Tag: film

Diana Ross | Theme from “Mahogany” (Do You Know Where You’re Going To)

“(Diana) Ross had always been something of an actress — a voice capable of conveying the entirely fictional emotional weight of the circumstances that the songs described,” (Stereogum). “She was beautiful and driven and precise and galactically famous, and it was only natural that she should become a movie star, too.” Ross had acted before, starring as jazz chanteuse Billie Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues. But her Motown boss and romantic partner, Berry Gordy, was a first-time director for 1975’s Mahogany.

“Mahogany bombed. It got terrible reviews and did bad business. Gordy never directed another movie. Ross only took one more big-screen role, in the 1978 musical The Wiz. These days, Mahogany has its defenders, but it’s mostly just remembered for its camp value. The movie did, however, spawn one unqualified success: The soft and elegant theme song,” co-written by Michael Masser and Gerry Goffin, “became Ross’ third solo #1 … a slight song, but it’s a pretty one … It’s a song that practically drowns in its own drama, filling up the mix with sighing strings and wailing backup singers and fluttering acoustic guitars and pianos. Musically, the song has nothing to do with the effervescent pop-soul of Motown’s ’60s past. It’s closer to down-the-middle Los Angeles pop, and at its biggest crescendo, it sounds a bit like the work of Gerry Goffin’s old collaborator Phil Spector.”

Modulations between C minor and C major are front and center in this track, nearly from start to finish. The first shift to C major (0:44) is accentuated by the addition of percussion to the instrumentation, while the first transition back to C minor (1:10) is ushered in with an odd-metered measure. At 2:32, a long, string-saturated instrumental outro cycles through multiple keys as multiple instruments take the lead on the now-familiar theme.

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Our thanks once again to the late Chris Larkosh, an energetic and consistent supporter of MotD. This submission is one of several he sent in over the years, even though we’re only now getting around to featuring it.

Huey Lewis + The News | The Power of Love

“Back To The Future, the biggest hit at the 1985 box office, is a beautifully assembled Swiss watch of a movie, a perfect little machine full of subliminal clues that pay off much later,” (Stereogum). “Director Rob Zemeckis and his co-writer, producer Bob Gale, find small and clever little ways to convey information, and we get a lot of those in the film’s first few minutes. We also get the big, pumping jam that would become the first #1 hit for Huey Lewis And The News, a band that was already on fire …

‘The Power Of Love’ is a goofy song, but it’s a catchy one. Lewis mugs hard all through it, and he wails out nonsensical cocaine-logic philosophical nuggets about how love is tougher than diamonds, rich like cream, and stronger and harder than a bad girl’s dream. When you’re making good bubblegum, you can get away with refusing to make sense, and ‘The Power Of Love’ is good bubblegum. The track has hooks on hooks on hooks, with all the keyboard stabs and shiny-bluesy riffs in the exact right places.”

The verses are in C minor, but the choruses (first heard from 3:12 – 3:30) shift to C major. Between 4:11 – 4:33, the bridge transitions to Eb major. True to HL+TN’s trademark sound, there’s plentiful helpings of everything: the generous guitar solo, the wall-to-wall huskiness of Lewis’ lead vocal, the up-in-the-mix drums, and synth kicks just about everywhere. The band might have been somewhat less delicate than a Swiss watch, but it was nonetheless one of the most perfect pop machines of its era, scoring 19 top ten hits overall. “Power of Love” reached #1 for two weeks in August 1985 and was later nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song.

The Supremes | The Happening

“If the Beach Boys’ ‘Good Vibrations‘ was a ‘pocket symphony,’ as it was so masterfully marketed, then the Supremes’ classic singles were pocket melodramas,” (Stereogum). “Those songs were heavily and fascinatingly orchestrated in their own ways, but the arrangements, nimble and groundbreaking as they might’ve been, were there to serve the stories. The Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting team found simple, direct ways to write about complicated feelings — heartbreak, elation, faint embers of hope. And Diana Ross sang those songs with poise and sensitivity, maintaining her composure even as she subtly hinted at huge and overwhelming feelings.

For years, the Supremes were an absolute machine. They cranked these songs out with a terrifying efficiency, and almost all of them hit their marks. And maybe that’s why ‘The Happening’ stands out in the group’s catalog. It’s a rare miss, a song that deviates from the plan and goes all the way awry. It’s the moment where everything falls apart … ‘The Happening’ sounds like exactly what it is: a cynical tie-in with a bad movie. But it doesn’t sound like a Supremes song — even though, in some literal sense of the term, it’s the last Supremes song.” Nonetheless, the track hit #1 in 1967, if only for one week!

The tune modulates up a half-step while trying its darnedest to be a light-hearted and goofy part of its “crime/comedy” genre.

I’ll Make a Man Out of You (from “Mulan”)

“I’ll Make a Man Out of You” is featured in the 1998 Disney film Mulan. Written by composer Matthew Wilder and lyricist David Zippel, it is sung by Donny Osmond in the movie and on the soundtrack.

This track is one of the few well-known Disney favorites that is not a ballad. “We knew it needed to be masculine and muscular and hence the drums, all the military aspects of what were factored into a very odd pop song,” Wilder said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. “I knew I wanted it to sound large and I knew what the tempo and the cadence of the piece was,” he continued. “I had a very extensive Asian sample library. I was sort of mixing and matching East meets West where I was taking drum cadences from traditional Chinese drums and then marrying that with military snares, etc. and just kept building and building and building so it became this cacophonous effect of a Chinese marching American band.” 

The song begins in E minor and modulates up a whole step to F minor at 2:03.

Harry Connick Jr. | A Wink and a Smile

Written by MotD favorite Marc Shaiman with Ramsey McLean for the 1993 Nora Ephron film Sleepless in Seattle, “A Wink and a Smile” was performed by Harry Connick Jr. for the soundtrack.

The song, which was nominated for Best Original Song at the Academy Awards, plays over a montage as Sam Baldwin (played by Tom Hanks) tries to cheer up his son Jonah (played by Ross Malinger) after his mother dies. It modulates from C up a half step to Db at 2:09

The Trolley Song (from “Meet Me In St. Louis”)

1944’s Meet Me in St Louis “was the first truly great movie from the Freed unit, the MGM department specializing in musicals and headed since 1940 by Arthur Freed, who wrote some of the best songs of the 1920s and 30s and produced several of the finest films of the 20th century,” (Guardian).

Freed … told studio boss Louis B Mayer: ‘I want to make this into the most delightful piece of Americana ever.’ He achieved his aim with a movie that defines perfection, as it captures the spirit of hope and anxiety that informed the last years of the second world war, when it was made … Judy Garland has never been more spirited or more poignant (‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ is up there with ‘Over the Rainbow’ and ‘The Man That Got Away’).” Much of the plot turns on whether the lead character’s family will move to New York City. “When fellow MGM executives demanded to know the source of the film’s dramatic conflict, Freed replied: ‘Where is the villain? Well, the villain is New York!'”

The chorus initially states the melody in the opening in A major, followed by a delayed intro from Garland at 1:24 and a first verse at 1:55. At 2:59, there’s a shift to C# before 3:14 reverts to A major.

Joel Waggoner & Julia Mattison | Stable Girl

“Stable Girl” is featured in Joel & Julia‘s Haunted Holiday Singalong, a variety special which premieres and is available on-demand online tomorrow. “They’ve been awoken from permanent sleep by Santa and they’ve found themselves in a cabin owned by the Christmas Witch,” says the website describing the show. “They find out that the Christmas Witch’s clams have lost their dingle bongle (aka. Christmas Spirit) and they set out on a musical journey to help them get their dingle bongle back.”

The track begins in Ab and modulates up a half step to A at 2:47. Thanks to long-time MotD fan and first-time contributor Leah Pye for this find!

It’s a Great Big World (from “The Harvey Girls”)

“A group of refined waitresses for a chain of railroad-station restaurants in New Mexico are sent out to tame the wild and woolly West in the 19th century, but encounter some resistance in the form of a saloon owner, a corrupt judge and a local madam,” (TV Guide). “Featuring the Oscar-winning song ‘On the Atcheson, Topeka and the Santa Fe.'”

“The Harvey Girls was MGM’s big-budget Technicolor musical follow-up to Meet Me In St. Louis (in between the two Judy filmed her first dramatic role in The Clock as well as her one-scene guest appearance in Ziegfeld Follies),” (TheJudyRoom). “It was based on the 1942 Samuel Hopkins Adams novel of the same name, which was inspired by the real-life ‘Harvey Girls,’ the waitresses who were employed by the Harvey chain of restaurants (still in existence today) placed along the route of the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe. The Harvey Girls became one of Judy’s (and MGM’s) biggest musical hits of the 1940s, winning the Oscar for Best Song (‘On The Atchison, Topeka, and The Santa Fe’) and earning a spot on Variety’s list of ‘all-time box office hits.’

“It’s a Great Big World,” a fast but gentle waltz, serves as a feature for several of the musical’s lead characters. It shifts up a half-step at 2:53. Many thanks to our regular contributor Jamie A. for this submission!

Voctave (feat. Mariachi Cobre) | Remember Me

“They say repetition is key to retention,” said Jon Burlingame, writing for Variety. “And in Disney/Pixar’s animated feature “Coco,” the song “Remember Me” is the tie that binds multiple generations in the shared love of music. It is central to the story about a young boy named Miguel who is pulled by the song from the land of the living to the land of the dead, gradually discovering the origins of the composition and awakening his own inner showmanship. Also part of the plotline are recollections of the distant past – hence, the song’s title — and of beloved long gone family members.”

The song won the Academy Award for Best Song in 2018, and was nominated for a Golden Globe and Grammy as well. This cover, by the a cappella group Voctave, features the instrumental group Mariachi Cobre, which regularly performs at Disney and also tours. Two modulations sprinkled in at 0:41 and 1:12.

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.