Tag: pop

The Supremes | Here Comes the Sunrise

Clifton Davis, known for writing “Never Can Say Goodbye” for the Jackson 5, wrote “Here Comes The Sunrise” for the newly Diana Ross-less (-free?) Supremes, released on their 1971 album Touch (The Diana Ross Project). ” … a nice song, a mid-tempo pop number with just the right amount of bounce; the Billboard review of Touch called this song a ‘chart possibility,’ and it’s easy to imagine it getting some radio play …

“Touch received strong reviews from critics; Billboard raved, ‘The trio really has its act together, and are sounding more exciting than ever,’ and Rolling Stone called the album ‘an unqualified success and the final proof that the Supremes will continue without Diana Ross.’ Indeed, the trio sounds extremely confident, tackling an eclectic group of songs with great skill; lead singer (Jean) Terrell, in particular, turns in some of the finest work of her Motown career, shaking off any bit of lingering hesitancy and attacking each song with impressive versatility and vocal elasticity.  Touch falls just shy of being a perfect album, but it’s close … Touch certainly deserved more success than it eventually found, and stands up today as a smart, satisfying artistic statement.”

After a start in G major, an early bridge (1:01) leads to a short instrumental interlude (1:24 – 1:29) featuring unexpected brass syncopations over a patch of sumptuous harmonies, dropping us into G# major for the balance of the tune.

The Belle Stars | Iko Iko

“Offering a self-contained, funkier alternative to early Bananarama, London’s seven-woman Belle Stars played and sang neo-soul and dance-rock,” (TrouserPress). The music “provoke(s) a good time largely through the band’s own evident enjoyment.”

Kent, a MotD regular, submits “Iko Iko” by the UK band The Belle Stars. “It’s been recorded many times, charting three times on the Billboard Hot 100, but only twice in the Top 40. The Dixie Cups’ 1964 version may be the oldest one recognized by most, as it was recorded as a percussive version of a song one member remembered her grandmother singing, not realizing that it had been written in the 1950s as ‘Jack-a-Mo.’ Dr. John recorded another version in 1972, which missed the top 40, but the best chart success came in 1989 when the version by The Belle Stars was featured in the movie Rain Man, scenes of which appear in the video.” The Belle Stars’ 1983 version, which became a top 40 US hit, modulates rather gently from F to F# (1:23); the entire harmonic structure drops away, leaving only the groove still running, and then re-enters in the new key.

Adele | Love Is a Game

“Early in the [2021] press cycle for her fourth LP, Adele referred to 30 as her most personal album yet,” (Pitchfork). “It’s hard to imagine something more personal than the empathy bombs that Adele typically drops, but she did not lie about 30 … Here, she’s telling a more unexpected story about love: What it means to inflict that pain on your family, to rebuild yourself from scratch, and—big exhale—to try to love again … she’s taking cues from newer visionaries like Jazmine Sullivan and Frank Ocean as much as her diva elders … her vocals are more playful: Motown-style background vox are modulated to a chirp on “Cry Your Heart Out” and “Love Is a Game,” in a kind of remix of her usual retro homage.”

“‘Cry your heart out, it’ll clean your face,’ Adele admonishes herself … It’s a record in which Adele ugly-cries, then wipes off her streaked makeup, sloughing off layers of dead skin in the process,” (The Guardian).

“Love is a Game,” drenched with strings and saturated with layers of background vocals, is a Motown/R&B pastiche of the highest order. After a start in Db major, the bridge wraps up at 4:15 — with a transition to Eb as the drum kit stunt-stumbles over an odd-metered measure before settling into a new chorus at 4:22.

Little Mix | You Gotta Not

“You Gotta Not” is featured on the 2016 album Glory Days by the British girls group Little Mix. The album was their first to reach #1 in the UK; AllMusic claimed “the group deliver[s] a set of hooky, smartly crafted songs that balance swaggering, ’60s-style R&B with stylish, electronic-tinged dance-pop.” Co-written by Meghan Trainor, “You Gotta Not” highlights themes of female empowerment, and its groove recalls Jennifer Lopez’s “Ain’t Yo Mama,” also written by Trainor. The tune modulates from Db up to D at 1:12.

Bee Gees | Fanny (Be Tender With My Love)

Released in 1975, “Fanny (Be Tender With My Love”) peaked at #12 on the United States Billboard Hot 100 chart and #2 in Canada. “According to Maurice Gibb, producer Quincy Jones called “Fanny” one of his favorite R&B songs of all time.” (SteveHoffman forums) Written by Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb and produced by Arif Mardin, the tune was recorded on the same day as “Jive Talkin’,” according to a 2001 interview in Billboard. Blue Weaver, keyboardist for the Bee Gees during this period, was influenced by Hall & Oates’ 1973 LP Abandoned Luncheonette: “The key change in ‘Fanny (Be Tender)’ was a complete rip-off from Abandoned Luncheonette (from ‘She’s Gone,’ which was also produced by Mardin). I only had it on tape, and I didn’t know that Arif produced it”.

The group did not perform “Fanny” live because of the layers of harmonies used to create the studio recording. In the same Billboard interview, Maurice Gibb explained: “We all love that one, but it’s just a bitch to sing.”

After starting with an intro and verse in E major, the tune shifts to its relative minor (C# minor) for the pre-chorus and chorus at 0:24. The pattern holds through verse 2 and chorus, followed by a bridge built around A major at 1:55 and another verse at 2:16. 3:00 and 3:05 bring two half-step modulatons.

Many thanks to our Brazilian follower (and first-time contributor) @julianna_arai for this submission!

Silk Sonic | Blast Off

On their album An Evening with Silk Sonic, released today: “Working together as Silk Sonic, Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak revisit that bygone analog era (the 70s) in a hybrid of homage, parody, throwback and meticulous reverse engineering, tossing in some cheerfully knowing anachronisms,” (New York Times). “They flaunt skill, effort and scholarship, like teacher’s pets winning a science-fair prize; they also sound like they’re having a great time.”

Mars and .Paak inhabit different regions of the R&B/Soul/Pop/HipHop vortex, but the overlapping section of the resulting venn diagram is intriguing — and apparently synergystic. The NYTimes continues: “Silk Sonic comes across as a continuation for Mars and a playfully affectionate tangent for Paak. Mars is a multi-instrumentalist with a strong retro streak … Paak’s catalog has delved into more complicated matters. On his albums, named after places where he has lived, he switches between singing and rapping, and his lyrics take on contemporary conditions; he’s also a musician steeped in live-band soul and R&B, and a hard-hitting drummer … On An Evening With Silk Sonic, Paak’s specificity merges with Mars’s pop generalities, while both of them double down on craftsmanship and cleverness.” With Parliament Funkadelic’s bassist Bootsy Collins serving as something of an intermittent master of ceremonies, the album “revives the sound of 1970s groups like Earth, Wind & Fire, the Spinners, the Manhattans, the Chi-Lites and the Delfonics … a Fabergé egg of an album: a lavish, impeccable bauble, a purely ornamental not-quite-period piece. Mars and Paak don’t pretend to be making any grand statement, but there’s delight in every detail.”

After a short intro peppered with compound chords, the tune settles in somewhere in the E major/E Lydian neighborhood. That duality is spelled out multiple times in the chorus (the first time at 0:44):

F#/G# — A/B — Emaj7

The use of densely-packed chromatic bass motion combined with compound chords as connective tissue (1:44 and elsewhere) keeps us happily wondering where we might touch down next. At 3:16, an extended outro leaves earth’s atmosphere entirely as the groove falls away. We continue to ascend a ladder of brief modulations (3:54), further and further into an ecstatic stratosphere — but not without a knowing and neighborly wave from Bootsy.

Lorde | The Man with the Axe

“Well, I thought I was going to make this big acid record but I don’t think it was an acid album,” New Zealand singer/songwriter Lorde said upon the release of her 2021 album Solar Power. “I had one bad acid experience in this album and was like meh, it’s a weed album. It’s one of my great weed albums.” The record, which represents a departure from Lorde’s typical synth-dominated style in favor of more acoustic, folk-oriented arrangements, reached #1 in Australia and New Zealand, and charted in the top 10 in thirteen other countries.

“The Man With The Axe” is autobiographical, a love song about a person who affects the singer in a way no one else can. “I wrote this track almost as a poem,” Lorde said. “I was very hungover and I think that fragile, vulnerable quality made it in here. It’s funny because it’s kind of melancholy, but I also think of it as very cozy.

“I’m expressing a huge amount of love and affection for someone. To me, it sounds very private — I sort of don’t even like thinking about people listening to it because it’s just for me…I really didn’t change the poem, apart from maybe taking one line out. That was one of the biggest accomplishments of the album.”

The song modulates from E to F# at 3:14.

Aubrey Johnson | No More ‘I Love Yous’

Aubrey Johnson “is a New York-based vocalist, composer, and educator who specializes in jazz, Brazilian, and creative contemporary music with and without words. She holds a Master of Music degree in jazz performance from the New England Conservatory and teaches at Berklee College of Music in the Voice Department and in the Jazz Masters Program at Queens College in New York City.” As a college student, Aubrey won two DownBeat Collegiate Student Music Awards for Best Jazz Vocalist and Jazz Vocalist, Outstanding Performance and another during her master’s studies for Outstanding Performance in Jazz Voice.

Johnson has studied with Danilo Perez, Jerry Bergonzi, Dominique Eade, Allan Chase, George Garzone, and Frank Carlber; she contributed to Bobby McFerrin’s Grammy-nominated release VOCAbuLaries. She’s also shared the stage with Lyle Mays, Janis Siegel (Manhattan Transfer), Fred Hersch’s Pocket Orchestra, John Zorn’s Mycale Vocal Quartet, and many others, and as a leader with her own band.

The tune Johnson covered in 2020, “No More I Love Yous,” is best known for its performance by Annie Lennox (1995) — itself a cover of a tune by a band called The Lover Speaks and written by David Freeman and Joseph Hughes. “When the song was released it made a mild murmur in the charts,” Lennox recalls, “but I don’t think it ever really became a hit. There are quite a few songs floating around which should have touched the consciousness of the nation – they should have made their mark, and this is one of them. I thought, well, I might be sticking my neck out to do this, but I really wanted to give it another chance because it’s a magnificent song.” Her hunch paid off: Lennox’s version became a multi-continent smash hit and a Grammy winner.

Liberated from the measured feel of Lennox’s version, Johnson focuses on the lyrical melody lines instead. After a start in D major and a menagerie of short, darting instrumental lines accompanying the vocal on the verse, 1:42 brings a modulation up to F major. At 2:36, there’s a bridge featuring wordless vocals and then a piano solo, cycling through several keys. At 4:09, just before the last chorus section, we’ve pivoted back to D major.

Jon Secada | Do You Believe In Us

Cuban-born, Florida-raised recording artist Jon Secada (born Juan Francisco Secada Ramírez) recorded “Do You Believe in Us” for his debut eponymous English language album and for his debut Spanish-language album Otro Día Más Sin Verte (1992). The English version peaked at #13 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and #3 on the Adult Contemporary chart; the Spanish version reached #1 on the US Billboard Hot Latin Tracks chart. In 1993, the tune won a BMI Award fr Most Performed Latin Song worldwide. The tune was composed by Secada, Miguel Morejon, and Joseph Stefano; Emilio Estefan Jr. was the producer.

Secada has both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in music, strongly attributing “my career, the things that have happened have happened, (to) my music education background. I always wanted to be educated and be prepared.”

After a start in Eb major, 2:34 shifts us into E major during the instrumental bridge.

Billy Ocean | Love Really Hurts Without You

British singer Billy Ocean’s first Top 40 hit in the US, “Love Really Hurts Without You” was featured on his eponymous first studio album, released in 1976.

Ocean claims he wrote the song while simultaneously learning how to play the new piano he had just bought. “The novelty of it was coming home every lunchtime and evening and tinkling my piano until eventually I did get something out of it which was the song ‘Love Really Hurts Without You’,” he said. “My left hand started playing the melody and my right hand just did some down beats and my voice just started coming out with [the opening lyric] ‘You run around town like a fool and you think that it’s groovy’ and the song just came together there and then.”

The song has since appeared in the 2013 film Filth, as well as in the Netflix series Sex Education. Beginning in F major, the tune modulates up to G at 2:07.