“John Lennon wrote this song, which may have been influenced by the ambivalence he felt during his first marriage,” (Songfacts). “Lennon called this song ‘my first attempt at a ballad… it’s semi-autobiographical, but not consciously.’ Lennon and McCartney sang together into the same microphone when recording this song. John sang the lead on the intro, then Paul sang in a higher lead while John sang harmony.” The tune “was used as the B-side of ‘And I Love Her.’
Paul McCartney said of his songwriting partner: ‘People tend to forget that John wrote some pretty nice ballads. People tend to think of him as an acerbic wit and aggressive and abrasive, but he did have a very warm side to him really, which he didn’t like to show too much in case he got rejected. We wrote ‘If I Fell’ together but with the emphasis on John because he sang it. It was a nice harmony number, very much a ballad,'” (BeatlesBible.com).
The intro of the 1964 track, a single from the Hard Days Night album, is largely in C major, but transitions to to C# major at 0:34, where it stays for the balance of the tune.
The Cyrkle was a pop band that met as college students at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania in the mid-1960s. Their business manager was Brian Epstein who, of course, also managed the Beatles; the affected spelling of their name was suggested by John Lennon. The group had the opportunity to open for the Beatles for some of their 1966 US tour dates.
“Red Rubber Ball” was their first and biggest hit (Billboard #2 in 1966). The song was written by Paul Simon and Bruce Woodley of the Australian group The Seekers. Simon offered the song to the group during the time they opened for Simon and Garfunkel on tour.
There are several other notable recordings of the song. The Seekers recorded their own version of the song in 1966. Simon and Garfunkel performed the song at Lincoln Center in 1967, the recording of which was released in 1997. The most notorious cover of the song comes from the Canadian punk group The Diodes. In an interview, Paul Simon had made disparaging comments about punk rock, so The Diodes took that as an invitation to record their punk cover.
While none of these covers features a key change, The Cyrkle’s version offers a half-step modulation at 1:21.
“Junior Senior were a Danish pop duo. The duo consisted of Jesper ‘Junior’ Mortensen and Jeppe ‘Senior’ Laursen,” (Discogs). “They were well known for their 2002 single ‘Move Your Feet,’ which gained worldwide success in 2003, most notably in the United Kingdom.” The track barely made a scratch in the US, peaking at #45 on the US Dance chart — the band’s most prominent release in the States. But the tune reached #4 in Denmark, #20 in Australia, #11 in France, and #3 in the UK.
The duo’s 2005 release “Take My Time,” from the album Hey Hey My My Yo Yo, sounds like an update on the sound of the US-based band B-52s because … it is: B-52s vocalists Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson are both featured on the track.
Sounding for all the world like a late ’80s/early ’90s B-52s hit with a bit less frenetic energy, a lot less intra-band banter, and a broader harmonic vocabulary, “Take My Time” is a pop/funk fête delivered by a band that brings “joyful energy … mix(ing) all kinds of genres in a melting funky pot with a big smile on their faces,” (MTV). The track features half-step modulations at 2:48 (with an uninterrupted groove) and 3:14 (after what seems like a false ending — until the decrescendo shifts into reverse and the groove returns).
“Gayle McCormick’s music career had begun in the mid-60s in Missouri, where she performed with Steve Cummings + the Klassmen,” (Exclaim.ca). “She moved to California with the band, but left the group upon arriving on the West Coast. From there, she hooked up with an act called the Smiths (not to be confused with the later group from the UK), who changed their name to Smith by the release of 1969’s debut album, A Group Called Smith.
The record’s biggest hit was their cover of the Burt Bacharach-penned ‘Baby It’s You.’ While the song had been recorded by the Shirelles, the Beatles and more, the smooth, soul rock groove Smith grafted to the piece gave the tune its highest chart position, climbing to #5 in late 1969.
Smith followed up their debut with a sophomore collection in 1970, but they disbanded, leaving McCormick to start a solo career. She yielded a minor hit with ‘It’s a Cryin’ Shame’ from an eponymous solo set in 1971.” The energetic track features a mid-phrase modulation up a half-step at 2:07.
“Boy Like You” is the sixth track on the English pop group S Club 7’s 2001 album Sunshine. The track has a 90s pop vibe, and alternates between F minor for the verses and F major for the choruses. A true modulation to G occurs prior to the last chorus at 2:10.
“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 Letter,” originally written and recorded (and a #1 hit) in 1967 by the American rock band The Box Tops, is featured on Hailey Reinhard’s 2017 album What’s That Sound?
Reinhart, whose career jumpstarted with her third-place finish in the 10th season of American Idol in 2010, said in an interview with Variety that the song “is such a cool, timeless tune. One of my earliest memories is crowding around my grandma’s piano listening to my Aunt Janice and Uncle Tom sing and play it. My uncle can sound just like Alex Chilton and the Box Tops with his guttural, sandpaper-like tone, while my aunt would harmonize with her soulful pipes. I thought it would be really neat to bring it up a couple of keys and give a woman’s take on the tune. It’s such a unique, upbeat song with gritty vocals, horns and sweeping strings. It’s become a pop standard to many and I’m so happy I got to put my own spin on it.”
Reinhart has performed and toured with Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox, and is preparing to tour on her own later this year.
The track is in D minor and briefly shifts up to Gb major at 1:41 for the outro.
“The most commercially successful female singer in British chart history,” (AllMusic) Petula Clark spent her childhood “entertaining British troops alongside fellow child stars Julie Andrews and Anthony Newley … by the dawn of the ’50s, she was a superstar throughout the UK, with a résumé of close to two dozen films” and released several charting pop tunes … “Riding the wave of the British Invasion, Clark was finally able to penetrate the U.S. market in 1964 with the Grammy-winning ‘Downtown,’ the first single by a British woman ever to reach number one on the American pop charts.”
‘Downtown’ was also the first in a series of American Top Ten hits … that also included 1965’s ‘I Know a Place’ and 1966’s ‘I Couldn’t Live Without Your Love,’ and the number one smash ‘My Love.'” Over the years, she’s acted in multiple stage productions and movies. During the 1960s, she released popular singles in French, German, Italian, and Spanish, building a strong fanbase across Europe. In January 2023 at age 90, she appeared in Stephen Sondheim‘s Old Friends concert on the BBC, where she performed “I’m Still Here” from Follies.
“I Couldn’t Live Without Your Love” (1966), heard here on French television with Clark chatting with the host in French, does a quick harmonic sidestep during the verses (heard for the first time from 0:58 – 1:05). But it permanently modulates up a half step at 2:20.
In an interview with American Songwriter, John Oates, songwriter/guitarist/vocalist for Hall and Oates, spoke about “She’s Gone,” from the band’s 1973 album Abandoned Luncheonette (re-released to larger acclaim in 1976): “I don’t know if it’s the best song we’ve ever written, but it’s certainly one of the most enduring songs. I think it’s a song that is certainly emblematic of our collaborative relationship … We knew it was a good song. We knew it was unique. But really that song – don’t confuse that song with the record. The song was the thing that happened in our living room with him on the piano and me on the acoustic guitar. The record is what happened when we went into Atlantic studios with the legendary producer, Arif Mardin, and this incredible collection of musicians who he surrounded us with and his string arrangement and the chemistry. I call it the perfect storm of creativity. It turned that song into a classic record that has really stood the test.”
From Songfacts: “This is one of the duo’s favorite Hall & Oates songs. Daryl Hall told Entertainment Weekly: ‘It’s very autobiographical. What we wrote about was real, even though it was two different situations. And it’s very thematic with us: this soaring melody and uplifting chord progression, but about a very sad thing.'” In Songfacts‘ 2011 interview with John Oates, he explained: “‘We started out as songwriters. And both Daryl and myself, individually and collectively, have a wide variety of musical tastes. Just because the music we made may have fallen into a certain category doesn’t mean we weren’t aware of and interested in other kinds of music. When Hall & Oates got together, I brought a traditional American folk-y approach, and it was something Daryl wasn’t really even aware of. And Daryl brought a lot more of the urban R&B side. And when we blended those together, we eventually created a sound.'”
In what might be a high water mark for the duo’s vocals, lead vocal duties are shared and harmonies alternate with octave unisons. Although the single peaked at only #7 on the Billboard Hot 100, it also placed in the top 10 on the Canada Top Singles chart and both the US and Canadian Adult Contemporary charts. It only reached #93 on the US R&B chart. Though the duo’s unprecedented run of early-80s hits almost entirely arose from the pop genre, this earlier outing was textbook blue-eyed soul. Between 4:08 – 4:34, a late instrumental bridge brings three half-step modulations, ushered in with a IV/V compound chord in each new key.
Mayer also confirmed that the ex he is singing about in the lyric is Katy Perry, who he dated for four years, and claimed he spent more hours fine tuning the song than any other he has recorded.
The track is the lead single from the extended EP The Search for Everything: Wave 2, released in 2017. It begins in D and then detours briefly to Bb (and a new half-time feel) for the bridge after the second chorus at 1:47 before seamlessly returning to the chorus in the original key at 2:28.
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