pop – Page 24

Todd Rundgren | Worldwide Epiphany 1.1

“Todd Rundgren has long made a career out of alternatively (and sometimes simultaneously) confounding and delighting his most ardent fans.” (MusoScribe). “Resolutely following his muse wherever it takes him … the result is a body of work like that of no other artist: rich with gems, but wildly varying and with little in the way of consistency. In fact, consistency is a quality in which Rundgren likely places little stock; for him, unexpected stylistic left turns are a feature, not a bug.

Even against that backdrop … Rundgren’s 1993 album No World Order remains among the most challenging and polarizing projects in his lengthy recording career … Then enamored of the new CD-i media format — a development that for a brief moment looked like entertainment technology’s Next Big Thing — Rundgren crafted a cache of what might be termed songlets or song snippets (the No World Order CD-i contained nearly one thousand four-bar segments). The idea of the CD-i was that users could interact with the media, creating their own mix of the music by adjusting the sonic elements … Despite the album’s dodgy reputation, Rundgren’s near infallible sense of melody — one arguably on a par with that of Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson — rarely fails him.”

“Worldwide Epiphany 1.1” is a shortened version of a tune with a full version that clocks in at well over five minutes, but the “1.1” version includes all of the track’s basic elements in a shorter form. An F# minor verse, starting with and strongly featuring a “9” tension in the melody, shifts to an E minor chorus at 0:50.

The Searchers | Needles and Pins

Jackie DeShannon was the first to record “Needles and Pins,” credited to Jack Nitzsche and Sonny Bono, in 1963. She has claimed co-authorship of the song. But the song’s big hit was scored by the British Invasion group The Searchers, released early the next year. That was their second UK #1, after “Sweets For My Sweet” from 1963. In the US, the song reached a respectable #13 on the Billboard charts. Later in 1964, their cover of The Clovers’ “Love Potion No. 9” became their best-charting song in America (#3).

According to Songfacts, “two 6-string guitars are playing in unison on the intro — it sounds like a 12-string guitar because an engineer accidentally left the echo switch on but liked the result.”

After the bridge, the third verse (1:24) lands a third up from the starting key.

Frank Sinatra | Strangers In the Night

In the midst of rock’s mid-60s domination of the pop music charts, Frank Sinatra’s treacly 1966 rendition of “Strangers in the Night” was a major hit. The music was written by Bert Kaempfert, with English lyrics by Charles Singleton and Eddie Snyder. In the US, the song reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and on the Easy Listening chart. The same-named album containing the single, with arrangements by long-time collaborator Nelson Riddle, was also a US #1 release. That album also contained “Summer Wind,” another Sinatra staple, though that song fared less well as a single.

Sinatra disliked the song, and wasn’t shy about mentioning it. See this dedicated Sinatra fan page for some of his very colorful commentary about the tune!

The scat-singing that starts at 2:20 gave rise to innumerable sophomoric bathroom graffiti quoting Sinatra’s do-be-do-be-do and the pithy wisdom of various philosophers.

There’s a whole-step modulation, from F major to G major, for the final verse at 2:01. According to the Wikipedia page for the song, referencing The Billboard Book of Number One Adult Contemporary Hits, Sinatra had trouble nailing the modulation, so the two sections were recorded separately and spliced together.

Joe Jackson | Real Men

“Joe Jackson is known for vibrant, emotional hits like ‘Is She Really Going Out with Him?,’ ‘Breaking Us in Two,’ and the new wave-ish ‘Steppin’ Out,’ the latter two songs from his 1982 hit album Night and Day,” (American Songwriter). “That seminal release also includes a piano-driven, violin-laced ballad that didn’t manage to get quite as much attention but was way ahead of its time.

… It has been said that the Night and Day album (1982) was a tribute to Cole Porter and his view of New York, and that ‘Real Men’ was referencing the city’s gay culture (which became more prominent in the wake of the six-day Stonewall Uprising in 1969) … Jackson’s debut single and video for Night and Day, ‘Real Men’ did not chart in America and barely charted in the UK, but it managed to go Top 10 in Australia and Top 20 in the Netherlands. The album fared well, becoming one of two Jackson releases to sell half a million copies.”

Built in E minor overall, the somber verses transition to soaring wordless choruses in B major (first heard from 1:04 – 1:26). The tune’s lyrics were edgy at the time — and remain so. But Jackson’s use of “the other F-word” is likely without malice, given his longtime status as an openly bisexual man. There’s plenty of broader commentary on gender overall: Now it’s all changed / It’s got to change more is a line which wouldn’t have been out of place in a Women’s Studies textbook of the era.

The Roches | I Love My Mom

“While just about every critic and fan has a favorite Roches album that was inexplicably ignored, most will probably agree that Speak (1989) was the one that really should have gone gold,” (AllMusic). “All of the ingredients for a huge album are here: emotional yet accessible songs, radio-friendly folk-pop arrangements, and the sisters’ usual mind-blowing vocal pyrotechnics … this album doesn’t have a dud track from end to end. Sure, fans of their early work will find ‘I Love My Mom’ a bit too conventional and poppy … The jazzy backups are well handled and subtle throughout the album, and it’s a classic. Alas, like all Roches albums, it was critically acclaimed but ignored by the public.”

At 0:40, the approach to the second verse gets a touch of The Roches’ trademark oddity factor with a time hiccup — the first of several extra 2/4 measures throughout. After a start in A major, the tune shifts up a whole step to B major at 2:39 in the middle of an instrumental bridge (2:19 – 2:43). Many thanks to regular contributor Rob P. for this great catch!

Chicago | Just You ‘n’ Me

The second single released from Chicago VI (1973), “Just You ‘n’ Me” climbed to #4 on the Billboard Hot 100. The track “was written after a fight between Pankow and his future wife Karen: ‘We had had a huge fight, it was a nasty lovers’ quarrel, if you will. She locked herself in the bathroom and wouldn’t come out…Just You ‘n’ Me poured out of me in its entirety. Usually when I write songs, I come up with an idea for a chorus or a hook and fill in the blanks in stages. This was a moment of clarity I’ve never experienced before or after. It remains a special event in my songwriting experience,'” (Billboard).

“Just You ‘n’ Me” was the final song played by Chicago AM radio station WLS (known as “the Rock of Chicago”) before it changed to a talk radio format in 1989 (WLSHistory.com).

The track starts in Bb major, with the band’s famous brass section playing a strong role from the first measures. 1:04 brings a shift to Ab major before a swaggering brass break brings Bb major back at 1:33. A calmer instrumental break section starts at 2:00, this time in D minor, featuring solo soprano saxophone and keyboards. At 2:40, there’s a shift to the original Bb as the backup vocals return, leading back to a very overdue second verse and a surprising unresolved ending.

Celine Dion | All By Myself

Eric Carmen’s 1975 song “All By Myself” was made famous by the Canadian singer Celine Dion, who included her cover on the 1996 album Falling Into You. Producer David Foster also added a modulation to the song, which has become one of the most iconic key changes in pop music (it is at 2:48.) The track reached #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and became one of Dion’s biggest hits.

In December 2023, Dion announced she had been diagnosed with stiff-person syndrome, a rare neurological condition that has made it difficult to sing. A documentary, I Am: Celine Dion, tracing Dion’s journey with the disease, was released on Prime Video last month.

Frankie Valli + The Four Seasons | Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You

“Once the Four Seasons became a consistent success, Frankie Valli established a side career doing solo recordings whose style hearkened back to pre-rock pop,” (AllMusic). “The best and most successful example of his solo work is ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’ (1967), (which) would be perfectly at home on one of Frank Sinatra’s mid-1950s albums … The music skillfully blends ballad and pre-rock pop feels by wedding gentle, yearning verses that ebb and flow in a cocktail jazz style to a swinging chorus that bounds along on a series of surging, soaring melodic motifs.

(The track) starts in a ballad style with stately horns drifting a smooth, jazzy beat, undergoes a change midway through where the horns and the beat both start to swing in an uptempo, lounge music style and then shifts back and forth between these two feels for the rest of the song. Valli navigates this tricky set of tempo shifts with graceful style, using a silky tenor croon for the lighter moments and a swaggering baritone in the uptempo moments … (it) became a #2 smash hit and an instant standard that was extensively covered by … Andy Williams, Paul Anka and Englebert Humperdinck … (and has) become an oldies radio favorite and popped up in films as diverse as The Deer Hunter and Conspiracy Theory.“

After starting in E major, the verse features with plenty of harmonic motion over a tonic pedal-point bass. At 2:08, there’s a shift upward to G major for verse 2 — impressive enough that you won’t even mind when you hear verse 1’s lyrics are re-used wholesale. At 2:38, the boisterous instrumental hook returns, but drops back into the original key E major for the chorus, which repeats as the track fades.

Boyz II Men | On Bended Knee

“When ‘On Bended Knee’ reached #1, Boyz II Men became only the second act in Hot 100 history to replace themselves (‘I’ll Make Love to You’) at the top of the Hot 100,” (Stereogum). “The Beatles had done it in 1964, going back-to-back-to-back and holding the #1 spot for 14 uninterrupted weeks. (Elvis Presley had once replaced himself at #1, too, but he did that in the pre-Hot 100 era.) When Boyz II Men pulled it off, they held that top spot even longer.

… And Boyz II Men really sing that. When singers get all showy with their melismatic runs, they can sometimes lose a song’s melody or its emotional center … Boyz II Men have these rich interweaving harmonies and these big solo moments, but they always convey the gravity of this heartbreak that they’re describing … ‘On Bended Knee’ (1994) does nothing new, but the execution is immaculate.”

The nuanced Jimmy Jam/Terry Lewis production never lets anything get in the way of the quartet’s beautifully balanced vocals. The fact that the track is also a Jam/Lewis composition makes all of the careful handling even less of a surprise. The single was a worldwide hit, but nowhere more than the US, where it reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, #8 (Adult Contemporary), #2 (Hot R+B/Hip-Hop), and #1 (Pop Airplay).

After an intro in Ab major, the tune settles into Eb major for the first verse. At 3:26, a bridge starts with emotion already turned up to 9.8 and ends somewhere around 14 on a scale of 10, delivering us into another verse in a new key of E major. Somehow, another ecstatic key change to F major hits at 4:32. The fever finally breaks around 5:20, dropping the tune into its final resting place of Bb major.

Tony Orlando + Dawn | Knock Three Times

“L. Russell Brown, one of the two songwriters behind ‘Knock Three Times,’ grew up in a Newark housing project,” (Stereogum). “There was one phone in his building, so when someone in his family got a call, his downstairs neighbors would bang on a radiator … Brown and his songwriting partner Irwin Levine made that into a song. Tony Orlando was another New Jersey guy. He’d started out singing doo-wop as a teenager in the late ’50s, and he scored a couple of minor hits in the early ’60s. From there, he became a Brill Building songwriter and, eventually, a record executive. He signed Barry Manilow and co-wrote a few songs with him.”

Orlando was unexpectedly pressed into service as a vocalist, saw success, began working with “Telma Hopkins and Joyce Vincent Wilson, two backup singers who’d worked for Motown and Stax and whom Orlando had gotten to know from working with Manilow,” using the collective stage name Dawn. “Dawn eventually became Dawn featuring Tony Orlando, and then Tony Orlando and Dawn, and that’s the version that eventually got a mid-’70s variety show on CBS.”

“Knock Three Times” modulates up a half-step at 1:59 with a partial instrumental verse; the strings and brass battle it out for the title of highest state of cheesiness. The single was a worldwide smash, hitting top 5 in Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the UK, much of Europe, and Canada. It also reached #1 on both the US pop and easy listening charts — but during this era it wasn’t entirely unheard of for octogenarians to hit the dance floor for tunes that also climbed to the highest reaches of the pop charts.