rock – Page 15

Red Hot Chili Peppers | Californication

Rather like the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ highest point of popularity around the turn of the millennium, Pitchfork‘s review of the band’s 1999 album Californication was very much of its era:

“In a way, you have to be familiar with California to appreciate (lead singer Anthony) Kiedis’ lyrics. I mean, Los Angeles is shallow, sunny, fun, and tragic … Longevity in rock music is about as rare as hip-hop spellcheckers these days. The idea of albums has given way to the force-feeding of singles. Teens reposter their walls with the face-of-the-moment more frequently than undercover advertisers placard boarded-up fences and buildings in New York. Basically, the Chili Peppers are the closest thing we have to a Led Zepplin today. If you want quality, commercial, Jeep-stereo, headphone, stadium-filling, champion Rock that you can get behind, where else are you going to turn? Not to Eminem, you ain’t.”

The title track is quite a lot more reserved than “Scar Tissue,” “Get on Top,” and “Right on Time.” But there’s room for a ballad on even a rock album (or a tune that amounts to a ballad in RHCP-land) — and “Californication” fits the bill. After a start in A minor, there’s a shift to F# minor or an instrumental bridge at 3:22, then a return to the original key at 4:02.

Good Charlotte | Wondering

“Wondering” is the fourth track on the 2002 album The Young and the Hopeless by the American rock band Good Charlotte. After their first record did not sell as well as they hoped, the group decided to let inspiration guide them for this release. “Nothing about that record was pre-meditated, we were just having fun, and trying to do the best we could to achieve that goal,” lead guitarist Benji Madden said. “We’d gone out into the world and felt both the positive and the negative. And on The Young And The Hopeless we decided to really take a direction and stand up for ourselves, in a way.”

The track shifts from B up a whole step to C# at 3:00

Demi Lovato | The Middle

“The Middle” is the ninth track on American singer Demi Lovato’s debut studio album, Don’t Forget, released in 2008. AllMusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine described the record as “the kind of pop that feels disposable but winds up sticking around longer than its more considered cousins.” The song begins in E minor and shifts up a step to F# minor for the last chorus at 2:17.

Talking Heads | With Our Love

On the Talking Heads’ album More Songs About Buildings and Food, “You can hear (producer Brian) Eno’s ‘studio as instrument’ approach in all sorts of sonic details.” But in comparison to the band’s early days as regular performers at spartan punk-centric clubs like CBGB’s, ” … these increasingly intricate aesthetics never threaten to overthrow the music’s pleasure center: an involuntary compulsion to move your body … Talking Heads were sorting out how to engage simultaneously with the mind and the soul (or at least the hips)—how to be both art-rock and dance music,” (Pitchfork).

Salon called the album “a backwards exorcism of frozen-brittle guitars, smeared textures, and super-ecstatic vocals. The record brought forth an essential darkness and didn’t try to extinguish it. These were songs about emotions that lurk, about the secret part of ourselves that knows people can see right through us on buses, planes, and subways, all sung by a disjointed, ferocious, manic, shivering guy named David Byrne. It was a kind of State of the Union address, examining the nation’s health from a dozen different angles, including the sky.”

Sharing real estate on the 1978 release with “Take Me to the River,” a languorous track which became the band’s first hit, is the up-tempo “With Our Love.” The verse is built around G minor, with prominent Bb minor chords. 0:30 – 0:37 brings an off-kilter section featuring Db minor and Cb minor chords before a return to the original G minor section. At 0:45, the chorus alternates between E minor, G major, and A minor chords. 1:36 starts the cycle again. The tune’s driving forces of groove, lyric, and texture seem to transcend any expectation of traditional rock chord progressions; it doesn’t so much modulate as it fails to ever settle into a specific tonality in the first place. Disjointed, ferocious, and manic, indeed.

Seals and Crofts | We May Never Pass This Way Again

After getting their start in rock and pop bands in the 1950s, Jim Seals and Dash Crofts, “adherents of the Baha’i faith, sought to make a calmer brand of music, mixing folk, bluegrass, country and jazz influences and delivering their lyrics in close harmony,” (New York Times). “‘Jim Seals plays acoustic guitar and fiddle,’ Don Heckman wrote in the NYT in 1970 in a brief review of their second album, Down Home, “and Dash Crofts plays electric mandolin and piano; together they sing coolly intertwined, and quite colorful, vocal harmony.” The duo had an impressive run of top 10 soft rock hits in the 1970s (including “Summer Breeze” and “Hummingbird”), although they never topped the US pop charts outright.

“We May Never Pass This Way Again” (1973) “calls on people to show courage and continue to stand with one another, partly because they may never see each other again. Written by the duo, it’s an example of their strong convictions to the Baha’i faith. They made a pilgrimage to Haifa, Israel, where they studied the teachings of the faith, and often based their lyrics on themes of compassion and devotion.” (Songfacts).

The ambitious track shows the duo’s writing abilities soaring toward their highest point. The track reached top 30 on multiple US, Canadian, and Australian pop charts and #2 on both the Canadian Adult Contemporary and US Easy Listening charts. Alternating between vocal solos, unisons, and harmony, the duo (with lead vocals by Jim Seals) urge the listener to seize the day. It’s hard to imagine now that a densely textured harmonic feast of a tune — centered around the life philosophy of living in the moment, marinating in earnestness, and clocking in north of four minutes — was fodder for top 40 radio. But somehow, this track’s many sections took flight when combined together, somehow creating a feeling of advance nostalgia for … now.

Seals passed away this week at age 79. It would be difficult to find a better tribute to the songwriter and performer than this track.

0:00 intro and verse 1 / A Major
0:33 Pre-chorus 1a / C major
0:50 Pre-chorus 1b / multiple compound chords
0:58 Chorus / B minor
(Second verse and chorus)
2:27 Bridge / F major
3:14 Instrumental chorus / B minor
3:56 Outro / E major (modulation via common tone in melody)

Green Day | Brutal Love

“Brutal Love” is the lead track on the 2012 album ¡Tré!, the third and final installment of a series released by the American rock band Green Day (who today make their MotD debut.) According to Billboard, the track “marries glam-rock, doo-wop and soul music. Part of the melody is lifted from Sam Cooke’s 1962 hit “Bring It On Home To Me,” leading him to be credited as a co-writer.

The song begins in Ab and modulates up to A coming out of the second bridge at 3:45.

Todd Rundgren | Izzat Love?

“In interviews, he has attributed the radical shift in his mid-20s less to his own changing perspective than to other people’s perspective on him—he got tired of being seen as merely another piano-playing, lovesick troubadour,” (Pitchfork). “While he still stands by the folk-pop simplicity of his earliest solo records, Rundgren is quick to note their lack of depth, citing their obvious reference points (thematically, a high-school break-up; musically, the work of Laura Nyro). After achieving commercial success on his 1970 debut with the slick single ‘We Gotta Get You a Woman’ and critical success a year later with his moodier sophomore album, Rundgren sought to expand his range. And he wanted to do it by himself.

Throughout (the 70s), Rundgren was one of the first prominent artist-slash-producers, as competent behind the scenes as he was in front of the microphone, earning him the admiration of a young Prince and, later, Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker. As he discovered his own identity on record, Rundgren was hellbent on learning what happens when those two roles converge. When everything about a record is fully under the artist’s control, he suspected, the product can become something singular.”

Todd (1974) featured the single “A Dream Goes on Forever” and “I Think You Know,” ballads which are at the very heart of Rundgren’s catalog for most fans. However, much of the rest of album is comprised of shorter tracks which form a dense audio collage, including “Izzat Love.” In some ways, the track is right down the fairway when considering Rundgren’s younger years marinating in Philly Soul; with a slower tempo and more relaxed arrangement, the track might have been a hit. But instead, a frenetic feel and relentlessly uptempo rock delivery ruled the day, shifting up a whole step at 1:08. Be forewarned: the loud connective tissue to the next album track, “Heavy Metal Kids” (apparently the sound of analog recording tape being suddenly rewound) is inextricably included at 1:52.

English Beat | She’s Going

“The English Beat is a band with an energetic mix of musical styles and a sound like no other,” (NPR Music). “The band’s unique sound has allowed it to endure for decades and appeal to fans, young and old, all over the world. When The English Beat (known simply as The Beat in their native England) rushed on to the music scene in 1979, it was a time of massive social and political unrest and economic and musical upheaval. This set the stage for a period of unbridled musical creativity, and thanks in large part to the Punk movement and its DIY approach to making music, artists like The Beat were able to speak out and speak their mind on the news of the day, as in ‘Stand Down Margaret’, things that mattered to them and the youth culture, as in ‘Get A Job’, and universal matters of the heart and soul, as in their classic hits ‘I Confess’ and ‘Save It For Later’.”

Massachusetts-based ArtsFuse reviewed a 2019 performance in Lowell, MA: “(The band has) always embraced both love and social justice in its music, from joy to anger. Now in its 40^th year, the Birmingham, England-bred band was born in the punk movement but based its messages and beats in ska … to form what was called the two-tone movement in England. The result was highly danceable and lyrically edgy.”

1982’s “She’s Going” packs all of that edginess into a track which clocks in at just barely over two minutes, yet seems anything but incomplete. After a start in B major, 1:00 brings an instrumental break which goes airborne at 1:17, quickly shifting through several keys and landing us in E major for a frenetic closing verse and chorus.

James Taylor + Carly Simon | Mockingbird

“Carly Simon and James Taylor where performing in 1979 for the MUSE No Nukes concert in New York City (Daily Rock Box). The ‘Mockingbird’ performance was lively and magnetic. Their energy was absolutely addicting. The duo’s dancing and stares were definitely a welcomed form of PDA. Carly and James did fall in love. They were married for a decade and had two children. Their music was so good because they were so good.”

The live track, which reached #34 on the pop charts, shifts up a whole step at 1:55.

Del Shannon | Runaway

“Runaway” by Del Shannon is an “eerie, aching, chart-topping 1961 single” according to the AV Club. “Few songs in popular music are so enduring yet ethereal. ‘Runaway’ is a moody song for a brooding scenario, one that seems to instantly sublimate into a glum, haunting fog. Written by Shannon and his keyboardist, Max Crook, it outlines in tear-streaked detail a guy who’s lost his girl. Guys losing girls is a primary preoccupation of pop songwriters, then and now, but ‘Runaway’ nudges that theme to a preternatural level. ‘As I walk along I wonder / what went wrong,’ he begins the song, not bothering to mention where he’s walking or why.

The not-so-secret weapon of ‘Runaway,’ though, is its keyboard. Crook joined Shannon’s band in 1959, and soon after he began toying with a riff on his Musitron, a self-built version of the clavioline that served as a precursor to the analog synthesizer. Modifying the instrument with spare parts from television sets and household appliances, Crook used his invention to turn his riff into the spooky, unsettling hook of ‘Runaway.'” The single went to #1 in the US and was a true international smash hit as well, hitting Top 5 in Australia, Canada, Chile, Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, the UK, among others.

The intro, verses, and iconic keyboard feature sections are in Bb minor; the choruses (first heard at 0:31) shift to Bb major.