pop – Page 42

Carole King and James Taylor | Up on the Roof

“By the 1960s, decades after Tin Pan Alley had moved from its original location on Manhattan’s West 28th Street and become a catchphrase for the popular music industry as a whole, writers such as the stellar team of Carole King and Gerry Goffin were mining the same escapist concepts, but updating them with a hint of postwar anxiety… (American Songwriter). ‘Up on the Roof,’ a hit for the Drifters in 1962, remains one of the most enduring songs of the latter-day Tin Pan Alley period (when writers labored at the Brill Building and other sites along Broadway), if only for its lushness of melody and lyrical sophistication. ‘At night the stars put on a show for free’ … In a manner similar to that of the first Tin Pan Alley writers, Goffin and King honor the tradition of quick recognition through tunefulness: hit songs, during the Brill Building era, needed to be heard just once to be remembered.

But ‘Up on the Roof’ also evinces a quiet sense of sadness, an urban dissatisfaction that moves beyond anything conceived by the rose-spectacled Tin Pan Alley writers of the early 20th century. Inspired, perhaps, by the realism of works such as Rebel Without a Cause and West Side Story, King and Goffin view modern Gotham as a place of chaos and potential strife: ‘people are just too much for me to face…I get away from the hustling crowd.’ For these city dwellers, escape is not just a goal but a necessity. The difference—from the perspective of songwriting technique—is that listeners are allowed to visualize the beauty of the flight ‘to the top of the stairs’ along with the reasons for making it … Hard, unsparing reality could be saved for Bob Dylan and the new generation of singer/songwriters who arrived in his wake.”

James Taylor’s 1979 album Flag featured his cover of the tune, which performed well as a top 40 single. Reflecting on his first years of work with King starting in 1970, Taylor remembered: ” … Carole and I found we spoke the same language” (The Guardian). “Not just that we were both musicians, but as if we shared a common ear, a parallel musical/emotional path. And we brought this out in one another, I believe.” It’s all the more powerful to hear Taylor and King collaborate on this live duo version of the tune (2010). The duet finds them shifting between her best key and his — while adding a surprising new dimension with the connective tissue. King begins in C major, followed by a shift to the F major (the same key as Taylor’s studio cover) at 1:15, then back to King’s C major at 2:22, then finally settling into F major at 2:45 for the balance of the tune.

for Shayna

For reference, here’s the 1962 original:

Guys ‘n’ Dolls | There’s a Whole Lot of Loving

“Yes, we have reached the stage where a song from a McVitie’s fruit shortcake TV ad can be recorded and released as a hit single.” (Music Sounds Better With Two). “The song itself has nothing to do with cookies and a lot to do with the natural hugeness of the United States (the songwriters were American). It’s a proper song, not a jingle fleshed out. The loving going on is abstract; the love could be for anyone, but it’s heartfelt and the wholesome goodness of the song’s sing-a-long style matches the Hoover Dam mention. It could be straight out of a musical, though usually there’s a bit more plot in a stage song.

I don’t know if this was expected to be a hit – but it was. So, what to do? On very short notice, a group of male and female singers were put together so they could appear as Guys ‘n’ Dolls for promotional purposes – miming the song and dancing on variety shows … There was no time to re-record the song with the new group, however. It worked, at least at first … This scam, if you like, did have one unintended consequence. A few years after their being relieved from Guys ‘n’ Dolls, Theresa Bazar – the female of the pair – approached the studio bass player, one Trevor Horn, to see if he would be interested in working with her and David Van Day, the male of the pair. He was and so they did – as the duo Dollar. And so from late 1974, the tiny seeds of something different were being sown.”

The intro features a few psychedelic-adjacent instrumental touches before it kicks into its full “Up With People”/The Bicentennial is Approaching — Look Busy! vibe in earnest at 0:33. At 1:45 and 2:30, the string-saturated key changes are unsubtle enough to drive your Great Aunt Mildred’s V8 Buick Electra through — with room to spare.

Cher | Love and Understanding

“Love and Understanding” was featured on American singer Cher’s 1991 album Love Hurts. Written by MotD regular Diane Warren, the track reached the number 3 spot on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart.

The song’s intro begins in the key of A minor and 12/8 time before abruptly shifting to a 4/4 rock groove in the relative C major at 0:14. The verse stays in C before pivoting back to A minor through a V7 chord for the chorus at 1:00. A full modulation up a step to B minor occurs at 2:50, leading into the final chorus. Finally, a short outro at 3:54 recalls the opening 12/8 motive.

Jane Siberry | Mimi on the Beach

“Canadian art-pop chanteuse Jane Siberry stands outside the traditional boundaries of folk and pop music, creating ethereal, unconventional songs that draw from a deep wellspring of creativity,” (AllMusic). “Emerging in the early ’80s, Siberry courted mainstream success with left-of-center hits like “Mimi on the Beach,” “I Muse Aloud,” “One More Colour,” and “Calling All Angels.” As the decades progressed, she began weaving elements of jazz and Celtic music into her cosmopolitan sound — which evokes names like Laura Nyro, Kate Bush, Toyah Willcox, Suzanne Vega, and Laurie Anderson — while remaining fiercely independent and releasing her material via her own label, Sheeba Records.

… “No Borders Here (is an) assured, cinematic collection highlighted by ‘Mimi on the Beach,’ an underground Canadian hit,” which the 1984 album’s liner notes describe as a ‘7.5 minute art-rock single.'”

Built in G major overall, the tune takes a turn after the second verse, when the pre-chorus arrives at 2:35. The previously relentless 8th-note accompaniment is suspended as the melody shifts to short upgoing segments. At 2:42, the melody starts (but doesn’t complete) an E whole-tone scale, further unmooring the listener. At 2:51, the chorus lands in B minor.

The Maisonettes | Heartache Avenue

“The Maisonettes’ oddness lay not so much in their hit as their combination of maverick indie record label beginnings with a semi-manufactured image that some indie purists might find crass,” (LastFM). “Their hit, ‘Heartache Avenue,’ entered the UK chart in late 1982 and rose all the way up to number seven. Like most of the music they would record over the next year or two, it was fairly mainstream pop / rock with early 1980s synthesizer-abetted production and a notable (but not overwhelming) 1960s soul-pop influence, with a particularly audible debt to Motown.” The manufactured nature of the UK band’s lineup was driven completely by the nascent music video era: the backup vocalists didn’t sing on the studio version of the tune (or anything else), but rather were strictly dancers who could also lip-sync. Many saw this limitation on the band’s flexibility as a cause of its demise.

The public’s taste for music based on a nod to the past proved limited: ” … interest in the revival of the sounds and fashions of the Mod and Beat Generation era of the 60s was starting to cool off (the break-up of The Jam proving the final nail in the coffin). The Maisonettes never did get into the chart again …”

After beginning in a slightly detuned F# major, 0:33 – 0:40 brings a short pre-chorus. After a second verse and pre-chorus, a more ambitious G# major chorus hits from 1:19 – 1:42, making the verse seem rather connect-the-dots by comparison. The key reverts to the original F# for another verse, then lifts again to G# at 2:13 for another chorus.

Barry Manilow | I Write The Songs

“I Write The Songs” was written by Bruce Johnston, a member of the Beach Boys, and released on his 1977 solo album Going Public. Barry Manilow’s cover, recorded in 1976, won Song of the Year at the Grammy Awards and reached the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100. Cash Box, a now-defunct music trade industry magazine, wrote that “the melodic, ballad-like beginning grows into an operatic crescendo, all done in clear production that all age groups will appreciate.”

There is an unusual modulation up a major third from F to A for the penultimate strain of the chorus at 2:34, and then Manilow takes it up one more step to B for the last chorus at 3:00.

Jim Croce | Time in a Bottle

Jim Croce was “a songwriter with a knack for both upbeat, catchy singles and empathetic, melancholy ballads” … (AllMusic). “Croce appealed to fans as a common man, and it was not a gimmick — he was a father and husband who went through a series of blue-collar jobs. And whether he used dry wit, gentle emotions, or sorrow, Croce sang with a rare form of honesty and power. Few artists have ever been able to pull off such down-to-earth storytelling as convincingly as he did.”

“Jim Croce wrote this reflective song the night that he found out his wife, Ingrid, was pregnant,” (Songfacts) … “She recalls a mix of terror and delight in Jim’s reaction when she told him the news. The child was a boy named Adrian, who grew up to become the singer-songwriter A.J. Croce … ‘Time In A Bottle’ hit #1 in America 14 weeks after Croce was killed in a plane crash. Croce started touring after he completed his last album, I Got A Name. On September 30, 1973 a plane carrying Croce and five others crashed upon takeoff as he was leaving one college venue to another 70 miles away … The single entered the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart for the week ending December 1, 1973 and finally reached #1 for the week ending December 29, a little over three months after he died.”

The verses are in D minor, but the choruses (heard first between 0:56 – 1:17) shift to D major. Quite unusually, the title is mentioned only at the beginning of the first verse, rather than during the chorus.

T-Pain | Best Love Song

“Best Love Song” was released as the first single from American singer/rapper T-Pain’s 2011 album Revolver. It features singer Chris Brown and the R&B group Once Chance. It reached the 33 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 and was used in the premiere of the TV show Hart of Dixie.

Beginning in G, the track shifts up to A at 2:50.

Justin Bieber | That Should Be Me

Canadian singer Justin Bieber makes his MotD debut with “That Should Be Me,” the final track on his first studio album, My World 2.0, released in 2011. The song, which was co-written by Bieber, Nasri Atweh, Luke Boyd, and Adam Messinger, debuted at ninety-two on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The lyric portrays the singer pleading with his lover to take him back.

The tune begins in C minor and transitions to the relative major, Eb, for the chorus at 0:41. There is a full modulation, up a half step to E major, coming out of the bridge for the final chorus at 2:34.

Annie Lennox | Cold

“From the very beginning of her rise to international stardom, Annie Lennox desperately wanted to transcend her own fame,” (Pitchfork). “Her breakout single as one half of Eurythmics, 1983’s ‘Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),’ encapsulated her anxieties as a frontwoman in the increasingly panoptic public eye: ‘Everybody’s looking for something,’ she warned … Like an international spy, Lennox used clothing and makeup as tools of professional disguise, continuously shapeshifting … many of Lennox’s characters served as commentary on societal perceptions of fame, wealth, and gender … But even if her facades had successfully warded off the media’s leering eye—even if she hadn’t been dubbed ‘Britain’s most tortured rock star’ … Lennox might still have justifiably burnt out by the end of the decade. Eurythmics were incredibly prolific, releasing almost an album a year starting with their 1981 debut In the Garden. Almost every album begot an international tour, with little downtime to recuperate. ‘I had this vision constantly towards the end of the Eurythmics period,’ Lennox later told Q, ‘my life was a bus, but I was running behind it. I just could not catch up with that fucking bus.'”

After she stepped away from Eurythmics and her longtime artistic partner Dave Stewart, “Diva (1992) broke dramatically with Eurythmics in style and substance: Where her work with Stewart trafficked in restless anxieties, her solo work was a step towards the wistful, patient resolve of womanhood … Despite the velveteen, varied instrumentation on Diva, Lennox’s voice is the album’s most essential and expansive element … a veritable one-woman orchestra.

In a decade marked by the meteoric rise of prefab boy bands, the explosion and subsequent implosion of Britpop, and the tragic, paparazzi-fueled death of Princess Diana, Diva is a prophetic warning about the acceleration of fame … In her eerily predictive manner, Lennox identified Ivana Trump as a bellwether for the growing influence wielded by, as she put it in 1992, ‘people famous for being famous.'”

On “Cold,” one of Diva‘s ballads, the verses never settle into one key (the music starts at 0:44, after a cinematic intro). The first progression, I – bIII – IV – I in G major (0:56 – 1:19), alternates with a second progression (1:20 – 1:43), which features the ii-V (and eventually the I) of the closely related key of D major. This tonality shift continues throughout all of the verses. Amid the rangy yet fluid melody and intensely emotive lyrics, somehow not a hair seems out of place.