Tag: 1990s

Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach | In the Darkest Place

“‘Alfie,’ ‘What the World Needs Now,’ ‘That’s What Friends Are For’ — the list goes on,” reports NPR. “He’s written 73 Top 40 hits, along with musical comedies and other collaborations. He’s won Oscars and the Gershwin Prize. His songs are often poised on the edge between poignancy and joy, or sometimes the reverse.”

Trunkworthy describes 1998’s Painted from Memory, a collaboration between Bacharach and Elvis Costello, as bringing out the best in both songwriters: ” … it makes perfect sense that collaborating with one of (Costello’s) biggest influences would result in one of the most meticulously arranged albums in his entire career … Painted From Memory feels like Elvis deliberately writing from the viewpoint of someone who isn’t him but whom he hopes may be you … the songwriting on this record feels very much in the spirit of professionalism: exercises in manipulation, in putting feelings and words together such that they channel a universality which transcends the limitations of any one person’s experience … The sum of this artistic one + one is more than strictly musical. By coming together when they did, each man underwent a kind of recalibration whereby the sheen of kitsch acquired by Bacharach’s body of work since his ’60s heyday was stripped away, and Costello, then in his mid-40s, shed the last lingering remnants of his image as an angry young man.” The composition process between the songwriters ties the album indelibly to the 1990s: the tunes were written through multiple drafts sent back and forth via transatlantic FAX.

Bacharach’s harmonic sense is enough of a feast for any listener, but he brings more to the table. Early in his career, Bacharach studied composition and orchestration with Darius Milhaud, a French composer known for a melange of jazz and Brazilian sounds combined with more traditional classical structures. Milhaud, a member of the informal yet influential guild of composers (Les Six) bound together by a reverence for Eric Satie, likely had a sizeable influence on Bacharach. Bacharach’s comfort with an orchestral palette is at the forefront with “In the Darkest Place,” including a doleful initial hook featuring bass flute, followed by strings, muted trumpet, oboe, etc.

Largely in A minor, there’s a harmonic fake-out (1:49 – 1:54) which turns out to be only a false hint of a modulation. However, the outro shifts to A major at 3:22.

Bruce Hornsby | The Tide Will Rise

“The Tide Will Rise,” co-written by Bruce Hornsby and his brother John, is featured on the 1993 album Harbor Lights. The lyric focuses on the rhythms in particular of a fisherman’s life at sea, but the sentiments are universally applicable to the ups and downs of life. Key changes from F to G at 2:08.

Hezekiah Walker + the Love Fellowship Crusade Choir | Calling My Name

AllMusic details that “gospel singer, composer, and choir leader Hezekiah Walker, known as ‘the hip-hop pastor,’ has brought a lot of young people to gospel and choir music, and has shown that he has no problem using modern vernacular and recording techniques to expand his fan and worship base. A New York native, Walker grew up in the Fort Greene housing projects of Brooklyn. He formed his first gospel group, the Love Fellowship Crusade Choir, when he was in his twenties and serving as a Pentecostal minister.”

Walker has produced and led many top ten Billboard gospel recordings, including Grammy-winning live gospel recordings; he was inducted into the Gospel Music Association Hall of Fame in 2016. Rev. Walker now leads the Kingdom Church in New York and Pennsylvania.

Featuring soloist Timiney Figueroa-Caton, the Love Fellowship Crusade Choir’s live 2008 version of “Calling My Name” was originally released in 1994. Written by the prolific Jules Bartholomew, the track begins in Db major but shifts to Bb major at 4:31. Many thanks to our recurrent contributor JB for submitting this tune!

Buckshot Lefonque | Phoenix

Saxophonist, composer, and former Tonight Show with Jay Leno bandleader Branford Marsalis has long been a proponent of musical egalitarianism. Born into one of the most prominent families of jazz artists in the US, he’s kept a foot in that style while also performing R&B, classical, rock, and more. From Marsalis’ website: ” … there will be those who insist on sorting even the most adventurous music into neat and compact categories. Fortunately, Branford Marsalis will always be around to shove his square pegs into their round little pigeonholes.” Marsalis has collaborated with Sting, the Grateful Dead, Bruce Hornsby, his brothers Wynton and Delfeayo and his father Ellis, Dizzy Gillespie, Bela Fleck, and dozens of others; won a Grammy in 1993 for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Individual or Group for his album I Heard You Twice the First Time; and released a trio album, Bloomington (1993), which was hailed as a landmark in contemporary jazz.

Using a name which served as a pseudonym for jazz saxophone great Cannonball Adderly when he was moonlighting on pop and R&B records in the 50s, Buckshot LeFonque “blends rock, hip-hop, jazz, reggae, and African elements. In summing up his thoughts on what has been one of the most musically diverse projects he has yet undertaken, Marsalis says, ‘We took some interesting left turns… which is what I expected.’ The members come from widely diverging backgrounds yet find common ground … ‘You might get on the tour bus one day and hear Italian opera; the next day you’re hearing hip-hop.’ Singer Frank McComb agrees. ‘Everybody gets to stretch out in his own way. Everybody is an artist in this band and not just a backer. We’re all loose, free and easy.'”

McComb, a solo artist in his own right, covers the vocals on “Phoenix,” a slow ballad from the band’s second album, Music Evolution (1997). The track ramps up its energy gradually — at first. With a seemingly devastating breakup in the rear view mirror, the protagonist unflinchingly revisits the pain, then gathers strength to move on. The transition in point of view is matched by a brightening of the tonality: starting in F# minor, a huge shift to to F# major declares itself at 4:46, leading to an ending on an unresolved yet hopeful IV/V.

Lisa Stansfield | Set Your Loving Free

“The most convincing white R&B singer since Teena Marie,” declares AllMusic, “Lisa Stansfield reached the mainstream after nearly a full decade in the music industry … (1989’s) solo single ‘All Around the World‘ gave Stansfield a tremendous boost by reaching number one in several countries, including the U.K. From that point, throughout her distinguished if sporadic recording career, she was known for sophisticated, soul-inspired releases that appealed to a broad audience.”

Stansfield’s sleek yet evocative stage presence made her a natural for music video and for her live shows. The UK native’s distinctive, open expression (so celebrated in the iconic video for “All Around the World”) might have made her a silent film star had she been born 60 years earlier.

In addition to the custom-written dance tracks she’s best known for, she has reverently covered a wide range of classics by artists ranging from Billie Holiday to The Four Tops, from Barry White to Marvin Gaye. “Set Your Loving Free” is a single from Stansfield’s second album, Real Love (1991), written by Stansfield, Ian Devaney, and Andy Morris. This expansive 1994 live performance provides all of the lush instrumentation of the studio version, if not more. The verse starts in B minor at 0:28. At 1:04, the pre-chorus in C# minor quickly sets the stage for the chorus in E minor (1:22).

Brian McKnight | Back at One

“Back at One,” featured on Brian McKnight‘s eponymously named 1999 studio album, is one of the 16-time Grammy-nominated singer’s most successful singles. A Top 10 hit in New Zealand and Canada, the track reached the #2 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US, and also placed on the Adult Contemporary and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop charts. Key change at 3:00.

Hall + Oates | I Ain’t Gonna Take It This Time

Hall and Oates came into being during the height of the Philly Soul sound. “Daryl Hall had become friends with The Temptations as they rose to stardom from the streets of Philadelphia,” reports SoulCountry. “‘They were an outrageous influence on me,’ Hall said. He joined them on the road some, ‘trying to be their assistant,’ picking up their suits at the cleaners and grabbing their coffee.

‘After the show, they would just go and sing gospel songs and stuff,’ Hall said. ‘I felt that was something I belonged doing. It was really a lot of interracial interaction, and it’s why I sing the kind of music that I sing,’ he continued. ‘There’s been a lot of misunderstanding over the years by people who can’t even imagine that.'”

The 1990 power ballad “I Ain’t Gonna Take It This Time,” like so much of the band’s output, straddles the lines among rock, pop, and soul. The tune starts in D minor; at 1:37, a multi-section bridge builds tension until 2:37, which brings a mammoth shift to F# major.

New York Rock + Soul Revue | Lonely Teardrops

“At a time when rock concerts are putting an increasing emphasis on spectacle and choreography, it is refreshing to attend a show at which genuine interplay among musicians is the main attraction,” notes a New York Times review of a 1990 concert by the New York Rock & Soul Revue. “… Seasoned pop veterans working together in an unusually flexible and informal setting … a loosely-structured round-robin format.” According to AllMusic, the concert lineup included the organizer of the short series of shows, Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen, as well as Phoebe Snow, Charles Brown, Michael McDonald, Eddie and David Brigati (the Rascals), and Boz Scaggs. In the liner notes, Fagen called the selected tunes “durable music.”

Songfacts reports that “Lonely Teardrops,” made famous in 1959 by Jackie Wilson, was “written by Tyran Carlo (the pen name of Wilson’s cousin Roquel Davis) and a pre-Motown Berry Gordy Jr., who co-wrote eight other songs for Wilson. This song gave Gordy him the confidence to rent a building in Detroit and start the Tamla label, which would become Motown.” The tune was a #1 R&B hit, also reaching top 10 on the Pop charts.

Unlike the single-key original, the NYR+SR version has a quick key-of-the-moment lift from 2:19 to 2:26, but it’s a fake out that returns us to the original key almost immediately; 2:59 brings a real key change.

Jackie Wilson’s original:

Let It Sing (from “Violet”)

“Let It Sing” is featured in composer Jeanine Tesori’s 1997 Off-Broadway musical Violet. Based on the short story “The Ugliest Pilgrim” by Doris Betts, Violet won the Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Musical the year of its premiere, and was revived on Broadway in 2014 starring Sutton Foster and Joshua Henry, who performs here. Key changes at 0:57, 1:05, 1:18, 1:39, 1:48, 2:00, 2:32, and 2:57.

Christina Aguilera | I Turn To You

Written by songwriter and vocalist Diane Warren, “I Turn To You” didn’t become popular until Christina Aguilera included it on her debut album in 1999. She described the song as being “about that sort of perfect love, which we all dream. This kind of song can make you feel safe and warm anytime of the year.” The track peaked at the #3 on the Billboard Top 100 chart, and has been a popular choice for contestants on reality competition series such as American Idol and The Voice. Key change at 3:17.