pop

Howard Jones | City Song

“One of the defining figures of mid-’80s synth pop, Howard Jones merged the technology-intensive sound of new wave with the cheery optimism of hippies and late-’60s pop … (The UK’s) Jones released his first single, ‘New Song,’ in England in the fall of 1983 and it became a big hit, peaking at number three,” (100PercentRock). “His second single, ‘What Is Love,’ was released a few months later and it reached number two. Humans Lib, Jones’ debut album, was released in the spring of 1984 and quickly rose to number one in England. Thanks to repeated exposure on MTV, the album became a moderate hit in the U.S. Later in 1984, ‘New Song’ and ‘What Is Love’ became American Top 40 hits, while ‘Pearl in the Shell’ became his third British Top Ten single.

In 1985, Jones … formed a touring band and released his second album, Dream Into Action. The record became his most successful, reaching number ten and going platinum in the U.S., spawning the hit singles ‘Things Can Only Get Better,’ ‘Like to Get to Know You Well,’ ‘Life in One Day,’ and ‘Look Mama.'” He’s continued releasing albums ever since, the most recent being Transform in 2019.

“City Song” is the album-closing track from Jones’ 1992 album In the Running. Starting with a desolate synthesized drone in Ab minor, the tune’s groove kicks in for the second section of the intro at the 1:00 mark, followed by the verse’s vocal at 1:41. At the 2:00 mark, a pre-chorus in B minor enters before a return to the original key for the next verse. The D minor chorus finally arrives at 3:03. The pattern continues from there — until 4:44, when C# minor is in effect for the bridge. The key changes are so frequent that the focus remains instead on Jones’ melodies and lyrics. Characteristically, Jones focuses on humanity writ large and the possibility of its betterment: What is it about this city, that brings us all to life / Ten millions souls vibrating / They’re shimmering in the night.

The Beatles | Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds

“Classic rock is known for having subversive songs, dealing with taboo topics. So, it’s not all that surprising to learn that quite a few tunes from the genre were not allowed on radio stations at one time or another,” (Yahoo) ” … Far Out ranked The Beatles’ 1967 song, ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,’ as the best classic rock song ‘banned from radio.’ According to the publication, the John Lennon-penned hit, off the acclaimed record, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was deemed not radio-friendly because of its initials. The official Beatles website reported that ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds’ was prohibited by the BBC due to theories that it was inspired by LSD. Far Out reported that Lennon stated the rumors were untrue.”

“… the Faberge psychedelic egg that was finally laid on the eve of the Summer of Love came so fully-realised that it changed the way we listened to recorded sound forever,” (BBC). “Sgt Pepper’s is at once warm and familiar, yet wild and strange … Yet what was revolutionary was the sonic carpet that enveloped the ears and sent the listener spinning into other realms.”

After the tune starts in A major, there’s a shift to Bb major for the pre-chorus at 0:32. At the 0:50 mark, the G major chorus begins, built around a repeated I-IV-V chord progression. At 1:08, the pattern repeats.

Barbra Streisand | Woman in Love

After the popularity of disco waned, so did album sales for the Bee Gees — widely considered standard bearers for genre. “… And yet Bee Gees songs still hit huge in the US (in the early 1980s); they just did it without the words ‘Bee Gees’ on the record cover,” (Stereogum). “Consider Barbra Streisand’s 1980 LP Guilty. Barry Gibb produced the album with his regular Bee Gees collaborators Karl Richardson and Albhy Galuten. Gibb also wrote or co-wrote every song on the LP. He sang, played guitar, and did the horn and string arrangements on Guilty. Guilty was basically a Bee Gees album, except with Barbra Streisand singing lead … On Guilty, the ballads dominate. ‘Woman in Love,’ the biggest hit from Guilty, is an extremely Bee Gees song, and yet nobody would confuse it with disco.

… Multi-tracking his own voice, Barry Gibb does the backing vocals, echoing the song’s central melody and anchoring it so that Streisand can sing all her showiest runs. Gibb and Streisand recorded the song in Miami with an elite squad of session musicians, and it sounds lush and clean and expensive. Strings and horns hum to each other. Electric pianos glow. The heavily processed guitars murmur fancily. On the chorus, the echo on Gibb’s voice is immaculate, and Streisand holds notes for absurd lengths of time. It’s terribly dramatic, in a good way. ‘Woman in Love’ (was) Streisand’s fifth and final #1 hit.”

After a few verses and choruses in Eb minor, 3:03 brings a shift up to E major for a final chorus. Streisand’s famously strong belt takes top billing here, well above melody, lyric, arrangement, etc.!

Simon + Garfunkel | My Little Town

“It’s humorous to see what experts in the music world thought was the location of Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘My Little Town,’ the duo’s final Top 10 Columbia Records single,” (Viera Voice). “On October 18, 1975, Simon hosted the second broadcast of Saturday Night Live. In doing so, he brought on his former partner. They sang three songs together, including a new Simon composition called ‘My Little Town” … the fun began when people began to opine exactly where they thought that little town was.

In his book Paul Simon: A Life, writer Marc Eliot proclaims that ‘My Little Town’ is ‘clearly Queens, and all the references to schoolbooks, saluting the flag and so on appear to be symbols of nostalgia for the days of Tom and Jerry as much as for the years of Simon and Garfunkel.’ Not so, counters music critic Dave Marsh, the author of The Heart of Rock and Soul. ‘(It’s) a portrait of the middle-class Forest Hills, NY neighborhood where Simon and Garfunkel grew up.’

… In a (1980s) interview with Bill Flanagan for his book Written in My Soul: Conversations with Great Songwriters, Simon admitted, ‘I was picturing a town. I was thinking about Gloucester, Massachusetts. A friend of mine comes from Gloucester, and he used to talk about what it was like to grow up there … . That song was entirely an act of imagination. … There’s no element of me in there at all.'”

Starting in E major, the tune then briskly parades through many keys; at the 1:14 mark, D major is a resting point for awhile. After an interlude, the tonality shifts to B minor at 2:05 for the woeful mantra “Nothing but the dead and dying back in my little town.” 2:23 brings another multi-key tour before B minor and the mantra return — this time accompanied by the intensity of a full horn section even as the tune fades.

Madness | Coldest Day

“While a keen feature of London’s musical tapestry, Madness seem to have bottled whatever the British spirit is, unmistakably moulded by the nation’s working class households, terraced streets, and enthusiastic embrace of Caribbean cultural import in keeping with the rest of the Two-tone generation,” (Far Out Magazine). “There’s an infectious invite to Madness at their best, which has assured pop ubiquity ever since, any spin of their hits letting you in on the Nutty gang’s weird world.

Fundamentally, Madness are fantastic popsmiths … the lads wielded a strange ability to report on the lay of the land, even with the grey bits left in … Madness can often pull the rug up while still larking about in fezzes, a bouncy ska number can easily jump into a peek at urban malaise, poverty-induced crime, or racial tensions via their tattered, Beano lyrical lens.

As the 1980s rolled by, so did the studio toys. While never completely losing themselves in the decade’s production trends and digital gadgets, a little of that sophistipop gloss trickled into Madness’ sounds … there’s plenty to enjoy from (1985’s) Mad Not Mad’s vivacious offering … Madness dwell in a deeper introspective realm than fans were used to.”

After beginning in G minor, “Coldest Day” a pre-chorus in F major(ish) kicks in at 0:26. The 0:45 arrives as the chorus shifts to E minor via some thoroughly Madness-style flourishes, despite the tune’s prominent synthetic drums and decidedly non-Ska groove. 1:10 brings a return to G minor; more shifts continue from there.

Many thanks to Julianna A., a longtime contributor from Brazil, for submitting this distinctive tune!

Alannah Myles | Love Is

“When Alannah Myles burst onto the scene in 1989 with ‘Black Velvet,’ the bluesy single, her fantastic, slightly gravelly vocals caught the attention of the entire world,” (Adam’s World). “The song didn’t just hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S., it reached the Top 10 in over a dozen countries (although, oddly, just #10 in her native Canada); it continues to receive radio airplay to this day. In fact, in 2005 ‘Black Velvet’ was the recipient of a “Millionaire Award” from ASCAP for having racked up more than four million radio plays. The single went gold in the U.S., took home the Grammy in 1991 for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance (yes, nearly two years after its release), and launched her self-titled debut album to platinum status.

The follow up single, however, titled ‘Love Is,’ peaked at #36 (although it was her debut single in Canada) … After that, those of us in America didn’t hear much from Alannah, even though she released three albums in the ‘90s, and two more in the current century, including one as recently as 2014. ‘Black Velvet’ was a lightning in a bottle moment, and its staying power over the past 30+ years is a testament to the greatness of the song … ” But “Love Is” has a key change — one of the very few features that “Black Velvet” lacks.

Built primarily in G major, “Love Is” spends most of its verses and choruses in a groove-driven trance limited to various voicings of the tonic chord. From 1:44 – 2:05, a bridge in E major is in effect before a return to the original key. At 2:24, the same E major section returns through 2:44. Then it’s back to G major again for the balance of the tune. In 1990, “Love Is” was nominated for Canada’s Juno Award for Single of the Year; the track lost to “Black Velvet,” clearly illustrating the song’s also-ran status when compared to Myles’ international smash hit.

Huey Lewis + The News | Simple As That

Huey Lewis and the News’ 1983 collection Sports “had been an absolute smash, one of just five records to top the Billboard album chart in 1984 (for just one week in its case, but in that Thriller– and Purple Rain-dominated year, still quite something),” (Best Classic Bands). “It yielded four top 10 singles and catapulted the band into the rarefied space of touring attractions capable of filling arenas around the world. The album stayed on the chart for 160 weeks, and the accompanying Sports tour was about as long.

… Fore! was one of the most front-loaded records ever created. On side one of the vinyl release, four of the five songs charted in the top 10, as did the first song on the flip side.” A tune from the side two of the album, “Simple as That,” is “nestled among band vocals and horn trimming, its throwback soul underpinnings were a reminder that for all the band’s straightforward appeals, its versatility—and willingness to take it in different directions—was easy to underestimate … Recruitment of the Tower of Power horns paid dividends on multiple tracks … Never possessed of dazzling range, Lewis’ singing nonetheless sported enormous craft, and the sheer emotive power he generated was irresistibly insistent.”

After a regal fanfare of an intro, this musical tribute to everyday middle class struggles settles into Ab major. At 2:30, a resounding unprepared key change hits so hard, squarely on beat one, that it takes a few moments for the smoke to clear. Soon, we realize that there’s been a downward key change to G major — vanishingly rare in pop music, and doubly so for straight-down-the fairway Top 40 fare. Quite a lovely touch for the closing moments of the album’s final track.

Mickey Woods | (They Call Me) Cupid

“Mickey Woods, here making his final appearance on a Motown record, was a minor figure at best in the Motown story,” (Motown Junkies). “He may have been the first white male solo act on the label” (Woods is such an obscure figure in Motown’s history that this factor is not 100% confirmed) … “This B-side marks the first ever Motown writing credit for Norman Whitfield, later one of the all-time great songwriters and producers.

Odd that ‘(They Call Me) Cupid’ (1961) should have been relegated to a B-side – it’s clearly intended as a take on Sam Cooke’s ‘Cupid,’ released earlier the same year … perhaps Berry Gordy felt that to invite comparison between Sam Cooke (who was one of the all-time great voices) and Mickey Woods (who wasn’t) would be unfairly prejudicial … There’s also an ambitious string break in the middle eight which is pleasing to hear; the sound of musical horizons being continually broadened … That unexpected string interlude is a little rough, coming over at times as awkward and scraping; hardly the lush orchestral aural carpeting that would come to be associated with Motown in later years.”

Starting in C major, there’s a shift to Eb major at 1:16 after a brief suspension of the groove. Yes, the string section sounds like it’s sight-reading — but otherwise, an intriguing very early Motown track!

Journey | Girl Can’t Help It

Journey was so ubiquitous in the 1980s that its “best of” album was ranked the #10 best selling album of that decade. Their sound was right down the fairway, defining mainstream 80s rock/pop for all time. But by 1986, the band’s fortunes began to level off. “Following the most commercially successful era for (Journey), lead singer Steve Perry firmly took control over Journey‘s musical direction,” (Classic Rock Review). “The ultimate result of this new direction was this 1986 album Raised On Radio, an album which would (at least initially) become just about as popular as their biggest earlier albums, but ultimately would symbolize the decline and fall of Journey’s successful run in through the late 1970s and early 1980s.

“‘Girl Can’t Help It’ is the best song on the album, with a direct and crisp sound … a simple but memorable piano riff, and some counter-harmonic guitars to accent it all … Following the release of Raised On Radio, Journey embarked on a tour which was initially very successful, but in early 1987 Perry suddenly and unexpectedly pulled the plug and the band was forced to cancel the rest of the tour … They would not again reconvene as a band for nearly a decade, when (they) had a short-lived comeback. But the classic band was never again the same.”

“Girl Can’t Help It” doesn’t even begin to approach the band’s top five singles list (by contrast, “Don’t Stop Believin'” has reached 2.9 billion streams on Spotify and has 13.1 million downloads and ringtone purchases). But although the former top sellers were starting to see their longtime popularity slip, their stage presence and musicality were undimmed for this 1986 performance. The band’s exquisitely blended stacked vocals (perhaps best heard at 2:40 and again at 4:04 for the a cappella outro) somehow all sounded like frontman Steve Perry. Built in A minor overall, the track shifts to C minor at 1:07 for the pre-chorus, transitioning to C major for the chorus (1:19 – 1:34) before flipping over to the relative A minor and onward from there.

Many thanks to regular contributor Rob P. for submitting this track!

J.D. Souther | Banging My Head Against the Moon

“It’s been said that JD Souther could have been a major artist if he had kept more of those beautiful, introspective songs he wrote for himself,” (Country Music Hall of Fame). “He had the aching tenor voice, the good looks that got him TV acting jobs … He wasn’t a star of country-rock, but he was crucial to its enduring power.

—Kyle Young, CEO, Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum”

Souther wrote ‘Faithless Love’ for his then-girlfriend Linda Ronstadt and later co-wrote ‘The Best of My Love’ with Glenn Frey and Don Henley of the Eagles. He went on to write other signature Eagles hits: ‘Heartache Tonight,’ ‘New Kid in Town,’ and ‘Victim of Love.’ “Souther even had an opportunity to join the band early in their run—an experience he called being ‘an Eagle for a day.'” He summed it up by saying “‘I think they were so relieved when I said no. I’m not a very good team player.’” He had his own chart success with 1979’s “You’re Only Lonely” and then a duet with James Taylor, ‘Her Town Too.’ Looking back, he summed up his career: “’Good music really lasts a long time.’”

“Banging My Head Against the Moon,” from Souther’s 1976 release Black Rose, is built in F major overall. At 1:39, a bridge slips quickly into Db major for what starts as an instrumental bridge, later joined by vocals. At 2:00, we slip right back into F major before a return to the next verse at 2:09.