Tag: 1990s

Tony Toni Toné | Holy Smokes and Gee Whiz

“As the title of their crown jewel Sons of Soul (1993) boldly declared, Tony! Toni! Toné! were true descendants of soul and funk music’s golden age from the very start,” (Albumism). “Hailing from the undeniably tough and vibrant streets of Oakland, California, the family trio absorbed the social, cultural, and political climate that defined the Bay Area during its most incendiary era. Above all, the Bay Area was one of the powerhouse cornerstones of funk and soul, where several influential luminaries like Sly & the Family Stone, Larry Graham & Graham Central Station, Tower of Power, and Con Funk Shun laid down their gusty, muscular, and righteous grooves all over the music landscape.

They were a band that were truly rooted in the tradition of yesteryear funk and soul bands, devoting themselves to retaining the beauty of live instrumentation, while utilizing hip-hop technology of the time … By the mid-1990s, the Tonies’ signature touch was felt all over the R&B world … Instead of merely wearing their influences on their sleeve, as they’d done on previous offerings, the trio embodied them organically and proudly on House of Music, making it the most classically overt and sophisticated dip in the revisionist waters of Black pop they pioneered for over a decade.” House of Music didn’t quite equal the success of TTT’s previous album, Sons of Soul, reaching #32 on the Billboard album chart and #10 on the Top R&B Albums chart. The release, the band’s fourth, ended up as its last. “Following a nearly ten-year standing as one of R&B’s most creative vanguards, the Tonies officially called it quits a year after the release … it proved to be the summation of everything the Oakland soul brothers ever sought to accomplish musically … They went out on top and didn’t look back.”

Sounding every bit like a lush early-70s soul ballad with the exception of its updated sound engineering, “Holy Smokes and Gee Whiz” seems to owe even its title to the tradition which brought us The Stylistics’ classic “Betcha By Golly Wow” (1970). After a start in Bb minor, the bridge (3:00) builds to an overflowing fountain of layered vocals that would do Earth, Wind + Fire proud, heralding a whole-step key change to C minor (3:33). A faded ending would likely have made it all complete — but 4:29 brings another whole-step modulation to D minor for an instrumental outro, re-stating the hook but forgoing harmonic resolution.

Angela Lansbury | Beauty and the Beast

Beauty and the Beast was the first Disney animated feature adapted for the Broadway stage, where it premiered in April 1994. The score, by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, was recognized with an Academy Award for Best Original Score, and the title song, featured here, won Best Original Song.

Angela Lansbury voiced Mrs. Potts for the film, and her universally acclaimed performance of the tune has since been enshrined in the minds of thousands of children who have watched the film. In 2004, the American Film Institute ranked “Beauty and the Beast” at number 62 on their list of the greatest songs in American Film History. Lansbury died today at the age of 96 after a remarkable eight decade career in film, television, and theater.

The key change comes at 1:21.

Dave Koz | Show Me the Way

“By virtue of his many achievements, Dave Koz has long been considered the prime contender for the saxophone throne of contemporary jazz,” (AllMusic). “Active since 1990 when he arrived on the scene from seemingly nowhere to issue his self-titled leader debut, he climbed onto the Billboard contemporary jazz charts and stayed there for several weeks. The platinum-selling Koz was nominated for nine Grammys, hit the top spot on the contemporary jazz charts five times, placed 14 singles in the Top Ten, and earned a total of 20 cuts on the jazz songs charts. He is also a seasoned radio and television host … His sound is full of fire and intensity, often recalling that of his musical forebear David Sanborn, and which often crosses over to the adult contemporary R&B side of the genre line.”

Along the way, Koz has collaborated with guitar phenom Cory Wong, jazz fusion standard bearer Jeff Lorber, pop songwriter/performer Richard Marx, legendary bassist Marcus Miller, pop/R&B vocalist Jeffrey Osborne, vocalist/keyboardist songwriter extraordinaire Michael McDonald, and many others.

Featuring pianist Greg Phillinganes, bassist Nathan East, and percussionist Lenny Castro, 1993’s “Show Me the Way” is a slow burn of a track. Building gradually from a soft-spoken ballad to a fully-fledged gospel-centered summit, it features a shift from C major to D major at 3:51. Many thanks to Christopher Fox for submitting this tune!

Unworthy of Your Love (from “Assassins”)

Stephen Sondheim’s 1990 musical Assassins depicts the inner lives of various real-life figures who tried (and sometimes succeeded) to assassinate the president of the United States, and the repercussions their actions had on themselves and the country and its history. “Unworthy of Your Love” is sung by John Hinckley to his fantasy girlfriend Jodie Foster; he is joined by partway through by Squeaky Fromme, who declares her love Charles Manson.

By Sondheim standards, the tune is a remarkably conventional love ballad. It begins in B, shifts down to A for Squeaky’s verse at 1:42, and returns to B for the final chorus at 2:57.

Madonna | Vogue

“The underground — any underground — tends to find peculiar and unintended routes into the spotlight,” (Stereogum). “Madonna was always a creature of New York club culture, and it wasn’t particularly out of character for her to get interested in a particular facet of that culture, which kept evolving after she got famous. But it was pretty weird that Madonna managed to take a small slice of the deep underground and mainstream the absolute hell out of it. And it was also pretty weird that Madonna pulled this off with a would-be B-side that got stapled onto the hoochie-coochie retro-cabaret album that she’d recorded as a tie-in with her big summer-blockbuster movie … Madonna was prescient about a lot of things, but she can’t have predicted the ripple-effects of all the moves that she made. ‘Vogue’ wasn’t even supposed to be a single, but it became one of the defining smashes of a hall-of-fame career. That happens sometimes.” The single reached #1 in the spring of 1990 and remained there for three weeks.

The Guardian further describes the drag scene of the late 1980s: “Contrary to popular belief, Madonna did not invent voguing. (Her hit song) was a euphoric celebration/appropriation of a dance form that emerged from the Harlem ballroom scene in the 80s. ‘Balls are part of a broader history of black queer performance and spectacle that stretches back at least to the early days of the 20th century,’ says Madison Moore, assistant professor of gender, sexuality and women’s studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. Poet and playwright Langston Hughes described these balls in his 1940 autobiography The Big Sea as ‘spectacles in color’.”

After an intro and a verse in Ab major, the chorus shifts to Ab minor at 1:40, with a brief but dense series of syncopated compound piano chords layered over the bass, which never migrates away from the tonic throughout the entire tune. Since the melody also centers around the tonic, the harmonic variety of those compound chords is pivotal. At 1:56, verse 2 reverts to Ab major; the pattern continues from there.

Amy Grant | Baby, Baby

Amy Grant ruled the Contemporary Christian genre when she released her decidedly secular 1991 album Heart in Motion. She’d become “the Michael Jordan of Christian Pop,” according to Stereogum: “When Grant was working on ‘Baby Baby’ she’d only just become a mother. Her daughter Millie was six weeks old … Grant talks about driving around, trying to come up with lyrics, and then coming home and seeing Millie with her babysitter: ‘I sat down at the kitchen counter, and in less than 10 minutes wrote the song to her. Suddenly, all the little silly phrases fit with the music because it was all to her.’ Backstories for #1 hits don’t come much cuter than that …

‘Baby Baby’ topped Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart, as well as the Hot 100. The song also made a respectable dent in the Dance Club Songs chart, and I am really enjoying the mental image of a club DJ trying to find just the right moment to throw on ‘Baby Baby.’… Grant had already won five Grammys before ‘Baby Baby,’ but they’d all been in the gospel categories. But ‘Baby Baby’ got nominations for Song and Record of the Year, and Heart In Motion was in the Album of the Year mix, too.”

The tune starts in F# major, then bounces and sparkles its way until 1:33, when most of the groove falls away, making plenty of room for Grant to glissando her way up to G# major. 2:22 serves up a keyboard solo which feels like another upward modulation, but actually falls back to F#. A 2:52, we slide back up to G# major for the duration.

Holly Cole Trio | I Can See Clearly Now

“I Can See Clearly Now” was written and recorded by American singer Johnny Nash in 1972, and was a number-one hit in the US, the UK, Canada, and South Africa. Contrasting with Nash’s original reggae groove, the Holly Cole Trio recorded a jazz-driven cover as the lead track for their 1993 album Don’t Smoke In Bed. The tune begins in Db and, almost as if the sun is breaking through the clouds, emerges into Gb major coming out of the bridge at 3:02.

George Michael | Freedom ’90

“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.

Robyn | Do You Really Want Me (Show Respect)

“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!

Red Hot Chili Peppers | Californication

Rather like the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ highest point of popularity around the turn of the millennium, Pitchfork‘s review of the band’s 1999 album Californication was very much of its era:

“In a way, you have to be familiar with California to appreciate (lead singer Anthony) Kiedis’ lyrics. I mean, Los Angeles is shallow, sunny, fun, and tragic … Longevity in rock music is about as rare as hip-hop spellcheckers these days. The idea of albums has given way to the force-feeding of singles. Teens reposter their walls with the face-of-the-moment more frequently than undercover advertisers placard boarded-up fences and buildings in New York. Basically, the Chili Peppers are the closest thing we have to a Led Zepplin today. If you want quality, commercial, Jeep-stereo, headphone, stadium-filling, champion Rock that you can get behind, where else are you going to turn? Not to Eminem, you ain’t.”

The title track is quite a lot more reserved than “Scar Tissue,” “Get on Top,” and “Right on Time.” But there’s room for a ballad on even a rock album (or a tune that amounts to a ballad in RHCP-land) — and “Californication” fits the bill. After a start in A minor, there’s a shift to F# minor or an instrumental bridge at 3:22, then a return to the original key at 4:02.