Tag: 1990s

Bonnie Raitt | Something To Talk About

“Something to Talk About” is a single from Bonnie Raitt’s smash hit album Luck of the Draw (1991). The album exceeded even the strong success of her previous career-topping release Nick of Time (1989). These two albums helped Raitt transition from a respected but lesser-known Americana/blues musician to expanded fame as a blues-inflected rock artist — quite a tall order.

According to Songfacts, the Shirley Eikhard-penned tune “won a Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, beating out a field comprised of Oleta Adams, Mariah Carey, Amy Grant, and Whitney Houston…this was by far Raitt’s biggest chart hit in the United States.” Discogs reports that the liner notes included a dedication to blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, who died in 1990. Vaughan had encouraged Raitt to stop her longtime alcohol abuse. The dedication is the simple phrase “still burning bright.”

The tune modulates up a minor third at 2:30, at the beginning of a section which sounds at first like a bridge but functions as an extended outro.

The Chicks | You Were Mine

Earlier today, the American country band The Dixie Chicks announced they would be dropping “Dixie” from their name, becoming simply The Chicks. The change was made without much fanfare; in a brief statement on its new website, the band states simply: “We want to meet this moment.” To accompany this news, they dropped a new single from their upcoming album Gaslighter (due out next month — the group’s first album in fourteen years) titled “March March,” featuring images of current and historical protests — for women’s rights, gay rights, environmental causes and Black Lives Matter.

While the new track doesn’t have a key change, we thought it would be an appropriate day to feature The Chicks. “You Were Mine” was released in 1998, the fourth single from their hit album Wide Open Spaces. The song is notable for being the first to feature Natalie Maines as the lead vocal; the Erwin sisters were so impressed with her performance on the original demo that she would go on to replace Laura Lynch in the band. It is also a deeply personal song for the group as the lyrics describe the breakup of the Erwin sisters’ parents. It spent two weeks in the #1 spot on the US Country Singles chart, and reached #34 on the Hot 100 Pop Singles Chart. Key change at 3:03.

I’d Give It All For You (from “Songs for a New World”)

In recognition of Jason Robert Brown‘s 50th birthday this past Saturday, today we feature “I’d Give It All For You” from his debut production Songs For A New World, which premiered Off-Broadway in 1995. Straddling the line between musical and song cycle, the songs are connected through their depictions of moments of decision for the show’s four characters. Brown has described Songs as being “about one moment. It’s about hitting a wall and having to make a choice, or take a stand, or turn around and go back.” Here, a pair of former lovers are reuniting after attempting to live without each other.

Beginning in D major, the song stays there while each character sings a verse and chorus, narrating their backstories and how they ended up where they are. With the onset of the bridge at 3:01, the key center becomes ambiguous, reflecting the more unsettled, striving nature of the lyrics as the characters engage in a call-and-response. When the dust settles, we emerge into the sunlight of the chorus at 4:04 in A major, followed by a wistful, concluding coda in G major.

Performed here by noted Brown interpreter Shoshana Bean and Brown himself at the keyboard at an event at the Library of Congress in 2016. Happy 50th, JRB!

Mariah Carey | Always Be My Baby

The fourth single released from Mariah Carey’s fifth studio album, Daydream, “Always Be My Baby” was the most played song on the radio in 1996, and the first single to debut at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 list. The lyrics describes the lingering attachment the singer retains towards her former lover, even as they both go their separate ways. The track is one of Carey’s most successful, reaching Triple Platinum status with well over 2 million sales.

The key change is at 3:01. Many thanks to MotD fan Rob Penttinen for this submission!

Niamh Kavanagh | In Your Eyes (Eurovision 1993)

The 65th annual Eurovision Song Contest was to have been held this spring in Rotterdam. Unfortunately, like so many other live performance events, the contest was cancelled due to the worldwide COVID-19 crisis — an unprecedented move in the history of the competition. Fortunately, most of the nations originally slated to send a representative to the competition have already confirmed that they will return in 2021.

1993’s winning song, “In Your Eyes,” was performed by vocalist Niamh Kavanagh, a Dublin native. The tune became the best-selling 1993 single in the Republic of Ireland and reached #24 on the UK Singles chart. Kavanagh is still active as a musical artist with her band, The Illegals. In a 2020 interview with the Irish Examiner, when asked about her top choice of unsung hero: “I’m going to say to musicians, not specific ones, but musicians in general…who strive to create music everyday, who won’t necessarily achieve fame or fortune…who work just to create and share something that affects pretty much everyone on the planet. Music is around us all of the time…”

The huge modulation at 2:21 comes quite late, after several edge-of-the-seat opportunities.

Whitney Houston | I Believe In You and Me

Originally released and recorded by Four Tops on their 1982 album One More Mountain, “I Believe In You and Me” was covered in 1996 by Whitney Houston and included the 1996 flick The Preacher’s Wife. Much more successful than the original, Houston’s rendition became a top 5 R&B hit in the US and topped many charts worldwide. The key change, in Whitney’s customary dramatic fashion, is at 2:52.

Sisqo | Thong Song

“Thong Song” was the second single released from American R&B/pop artist SisQó‘s 1999 debut studio album Unleash The Dragon. The track was nominated for four Grammys, and peaked at #1 on the Billboard Rhythmic Top 40 chart. It was a major success worldwide as well, reaching the top ten throughout European charts, number three in the UK, Netherlands, and Denmark, and #1 in New Zealand.

The key change at 3:16 comes out of nowhere, leading the listener to believe we’ve moved to a distant key, when it is in fact only a half-step away.

Owsley | Oh No the Radio

Owsley had a brief but distinguished career as a band member, solo artist, and session/touring musician. Sadly, he apparently took his own life at age 44 in 2010, but his short discography is memorable. AllMusic reports: “Alabama-born multi-instrumentalist Will Owsley followed a career path not unlike Sheryl Crow‘s, by backing up big mainstream pop artists, collecting the rewards and channeling them into his own solo work. Owsley plied his wares in the bands of Shania Twain and Amy Grant in the mid-’90s, then recorded his own material at home, and offered the finished product to record companies on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.” Owsley’s early-90s band, The Semantics, briefly featured a young Ben Folds on keyboards; AllMusic describes the two musicians’ “likemindedness” as “hard to miss.”

“Oh No the Radio” (1999) is an account of the hold that radio had on music fans’ lives during a time when that medium was the primary way that music reached our ears. The tune seems to describe a music fan’s love/hate relationship with a medium so omnipresent that going to a drive-in movie provides a welcome but brief respite.

The intro and verse, both in C# major, feature the guitar’s crunchy, relentless battery of eighth-note seventh chords in a I7 – bVII7 vamp. This rock-solid foundation frees up the bass to intermittently depart from covering the roots, going airborne and adding harmonic context from the rafters. The chorus shifts to C# minor (for the first time at 1:47), bringing with it a far smoother and lyrical feel, before returning to the original C# major.

In a Place of Miracles (from “Hunchback of Notre Dame”)

“In A Place of Miracles” is from, in your humble moderator’s opinion, Alan Menken‘s best score, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The show, which premiered in Berlin in 1999 and became one of the city’s longest-running productions, has still not made its way to Broadway. But someday, in a place of miracles, it will. Key change at 1:37.