1990s

Sting | All This Time

“On the singer/songwriter side (to use the term in a strictly idiomatic sense), The Soul Cages (1991) marks the first time Sting fully divorced himself from his Police-era approach to writing,” (RockAndRollGlobe). “Sure, there were plenty of arty, harmonically sophisticated pieces on his first two solo records, but there were also songs with more groove-based settings that you could imagine as part of the Police continuum. There are none of those holdovers from Sting’s previous life here. Opinions will vary as to whether that’s a good or bad thing, but Sting stands or falls here as a man owing nothing to his past. And even his artiest applications of craft oThe Soul Cages feel more organic than they did his previous couple of times at bat.

Stylistically, Sting’s M.O. seems closer to the contemporaneous output of Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell or even Leonard Cohen than anything else. The free-flowing phrasing and poetic language spilling out over a solid rhythmic base on the album’s biggest single, “All This Time,” sure seems to suggest some quality time spent assimilating Simon’s Graceland and The Rhythm of the Saints … A strong case can also be made for The Soul Cages as a sneaky sashay into prog territory. First of all, it’s a freakin’ concept album. Something about Sting’s late father always wanting to be a sailor — don’t worry about it, he probably made more sense of the maritime themes when he wrote his musical, The Last Ship, a couple of decades later. It makes more sense than Jethro Tull did on Thick as a Brick, and that’s a masterpiece, so there you go.”

All this time / The river flowed / Endlessly to the sea … If I had my way /
I’d take a boat from the river …

The cheerful feel and relentlessly major-key tonality of “All This Time” belie the tune’s existential weightiness. At 3:15, there’s an unprepared whole-step upward shift in key.

Aztec Camera | Good Morning Britain

“‘When I was 13 years old, I was a real Mick Jones, Joe Strummer freak. I used to go and see them in the Glasgow Apollo and stand in the front row,’ pipes Aztec Camera singer, songwriter, and all around chief Roddy Frame,” (KillermontStreet). The Scottish songwriter reported “‘Recently I got to meet Mick because we played the same kind of festivals together and we got to hang out. He was just such a positive guy, I called him guru Mick and we talked a lot about the state of the nation,’ he continues. ‘I was quite negative about the things in Britain and he was saying yeah, but there’s more to life than that.

So I went home and wrote this song for him in about 45 minutes. I said, Mick, this sounds so much like the Clash that you’re either gonna sue me or you’re going to wanna sing on it, and he wanted to sing, so it was fantastic.'” Aztec Camera’s 1990 release Stray features the resulting single, “Good Morning Britain.”

The pop/rock track, which certainly sounds like The Clash (or its younger cousin, Big Audio Dynamite) shifts up a full step at 2:25.

Whitney Houston | Joy to the World

As always, we kick off the holiday season with Whitney Houston‘s inimitable cover of “Joy To The World,” originally recorded for the 1996 film The Preacher’s Wife. This arrangement hits the mark in every way — there are key changes at 0:43, 1:48, 2:22, 3:00 and 3:12, as well as a false ending at 3:37.

Journey On (from “Ragtime”)

“A turn-of-the-century tale of race, class, and hope … Set at the dawn of the 20th century, Ragtime intertwines the lives of three families in pursuit of the American Dream,” (Show-Score.com). “Coalhouse Walker Jr., a Black pianist, and his beloved Sarah navigate a society rife with racial tensions. Tateh, a Jewish immigrant from Latvia, seeks a better life for his daughter amidst the challenges of assimilation. Meanwhile, a white upper-class family grapples with their own evolving ideals. Their stories converge, painting a vivid portrait of a nation on the cusp of change.” The musical was composed by Stephen Flaherty, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, and a book by Terrence McNally. Based a novel of the same name (1975) by E. L. Doctorow, Ragtime initially opened on Broadway in 1998. The show has enjoyed several revivals, including a current Broadway run.

“As the characters’ lives collide, a world wracked by racism, anti-immigrant hate, social inequality, and violence comes into unsettling view,” (New York Theatre Guide). “You don’t have to squint to see Ragtime’s enduring relevance. That’s a great thing about the show, though not about the state of current events.”

After a protracted spoken intro, the melody of “Journey On” begins at 0:58 in E major. At 1:36, a shift up a whole step to F# major underscores a change in the storytelling’s focus, then again upward to G# major at 3:13.

Plush | Soaring and Boring

“Liam Hayes is an accidental perfectionist. In hindsight, the Chicago-bred/Milwaukee-based songwriter’s disjointed two-decade trajectory — under his nom de pop Plush and, now, his birth name — was pretty much spelled out in the title of his early signature “Soaring and Boring”: high expectations followed by agonizingly long periods of inactivity,” (Pitchfork). “On the surface, Hayes’ backstory boasts all the hallmarks of a contrarian eccentric genius, whether he was answering the orch-pop promise of Plush’s splendorous 1994 debut single “Three-Quarters Blind Eyes”/”Found a Little Baby” with 1998’s starkly somber solo-piano effort More You Becomes You; tinkering with the symphono-soul follow-up Fed so much he had to release it in two different versions; or issuing certain albums in Japan only. But the uncommon lags between albums have mostly been a factor of Hayes losing his money rather than his mind, and trying to find sympathetic label backers to support a vision of tastefully constructed, soft-focus pop music that’s always been out of step with both mainstream and underground orthodoxies.”

“While it’s hip for contemporary pop acts to toss out Burt Bacharach’s name as an influence, few even remotely approximate the master’s melodic savvy, emotional resonance and simple elegance; Plush’s Liam Hayes comes much closer to the mark, with his debut More You Becomes You — an intimate, often gorgeous collection of piano ballads — recalling the handful of solo records Bacharach cut during the late 1960s,” (AllMusic). “Gentle yet disarming, the record’s only hint of irony is in its title — Hayes smartly favors a less-is-more approach, stripping his music of virtually everything but piano and vocals; both are more than adequate to convey the somber beauty which lends the album its seductive powers.”

Starting in A minor, “Soaring and Boring” (1998) drifts down to Ab minor at the 0:17 mark before rebounding at 0:26. The alternating pattern continues until 0:44, when the track settles into a longer patch of G minor during the chorus. More harmonic shifts continue from there.

Many thanks to regular contributor Ari S. for yet another distinctive submission to MotD!

Jonatha Brooke | Landmine

“Jonatha Brooke started off as one half of The Story, with Jennifer Kimball,” (Tuesday Morning 3 a.m.) “The duo made lovely, complex acoustic pop music, but the best songs were Brooke’s, so it was no surprise that when she went solo with Plumb, she made a perfect pop record … It was her fourth album, 10 Cent Wings, however, that truly established her as a formidable songwriting voice. It’s one of those records on which each song, as it’s playing, is your favorite. It takes retrospection to find a standout track.

MCA Records had no idea what to do with an album this good … 10 Cent Wings languished unpromoted, a common story with an increasingly common result: Brooke bailed on major labels all together. (in 2000) she followed Aimee Mann, another literate pop songwriter with a history of uncooperative record companies, into the realm of independent distribution … Despite how difficult it must have been to watch an album like 10 Cent Wings wither on the vine, Jonatha Brooke has delivered on her own confidence. She’s proven throughout her career that if one group of songs doesn’t bring her the recognition she deserves, she can always write more that are just as good. That’s something no label executive could ever do.”

“Landmine,” a doleful track from 1997’s 10 Cent Wings, begins in D minor. The chorus shifts to D major at 0:46. But not before travelling through a short pre-chorus in E minor (0:31 – 0:46) featuring little more than a tritone bass line (’nuff said) and vocal melody. Starting at 1:21, the pattern repeats. Even when chorus’ sunnier tonality arrives, the lyrics are still downcast:

Was it that you wanted that I didn’t understand
The boomerang of expectation’s back to bite the hand

And I give my love to you
And you / You walk away too soon

Tom Petty | Mary Jane’s Last Dance

“Tom Petty wrote dozens of hit songs over the course of his four-decade career as frontman of the Heartbreakers, but not all of them impressed his bandmates. At least not right away,” (Ultimate Classic Rock). “Such was the case with ‘Mary Jane’s Last Dance,’ a song that Petty started one day and didn’t finish. ‘I wrote all but the chorus,’ he recalled for 2005’s Conversations With Tom Petty. ‘I just had the loop going around and around and really had most of the words and everything. And I played the tape for Rick [Rubin] and he liked it a lot and suggested I write a chorus. So I tried to finish it up while I was making [1994’s] Wildflowers, and there were maybe five years between the writing of the verses and the chorus.’

… For those who hastily assumed ‘Mary Jane’ was a reference to marijuana, Petty cleared that up later on. ‘I don’t think I was writing about pot,’ he said in 2005. ‘I think it was just a girl’s name. I can’t imagine that I’d write a song about pot. I don’t think there’s enough there to write about [laughs].’ Though it took years for ‘Mary Jane’s Last Dance’ to take its final form, it clearly paid off. By the time Petty died in 2017, the band had played the song live in concert over 500 times, and it’s remained an important touchstone of their catalog.”

Starting with an intro and verse in an uptuned A minor, the chorus (first heard from 1:09 – 1:31) shifts to A major — somewhat obscured by a prominent minor v chord (E minor).

The Indigo Girls | Reunion

“The Indigo Girls … have been friends singing together since they were kids in 1970s Atlanta,” (New York Times). “They make a good living as working musicians, touring regularly to delight a loyal fan base … But their music — songwriterly, acoustic-forward, aggressively emotional — hardly seems a good fit for our strange and cynical times. They are, as the kids would say, cringe … Cringe: the ultimate insult of our era. It implies a kind of pathetic attachment to hope, to sincerity, to possibility.

I asked (film director Greta) Gerwig why the Indigo Girls were in Barbie. ‘The Indigo Girls were part of my growing up … ‘Closer to Fine’ is just one of those songs that meets you where you are, wherever you are. It has spoken to me throughout my life, like a novel you revisit,’ … This is what the Indigo Girls are all about. Sincerity coupled with wisdom, which is a recipe for something durable: solidarity. A sense that we are in this together. The Indigo Girls are great. Cringe but true. That’s because the kernel of who we are is cringe. That is what it means to be open to the world. To be open to the possibility of a future different from who you are now.”

“Reunion” is a track from the duo’s fifth studio album Swamp Ophelia (1994). Tim Paul, a first-time contributor to MotD, explains that “the song is in A major until the instrumental interlude around 2:21; they modulate to B major, then back to A major at 2:51.” Many thanks, TP, for this wonderful submission — doubly good because it marks the Indigo Girls’ (long overdue) MotD debut!

The Offspring | Americana

“In 2015, The Offspring auctioned off the rights for their Columbia Records catalogue to Round Hill Music, a $35 million deal that included a total of six studio albums and a greatest hits LP — all released after 1994’s Smash, the group’s Epitaph breakthrough and still the best selling independent album of all time … (but) Round Hill was interested primarily in the crown jewel of (1998’s) Americana,” (Stereogum). The album’s lead single, “Pretty Fly for a White Guy,” is almost certainly the band’s best known track.

” … The Offspring’s transgressions in the ’90s did not exactly mirror those of their fellow radio-rockers; they did not hold as explicit a strain of toxic misogyny that saddled so many of their pop-punk peers and later descendants … As a whole, Americana practices a sort of ‘respectability politics’ against people in poverty — criticizing junkies, criminals, and the unemployed for not owning up and dealing with their problems, all the while conveniently neglecting any structural factors that may be at the root. Basically, it re-imagines punk rock as Fox News.” The Album reached #2 on the Billboard 200 album chart before being certified gold and then platinum.

As if “Americana” didn’t have enough energy to begin with, the band adds a half-step key change just before the track’s end (2:35).

Stone Temple Pilots | Trippin’ On a Hole in a Paper Heart

“For a band that started out their career hearing countless accusations of them being copycats and carpetbaggers, Stone Temple Pilots sure turned out to be willing to change their sound and blaze their own trail,” (Alternative Albums Blog). “Released in 1996, their third album Tiny Music … Songs From The Vatican Gift Shop found the band leaving behind nearly all traces of the grunge and alt rock of Core and Purple in favor of of glam, psychedelia, and fizzy pop. It is a bold move that mostly paid off.

The album spun off several successful singles, including the manic rush of ‘Trippin’ on a Hole in a Paper Heart,’ the second single from the album … (the track) is a jittery rush of music that captures the feeling of a bad acid trip, which (according to singer and lyricist Scott Weiland) is what the song is about … Sadly, Scott Weiland’s demons with drug abuse would … repeatedly cut short tours and other opportunities so that he could attend rehab or spend time in jail. In fact, it is impressive how creative and interesting Tiny Music … Songs From The Vatican Gift Shop ultimately is, considering how much Weiland was struggling at the time.”

Weiland died in 2015. But according to a 2005 Esquire interview, “Over the last decade, (he) established himself as the quintessential junkie rock star. Now thirty-seven, he has to his credit several platinum albums, five drug arrests, a six-month jail stint, and uncountable attempts at rehab … In 1987, he formed the group that became Stone Temple Pilots … One of the biggest acts of the mid-nineties, STP followed the lead of bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam to the top of the charts with its hard, lyric-driven rock. Fabulously rich, monumentally fucked-up, Weiland crossed over to mainstream consciousness in 1996, when the members of his band—his closest friends—held a press conference on the eve of a national tour to out their buddy as an incorrigible heroin addict, ‘unable to rehearse or appear.'”

The tune’s intro and verse are built on a contradiction right out of the gate, built around alternating F# major and A major chords. But the melody, lyrics, and groove take precedent, pulling us along to the chorus (0:34), which is built in B minor (with a i-VI vamp). At 0:48, we return to the verse. The second chorus (1:19) is more expansive, leading to an instrumental verse with a guitar feature (1:51). Lastly, a final chorus (2:22) with an unresolved ending suddenly leads us off a cliff, leaving the final vocal melody note completely unaccompanied. Spiky, manic, off-balance, unsettling? Yes.