Tag: 1980s

Jeff Beck | You Know, We Know

In its review of Jeff Beck’s Flash, Rolling Stone ranks it as “one of Beck’s best ever, a record of awesome guitar prowess and startling commercial daring. It is also irrefutable proof that his kind of flash never goes out of fashion.”

Trading on the huge cachet he’d built up during the 1960s and 1970s with garden variety music fans and tech-obsessed guitarists alike, Beck rested on his laurels a bit in the 80s: 1985’s Flash was his first release in five years. His work with The Yardbirds in the late 60s was legendary, but “while he was as innovative as Jimmy Page, as tasteful as Eric Clapton, and nearly as visionary as Jimi Hendrix,” explains AllMusic, “Jeff Beck never achieved the same commercial success as any of those contemporaries, primarily because of the haphazard way he approached his career. After Rod Stewart left the Jeff Beck Group in 1971, Beck never worked with a charismatic lead singer who could have helped sell his music to a wide audience. Furthermore, he was simply too idiosyncratic, moving from heavy metal to jazz fusion within a blink of an eye … releasing only one album during the course of the ’90s. All the while, Beck retained the respect of fellow guitarists, who found his reclusiveness all the more alluring.”

“You Know, We Know,” the closing track of Flash, is based on a simple hook. After an intro in C major, the hook is first stated at 0:33, along with a rasping unprepared modulation to C# minor. Another jarring key change to D minor drops at 4:35. The mid-80s production fingerprint of Chic’s Nile Rogers, catching perhaps the most synth-centric sound of the entire decade, couldn’t be clearer on this track. Robert Christgau’s snarky review gave the album a B grade, opining that Beck “turns in the best LP of his pathologically spotty career by countenancing Rodgers’ production on five tracks. So what do we have here? We have half a good Nile Rodgers album, more or less.”

Talking Heads | Nothing But Flowers

After its initial waves of success in the late 70s and early 80s, the future of Talking Heads seemed more precarious. But you wouldn’t know it from the sound of “Nothing But Flowers,” a single from the 1988 album Naked, the band’s final release. The energetic, bouncy track bears the clear signature of several guest musicians from Africa. But Naked turned out to be the band’s final album. “It was touch-and-go for the band ever since their fourth album, Remain In Light, was released in 1980.” (Songfacts) “After that one, David Byrne embarked on various projects and it wasn’t always clear if or when he would re-convene Talking Heads.” The band broke up in 1991.

Songfacts contines: “The lyrics describe a post-apocalyptic world in which modern technology has been largely eliminated. Lead singer David Byrne, as the song’s protagonist, is torn between his appreciation for nature’s beauty and his dependency on such disappeared items as lawnmowers and fast food. It’s kind of the opposite of Joni Mitchell’s ‘Big Yellow Taxi,’ where they paved paradise and put up a parking lot. Here, nature has re-claimed the land, and now the shopping malls are covered with flowers. Throughout the video, strong visual elements make the band’s origins at Rhode Island School of Design clear. The 1991 Bret Easton Ellis novel American Psycho opens with an epigraph quoting some lyrics from this song: And as things fell apart / Nobody paid much attention.”

Starting in C major, there’s a shift to D major partway through the chorus at 1:31, then a return to C major for another verse at 1:47. At 3:15, the second half of another split chorus is elevated up to D major, remaining there for the balance of the tune. Along the way, several short sections are propelled by the frisson of departures from the primary keys (for instance, 0:59 – 1:06).


Sting | Sister Moon

Derived from Shakespeare’s Sonnet #130, the title of Sting’s second solo album …Nothing Like the Sun (1987) doesn’t appear as the title of one of the album’s songs, but rather only as a lyric in the tune “Sister Moon,” the tenth of twelve tracks.

In an interview with Spin, Sting noted that the album was the first which he’d recorded in all-digital format — a novelty at the time: “Although recording digitally was difficult and kind of alienating, it allowed me more flexibility in terms of arrangement … and that drove me crazy. I could change the key, add whole sections to the song when it was already finished, change the tempo, everything. But basically I knew there was a core in each song that worked that you couldn’t destroy.” Q Magazine‘s review of the album focused on the artist’s growing maturity after his years of rock/reggae/pop with the Police and a debut solo album from two years earlier: “It’s a measure of what makes solo Sting special that after so many years in the hype machine, living a lifestyle based on god only knows what riches in the bank, he has finally found the will and the voice to sing simply and affectingly … “

This 2021 performance of “Sister Moon” was recorded remotely for the Sanborn Sessions, an echo of host David Sanborn’s groundbreaking 1980s music TV series Night Music. The tune begins in F# melodic minor, with plenty of emphasis on the natural 7th degree of the tonic chord. 2:02 brings a shift to A# minor at the chorus, but at 2:25, we return to F# minor well before the chorus ends.

Linda Ronstadt | Still Within the Sound of My Voice

“For well over four decades, Jimmy Webb’s songs have helped shape the American musical landscape,” Rolling Stone‘s Anthony Decurtis writes. “And ‘landscape’ is the operative term. A native of Oklahoma, Webb imbues his songs with a cinematic expansiveness and a musical sophistication that smooths the edges of his rootsy sources. They sometimes evoke specific places – ‘Wichita Lineman,’ ‘By the Time I Get to Phoenix’ – but more often Webb’s songs summon an internal realm of the imagination. Yearning and regret loom large in Webb’s songbook, as does a particular kind of American loneliness, the emotional flip side of the country’s obsession with individualism.”

The Webb tune “Still Within the Sound of My Voice” is clearly related to the title of the 2019 documentary which recounts American singer Linda Ronstadt’s sweeping career. “She didn’t write her own songs, but she owned the ones she performed with rare authority,” (New York Times) ” … someone uses the word ‘auteur’ to describe Ronstadt’s relationship to her material, and it doesn’t seem exaggerated. Starting out in the ’60s at the crossroads of folk and rock,” over time, she performed styles from New Wave, Great American Songbook standards, Gilbert and Sullivan operetta (on stage and in film), and Canciones de mi Padre, “an album of traditional Mexican songs that explored a family heritage many of her earliest fans and collaborators never knew she had.” Ronstadt retired in 2011 due to Parkinson’s disease, which has profoundly affected her voice. But the documentary seems to speak most to her groundbreaking influence on many facets of contemporary music.

The 1989 release, a long overdue MotD debut for Ronstadt, is on the gentle side of the artist’s releases, but still features moments of her famously effortless belt. It begins in C major for verse 1, shifts to Eb major chorus at 1:07, touches briefly back down on C major at 1:22, then travels on to Ab major at 1:25. At 1:43, we’re back to C for verse 2, and the cycle repeats. At 2:43, there’s an interlude Ab major; at 3:15, chorus 3 steps up to F major. 3:43 brings an outro in Bb major as the tune fades toward the horizon.

Adam Ant | Goody Two Shoes

The Guardian proclaims that in 1980, Adam and the Ants “were a riot of makeup, feathers, tribal drums and surf guitars – and, for a spectacular moment, they became the biggest band in the UK.” But by 1982, the flashy glam-fueled New Wave band probably best known for 1981’s “Stand and Deliver,” had largely disbanded. Frontman Adam Ant “cast around for a new angle,” reports FreakyTrigger. “It was a moment in pop history when sudden changes of image and sound were respectable – even expected for some stars. Compared to today’s performers who tend to cover bandwagon-jumping with a figleaf of artistic intent, there was a refreshing honesty about this pursuit of a new look for a new season: pop and fashion were merging in a blare of colour.”

The tune went to #1 in the UK and Australia; top 5 in Canada, Germany and Ireland; and top 20 in Belgium the Netherlands, and the US.

Regular contributor Kent adds to his submission: “Not only it its entire ‘verse’ a simple cycle of tonic, supertonic, subtonic (which is already disquieting if your ear is trying to settle on the key), but it migrates through through other keys before returning to the original (A, 0:00; D, 1:56; B, 2:15; C, 2:25; A, 2:35)!”

R.E.M. | Orange Crush

From the R.E.M. album Green, “Orange Crush” reached #1 in the Billboard Alternative Charts and Mainstream Rock Hits, #28 in the UK, and #5 in New Zealand in 1989. PowerPop.Blog quotes R.E.M.’s lead singer Michael Stipe: “The song is a composite and fictional narrative in the first person, drawn from different stories I heard growing up around Army bases. This song is about the Vietnam War and the impact on soldiers returning to a country that wrongly blamed them for the war.”

Songfacts details that while the chemical known as Agent Orange was “used by the US to defoliate the Vietnamese jungle during the Vietnam War,” it had far broader effects as well: “US military personnel exposed to it developed cancer years later and some of their children had birth defects. The extreme lyrical dissonance in the song meant that most people completely misinterpreted the song, including Top Of The Pops host Simon Parkin, who remarked on camera after R.E.M. performed the song on the British TV show, ‘Mmm, great on a summer’s day. That’s Orange Crush.’”

The subject matter was uncomfortably close for R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe, whose father served in the helicopter corps during the Vietnam War, Songfacts reports. “Stipe sometimes introduced this in concert by singing the US Army jingle, ‘Be all that you can be, in the Army.’”

The tune starts in E minor, but shifts to E major for a interlude-like section featuring wordless vocals at 0:50-1:06 before reverting to the original key. The interlude returns twice more, but the reiterations have an additional layer of unintelligible sung vocals and spoken military-style chatter superimposed over them.

Janet Jackson | Let’s Wait Awhile

Featured on Janet Jackson’s 1986 album Control, “Let’s Wait Awhile” represents a departure from the sexually provocative themes typical of Jackson’s output. “I didn’t think at the time we were sending out any kind of significant message,” Jimmy Jam, who helped co-write the song, said. “For us it was more like a love song. It got interpreted as maybe more of a statement than it was intended to be. It’s a very simple love song and it was just saying, ‘Let’s wait. I’m not going anywhere, so let’s just take our time.’ Lyrically, that was Janet’s concept and we shaped the music to fit.”

Released during the AIDS crisis in the United States, the song was also frequently employed as a teaching tool to encourage abstinence. Critic Danyel Smith commented in the magazine Vibe that “on the fragile [ballad], Jackson’s tender, hesitant delivery conveys all of the trepidation and wonder felt by a young girl on the brink of losing her innocence.”

Jackson included the track on two of her greatest hits albums, and performs it regularly on tour. A modulation from Db to D occurs at 3:14 (the tune briefly returns to Db in the outro at 4:24.)

Sweet Dreams | I’m Never Giving Up

According to SongsforEurope.com, the group Sweet Dreams was convened specifically to perform “I’m Never Giving Up” in A Song for Europe 1983, the United Kingdom’s preliminary round to the 1983 Eurovision Song Contest. The BBC reported that “on the night of Eurovision 1983, held at Rudi-Sedlmayer-Halle in Munich, Sweet Dreams performed third in a field of twenty. They finished the contest in sixth place.”

From Eurovision.tv: “The host for the evening was Marlene Charell, who presented the show in three languages: German, French and English. Due to the trilingual presentation, the contest lasted more than three hours for the first time ever.”

One of MotD’s earliest supporters, HC from Copenhagen, submitted this track years ago. But the message unfortunately got stuck in the bottom of the clunky inbox system for Facebook pages and was essentially lost for nearly a decade. HC’s take on the tune: “Here’s one I particularly like, complete with bar stool choreography. Everything about this song is awesome: jogging costumes, catchy chorus, full orchestra in 144 bpm shuffle, inside-a-toaster scenography, the ass-shake ending … Only Great Britain in the 80s!”

The tune starts at the 0:40 mark. After plenty of reiterations of a sprightly hook from the flute and piccolo, an upward whole-step modulation hits (3:04) after colliding with a downward synth glissando, the aforementioned bar stool move, and a two-beat suspension of the frenetic groove. Many thanks to HC for this submission — and for his supreme patience!

Edge of the World, feat. Yvonne Elliman (from “War Games”)

The 1983 film War Games targeted a teen demographic, but was well-reviewed as a thriller for general audiences. The film captured the Cold War zeitgeist of the US completely: nearly half of the country (100 million TV viewers) had just lived through the airing of the The Day After, a film about the dire consequences of nuclear war. From a review by the renowned film critic Roger Ebert: “Sooner or later, one of these self-satisfied, sublimely confident thinking machines is going to blow us all off the face of the planet. That is the message of War Games, a scary and intelligent new thriller … The movie stars Matthew Broderick as David, a bright high school senior who spends a lot of time locked in his bedroom with his home computer. He speaks computerese well enough to dial by telephone into the computer at his school and change his grades. But he’s ready for bigger game.”

David interacts with a supercomputer which just happens to belong to the United States Department of Defense; he unwillingly triggers it to play a “game” which leads DoD personnel to think that an actual nuclear attack on the US is underway. MovieThemeSong.com explains that the supercomputer “begins simulating endless nuclear war scenarios, every one ending with the result ‘WINNER: NONE.’ Eventually (it) comes to the film’s famous conclusion about nuclear war: The only winning move is not to play.”

The film’s score, written by busy film/TV composer Arthur B. Rubinstein (not to be confused with the noted classical pianist), included an instrumental closing credit entitled “Edge of the World.” This shorter version features vocalist Yvonne Elliman, perhaps most known for “If I Can’t Have You” from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack (1977). The video features scenes of the nascent romance between David and his classmate Jennifer (Ally Sheedy), complicated by the very real risk that their world might soon disappear. Modulations are more the rule than the exception on this short track, starting at 0:28.

Variety reports that Rubinstein, who died in 2018 at age 80, reflecting on his career, said: “In classical music and jazz there is a constant, living swirl of wonder and discovery — both sensual and intellectual. As a composer and conductor, I’ve always tried, in some way, to be part of that swirl.”

For contrast, here’s the more expansive original version of the closing credits.

Bonnie Raitt | Thing Called Love

“Prior to Nick of Time, Bonnie Raitt had been a reliable cult artist, delivering a string of solid records that were moderate successes and usually musically satisfying,” AllMusic recounts. ” … collaborating with producer Don Was on Nick of Time: At the time, the pairing seemed a little odd, since he was primarily known for the weird hipster funk of Was (Not Was), but the match turned out to be inspired. Was used Raitt’s classic early-’70s records as a blueprint, choosing to update the sound with a smooth, professional production and a batch of excellent contemporary songs.”

The album made was ranked number #229 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. “But the record never would have been a blockbuster success if it wasn’t for the music,” AllMusic continues, “which is among the finest Raitt ever made.” In 1989, the album won Grammy awards for Album of the Year and Best Female Rock Vocal Performance and reached #1 on the Billboard albums chart.

“Thing Called Love,” a single from the album (though far from the most popular) was written by blues/rock/Americana songwriter and performer John Hiatt. The tune starts in A major. At 0:46, the chorus arrives and modulates to F major. Many thanks to Ari S. for this submission!