“’Get Closer’ (1976) has all those soft-rock flourishes that everyone loves to deride: the wash of strings, the soulful piano, the soothing harmonies … The lyrical premise of ‘Get Closer’ is simple and pleasantly symmetrical,” (SF Weekly). “Seals and Crofts are asking for reciprocity in their romantic relationships. ‘If you desire emotional intimacy with me, I need you to open up more,’ they seem to be saying. ‘You want me to be monogamous with you? Then quit sleeping around with my friends.’
This song has the added bonus of the voice of Carolyn Willis. Willis was a member of the R&B group Honey Cone in the early 1970s. After the group broke up, she worked as a session singer in Los Angeles for many years before retiring. She seems to have never pursued a solo career; aside from ‘Get Closer,’ you may also recognize her voice on the original ‘Wonder Woman’ theme.”
After starting in G major through the verse, there’s a shift up to A major at 1:01 the chorus. At 1:41, an unprepared modulation back down to G major would have been a bit jarring all on its own, but we’re also knocked further off balance by an unexpected 2/4 bar in an otherwise 4/4 arrangement. The pattern continues from there — until we jump all the way up to E major for the balance of the track at 3:12.
“In music, there are some songs that speak to some people, and some speak to every one of us,” (Anurag Arya). “This is a song that makes us think of escapism and disillusionment with the world: ‘Life on Mars’ by David Bowie. The song is a career-defining one for Bowie, and one of his most-covered songs. Originally appearing on his Hunky Dory album (1971), it isn’t your standard rock ballad by any means. Bowie could have easily made a four-chord hit out of this one, but instead, this song contains about twenty chords, with unusual scale and tempo changes.
… In a song with a duration of about four minutes, David Bowie made us think of life, a sense of purpose versus a tendency to escape the real world, and commercialism with vivid imagery and a beautiful melody. No wonder his genius lives on even after his death: Among the generic and commercial tropes within pop music, David Bowie managed to cut through the clutter and redefine songwriting musically and lyrically.”
After beginning in E major, 0:42 brings us to a transitional pre-chorus with plenty of pivots in tonality. But at 0:58, we land squarely in A major for the chorus. After another unsettled section — this time an instrumental interlude (1:38 – 1:53), another E major verse returns. The pattern continues from there, with the tune ending with a return to A major.
Many thanks to Mark B. for submitting this tune — his fifth contribution to MotD!
The early 1970s was the Era of the Horn Band — Chicago, Blood Sweat and Tears, Electric Flag, and Ten Wheel Drive among them (anyone remember Ambergris or Sweet Apple?). They played jazz-tinged rock, or rock-tinged jazz, depending on your POV. Then there was Chase, led by trumpeter Bill Chase, an alum of the Woody Herman and Stan Kenton groups, and also of Maynard Ferguson’s group. Like Ferguson, he was a master of the highest registers of his instrument, and not shy about flaunting it. Unusually, Chase had only trumpets — four of them! — as its brass section.
Chase released three albums on Epic, but only their first self-titled release met with real chart success (Billboard #22 in 1971). The single presented here from that album was a decent hit, reaching #24 on the Billboard 100 chart. A second album, Ennea, recorded after several personnel changes with additional changes during its recording, performed much less well. By the time of Chase’s last album in 1974, Pure Music, only founder Bill Chase remained. Sadly, Bill Chase and several band members were killed in August 1974 when the small plane carrying them to an engagement crashed.
The song here contains the trademark Chase elements: virtuosic, outrageously pitched ensemble trumpet lines and a driving rhythm section, fronted by gritty blues-rock vocals. In case you thought the trumpets couldn’t play any higher, there’s an upward modulation at 2:34.
“Peaches & Herb weren’t really reunited. The duo had been a pretty successful soul act in the ’60s, and then they’d disappeared for years before returning with their two biggest hits ever,” (Stereogum). But the Peaches & Herb of the late ’70s weren’t the same as the Peaches & Herb of the late ’60s. Herb was the same. (Herb was Herbert Feemster, a Washington, DC native who wisely took the stage name Herb Fame when he got famous). Peaches was different. The Peaches on ‘Reunited’ was Linda Greene, the third in a long line of Peacheses. Maybe ‘Reconstituted’ just wasn’t as catchy a song title.
… Back in 1968, the first version of Peaches & Herb had scored a minor hit with a cover of ‘United,’ an early Philly soul song that Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff had written for the Intruders. So ‘Reunited’ (1979) was a kind of sequel … The lyrics hint at past mistakes: ‘I can’t go cheating/ Honey, I can’t play.’ But they mostly refer to relationship bliss in the most generic terms possible: ‘I was a fool to ever leave your side/ Me minus you is such a lonely ride/ The breakup we had has made me lonesome and sad.'”
The sleepy track did quite well for itself: it topped both the R&B singles chart and the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart for four weeks in 1979. Selling over two million copies, it was ranked as the No. 5 song for 1979 by Billboard. After a start in Db major, “Reunited” features an early half-step shift to D major at 1:42, then another to Eb major at 3:10. The verses are just about identical to the choruses in harmonic structure, so the extra bumps in energy brought by the harmonic step-ups is welcome indeed!
The Foreigner debut has some of the biggest FM rock hits of 1977, like “Cold as Ice,” “Feels Like the First Time,” (and) “Long, Long Way From Home” — songs which still get plenty of radio air time today,” (Classic Rock Forums). “This album had a solid production by Gary Lyons and one of the best songwriters of the 70s, Mick Jones. Jones was involved with each song on this album. Vocalist Lou Gramm is one of the best in the business, with a strong, soaring voice.
… every song is highly polished with flawless musicianship. This album is truly a classic! ‘Feels Like the First Time’ is a grand opening song. A quintessential glam-jam with stellar keyboards, catchy riffs, and an outstanding vocal performance from Gramm. The background vocal harmony layering is a great addition to the already fantastic musical mix.”
Built in G mixolydian overall, the verse for “Feels Like the First Time” features a striking ascending whole step key-of-the-moment series (0:37 and 0:46) before 0:55 brings us the first chorus (returning to the original key). Between 1:49 – 2:21, the relative E minor takes over for the bridge, leading to a series of choruses in the original key for the fading outro.
The producers of The Archies animated TV series (1968-1969) “recruited a crew of anonymous songwriters and performers to provide some musical product to be performed by the cartoon band,” (Reverb Raccoon). “To the consternation of everyone who was not taking massive doses of drugs, The Archies scored a #1 hit with ‘Sugar, Sugar.’ The song was written by Jeff Barry and Andy Kim, who later had his own #1 hit with ‘Rock Me Gently.'” In fact, the track was a worldwide smash hit, and scored #1 positions on the 1969 year-end charts in both the US and Canada.
” … Long story short, The Archies’ ‘Sugar, Sugar’ is the epitome of everything that was wrong with pop music of the late 60’s and early 70’s. No one, except maybe anyone unlucky enough to have lost their virginity at a drive-in movie while it played on the car radio, recalls ‘Sugar, Sugar’ with anything approaching nostalgic affection. But… Let’s give this much-maligned song to another artist. Let’s give it to soul singer Wilson Pickett. This is the guy who had hits with ‘In the Midnight Hour,’ ‘Land of 1000 Dances,’ and ‘Mustang Sally.’
Pickett’s 1970 version of ‘Sugar, Sugar’ is everything that The Archies’ version was not. Meaning that Wilson Pickett’s version can be listened to, fifty years after the fact, without embarrassment. The horns and pulsing organ drive the song, and Wilson Pickett’s vocal shows a passion and sincerity that his animated counterpart failed to achieve. I can listen to this song every day. If I stumble across the original once a year it’s too many times … The moral of this story: Don’t send a cartoon to do a man’s job. Or something like that.” To say nothing of the fact that Pickett’s version features a half-step key change (2:08), a factor missing from the original version! We’ve featured both versions below.
“’Baby, I’m Burnin” is a killer disco track that still sounds great today,” (Country Universe). “Very much of the era, but not overwhelmed by it. A big reason that it works is that Parton’s jubilant persona is a good fit for dance music in its late 1970s form. When the genre moved toward synthesized sounds in the 1980s, her natural warmth would often sound out of place. But she sounds great here. She knows she’s singing a silly song for people to dance to, and she commits to it wholeheartedly.
And don’t let the cotton candy substance of the song fool you. A great disco song isn’t any easier to write than a great country song, and having a talent for the latter doesn’t necessarily translate to having one for the former. It’s a keeper, and one that’s proven timeless enough for her to still open her shows with it today.”
There’s a disco-infused country version of “Baby, I’m Burnin'” (1978) and a country-infused disco version; this video is from the latter category. At 3:41, after what sounds like both an electronic and acoustic percussion break, the tune moves up a half step.
“It would have been hard for any group to release a more appropriately-titled single in late 1977 than the Commodores did with ‘Too Hot Ta Trot.'” (UDiscoverMusic). “After an appropriate period of dues-paying, the Alabama collective were now in the form of their lives. Two of the Motown group’s previous four singles, ‘Easy’ and ‘Just to Be Close To You,’ had topped the Billboard R&B charts. With Lionel Richie’s ballads as a counterpoint to their funk origins, they were masters of any tempo. The irresistible ballad ‘Easy’ had been followed by another Top 5 hit in both soul and pop formats with the slinky ‘Brick House,’ and now came another winning floor-filler.
In the group’s democratic way, the songwriting credit for “Too Hot Ta Trot” went to them all, listing Richie, Milan Williams, Ronald LaPread, Thomas McClary, Walter “Clyde” Orange and William King. It originated as the closing studio cut on their then-new Live! set, which was predicted by Billboard to be a “hot holiday item with both pop and soul crowds.” It entered Hot Soul Singles at a bold #51 on the December 24, 1977 chart, and rose swiftly to spend a week at the top of that countdown in February 1978. The Commodores had their fourth R&B #1, with another around the corner in ‘Three Times a Lady,’ and another again in 1979 with ‘Still.’ With disco fever at its height, ‘Too Hot Ta Trot’ was a natural for the soundtrack of the movie Thank God It’s Friday, which appeared the following spring.”
From 1:03 – 1:20, E major flips over into its C# relative minor for a brief section (not sure what to call it, as the song’s form is a little bit atypical!). The section is repeated later in the form.
“While most Michael Jackson fans are busy listening to The King of Pop’s most renowned albums, Off The Wall, Thriller, Bad, and Dangerous, I find great pleasure in listening to his 1972 debut solo release, Got to Be There,” (Subjective Sounds) … “it’s an exceptional album and, in the context of his continued evolution towards superstardom, has become somewhat of an underrated and forgotten release.
Yes, everyone is aware of Jackson’s earlier recordings, particularly as the frontman of the Jackson 5, but this solo outing is a world-class record with a collection of 10 timeless tunes … The production, songwriting, and artistry are exactly what one would expect from Motown during the era … it’s Jackson’s impressive vocal delivery that makes this timeless album a hidden gem, (as) he was no longer sharing the limelight with his brothers. Jackson was only 13 at the time of recording … but it’s the Motown spit and polish that is so compelling … Berry Gordy and the team at Motown played a core role in Jackson becoming the King of Pop.”
There aren’t many moments when Motown and the Baroque era of classical music overlap, but the brief solo harpsichord intro of “I Wanna Be Where You Are” qualifies. The balance of the intro leading up to the verse at 0:14 features lush instrumentation, including a tight string section. The verse straddles the relative major/minor border, starting in B minor (can it be I stayed away too long) and ending in D major (did I leave your mind while I was gone). The major section takes up the most real estate, resting on the D major chord at the end of the phrase (with flute filigree touching on the major seventh degree of the chord.) At 0:32, the pre-chorus stands ten toes down on the minor side of the line, strings and harpsichord pegging the 16th-note intensity meter. But then we return with verse 2 at 0:51, progressing straight into the B minor chorus at 1:09, where the strings are newly liberated to deliver a syncopated yet lyrical countermelody. 1:28 brings another pre-chorus, again resting on a bed of relentless 16ths.
Via what might have been the biggest compound chord of the 1970s (1:45) leading into an instrumental verse with a flute feature, we drop into the new keys (C minor and Eb major). 2:06 brings a chorus in the new key, with Michael singing even higher (repeatedly topping out at a G5) all the way to the faded ending. All of this complexity is packed into less than three minutes! The co-writers were Arthur “T-Boy” Ross and Leon Ware; the track went to #7 on the Cash Box chart, #16 on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart, and #2 on the Billboard R&B singles chart in 1972.
“Daybreak” (1977) is “… one of a few Manilow songs co-written by Adrienne Anderson. This track has the happiness of a new day beginning, with lyrics of peace and excitement,” (LanceWrites). “Its upbeat feel became a bigger hit for Barry at his live shows (the song only hit #23 on the U.S. charts, and #7 on the AC charts). Encouraging people to stop running around the rat race of life and just experience life’s simple things by singing to the world of being positive and full of love, which is still relevant today. Let the sun come through the clouds, is a theme that several of his songs have, encouraging people to go through their struggles and storms with a positive attitude.”
Released at the heart of Manilow’s legendary late-70s run, the track initially appeared on his 1976 studio album This One’s For You. Starting in D major, the tune shifts to Eb major at 1:09, making use of a catchy I-v progression as soon as the verse begins. Although the beginning of the end is at 1:54 — only the halfway point! — a late outro/tag adds another layer of “the end is near” with a shift to G major at 3:26. If a single tune were chosen to telegraph that Manilow was destined for eventual Vegas residencies, it’s this one!
modulationoftheday.home.blog 