.

Katis composes many of her own tunes and has cowritten several others. She is a capable pianist, with a voice that blends a slight breathiness with soulful clarity. All of this is to say that she has produced some extraordinary music. Of course, her greatest work has to be “Make Believe” – a soulful ballad off of Honesty – as it provides us with today’s modulation.

The song begins with Cory Wong delivering a sweet Latin ballad rhythm in the key of D major. However, the tune quickly settles into a laid back pop/soul feel as the full band joins in to accompany Katis’ smooth vocals. A short build beginning at 2:17 culminates in a whole step modulation upwards into E Major, where the tonic remains until the end. Enjoy!

One Knight (from “Wonderland”)

Frank Wildhorn’s musical Wonderland, based on the Lewis Carroll story Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, played on Broadway for a month in 2011, plagued by a poor and confusing script. In his review of the production for The New York Times, critic Charles Isherwood called the score a “competent rendering of various pop styles.” This song, sung by the White Knight, comes early in Act 1 and modulates from F# major to A at 2:56.

Good Charlotte | Wondering

“Wondering” is the fourth track on the 2002 album The Young and the Hopeless by the American rock band Good Charlotte. After their first record did not sell as well as they hoped, the group decided to let inspiration guide them for this release. “Nothing about that record was pre-meditated, we were just having fun, and trying to do the best we could to achieve that goal,” lead guitarist Benji Madden said. “We’d gone out into the world and felt both the positive and the negative. And on The Young And The Hopeless we decided to really take a direction and stand up for ourselves, in a way.”

The track shifts from B up a whole step to C# at 3:00

Hometown Hero’s Ticker Tape Parade (from “Dogfight”)

Benj Pasek and Justin Paul’s musical Dogfight is based on the 1991 film of the same name, and tells the story of a group of young men in the 1960s preparing to deploy to Vietnam. The musical premiered Off Broadway in 2012 and received an Outer Critics Circle nomination for Best Score. This song, the opening number of Act 2, starts in F major and wanders briefly through F# and G coming out of the bridge at 2:24 before ultimately landing in Ab at 2:34.

Demi Lovato | The Middle

“The Middle” is the ninth track on American singer Demi Lovato’s debut studio album, Don’t Forget, released in 2008. AllMusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine described the record as “the kind of pop that feels disposable but winds up sticking around longer than its more considered cousins.” The song begins in E minor and shifts up a step to F# minor for the last chorus at 2:17.

Cole Fortier | Such Unlikely Lovers (Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach)

Here’s a first: a submission which not only includes an exacting level of theory detail, but is a live performance by the contributor, leading a quartet! Cole Fortier is an undergrad at the SUNY’s Crane School of Music. Thank you for such a detailed description of this genius tune’s structure, Cole!

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From Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello’s masterwork album, Painted from Memory (1998), comes the track “Such Unlikely Lovers.” It’s a truly unique and incredible song for many reasons.

First, it seems to be the one lyric on the album where everything goes right for the main character! While this album is an epic and stunning meditation on heartbreak, the upbeat and colorful narrative of this song brings the variation of levity and charm to the ordeal. Costello said that he heard the music that Bacharach presented to him for this track and immediately envisioned a lyric based around a chance romantic encounter on the street. The sense of spontaneity, optimism, and energy in the lyric is reflected so excitingly in the music. This song grooves so hard — more than almost any other song on the album. The constantly shifting tonality and subtle meter changes (a Bacharach trademark) truly embody the spontaneous spirit that drives the song.

As the song begins, it’s difficult to discern the key; the riff essentially vamps between a Gsus chord and an Fsus chord (Eb/F to be specific). The vocal then enters on a C minor chord, which contextualizes the previous Eb/F chord as being a part of the key signature of C minor. More specifically, this section of the song can be interpreted as C Dorian with the raised sixth scale degree of the A natural. The most intriguing harmonic shift happens very quickly though as an F#min7 chord occurs on the word “gray” (0:24) and subsequently resolves to a Bmin9 chord. This modulation from C minor to B minor is masterfully handled through carrying over the common tone of the A natural from the C Dorian mode to the F#min7 chord. The entire modulatory sequence repeats again at the lyrics “when you look how you feel” (0:30) — but this time, the song continues on in a tonality much more closely associated with B minor than C minor (starting at “Listen now”, 0:40). After the chorus, the opening riff returns at 1:17. Weirdly enough though, the opening riff is played 2.5 steps down and is never played in its original tonality again.

The smooth and nuanced modulation patterns in “Such Unlikely Lovers” through the use of common tones really show the genius of Bacharach’s writing while also supporting the energized and spontaneous lyric that Costello wrote. 

Il Divo | Adagio in G Minor

Featured on the classical/pop crossover group Il Divo’s fifth studio album, The Promise (2008), “Adagio in G Minor” is based on a manuscript written by Venetian baroque composer Tomaso Albinoni in the 18th century, which musicologist and Albinoni biographer Remo Giazotto discovered and expanded upon. The piece has been used in many films and TV shows, most recently in the 2018 installment of Ryan Murphy’s anthology series American Crime Story, focused on the assassination of Gianni Versace.

Il Divo’s arrangement begins in C# minor, modulates up to D minor at 2:36, and lands in F# minor at 3:28.

Talking Heads | With Our Love

On the Talking Heads’ album More Songs About Buildings and Food, “You can hear (producer Brian) Eno’s ‘studio as instrument’ approach in all sorts of sonic details.” But in comparison to the band’s early days as regular performers at spartan punk-centric clubs like CBGB’s, ” … these increasingly intricate aesthetics never threaten to overthrow the music’s pleasure center: an involuntary compulsion to move your body … Talking Heads were sorting out how to engage simultaneously with the mind and the soul (or at least the hips)—how to be both art-rock and dance music,” (Pitchfork).

Salon called the album “a backwards exorcism of frozen-brittle guitars, smeared textures, and super-ecstatic vocals. The record brought forth an essential darkness and didn’t try to extinguish it. These were songs about emotions that lurk, about the secret part of ourselves that knows people can see right through us on buses, planes, and subways, all sung by a disjointed, ferocious, manic, shivering guy named David Byrne. It was a kind of State of the Union address, examining the nation’s health from a dozen different angles, including the sky.”

Sharing real estate on the 1978 release with “Take Me to the River,” a languorous track which became the band’s first hit, is the up-tempo “With Our Love.” The verse is built around G minor, with prominent Bb minor chords. 0:30 – 0:37 brings an off-kilter section featuring Db minor and Cb minor chords before a return to the original G minor section. At 0:45, the chorus alternates between E minor, G major, and A minor chords. 1:36 starts the cycle again. The tune’s driving forces of groove, lyric, and texture seem to transcend any expectation of traditional rock chord progressions; it doesn’t so much modulate as it fails to ever settle into a specific tonality in the first place. Disjointed, ferocious, and manic, indeed.