Here’s James Taylor’s “Your Smiling Face” (1977) featuring a double modulation (0:48 and 1:25). The track reached #12 on the US pop chart and #6 on the Adult Contemporary chart. Rock critic Timothy White described the tune as a “pop sonnet.”
Tag: acoustic
Paul Simon | Still Crazy After All These Years
One of Paul Simon‘s many solo hits, 1975’s “Still Crazy After All These Years” pushed the album of the same name to #1. The form is quite unpredictable: the first modulation happens at 1:25 (at the start of a bridge, including an odd-metered measure thrown into the mix). Then another pivot at 1:38 into a darkly intriguing instrumental interlude, followed by a key change into a sunnier instrumental section at 2:12, finally settling into another verse and another harmonic shift at 2:50.
Connect-the-dots songwriting, this ain’t!
Chris Thile, Edgar Meyer, Stuart Duncan + Yo-Yo Ma | Attaboy
Classical musicians don’t always experiment with other genres, but famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma makes a regular habit out of it. Ma has collaborated regularly on jazz projects — but here, he and his band of noted Bluegrass/Americana players present a smooth, lyrical sample of a style often called Newgrass from 2011. Mod at 2:43, then back to the original key at 4:14.
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