The Beach Boys‘ first charting single, 1964’s “I Get Around,” was co-written by band members Brian Wilson and Mike Love. Starting in G major, the tune transitions to Ab major at 1:06.
Rolling Stone magazine’s Anthony DeCurtis praised Wilson’s tendency to be “very complex and have every single thing you do have an emotional impact, and have the hearer not even be aware of it — just hear it the first time and get it. That’s hard.”
1979’s “Every Time I Think of You” by the UK band The Babys (yes, that’s the spelling) has too many modulations to track. Each verse/chorus pairing, after its series of modulations, reverts to the original key for the start of the next cycle. The frontman was John Waite, who later enjoyed a successful solo performance career. The tune hit top 10 in the US, Canada, and Australia.
Prog-rock royalty Yes released their blockbuster album 90125 in 1982, featuring a far more radio-ready sound than most of the band’s other output. “Leave It,” the album’s second single, reached #24 on the Billboard Hot 100. The video, directed by Godley & Creme, utilized cutting-edge digital effects for that era.
The intro (through 0:21) is in D major, as is the bridge from 2:46-3:17. The remainder of the tune is in G minor. Happy weekend to all!
UK songwriter/vocalist/guitarist Dave Stewart, probably best known as half of Eurythmics, has also enjoyed a busy career as a solo rock/pop artist, music producer, and music video director. His solo release “Heart of Stone” (1994) modulates at 1:53. Then, after a guitar solo which might have come from a dream journal, Stewart falls like timber at the downward modulation back to the original key.
Yes, that is legendary funk bassist Bootsy Collins!
Many thanks to MotD fan John Powhida for this submission.
“Birdhouse In Your Soul,” a 1989 single from the always-quirky They Might Be Giants, reached #3 on the US Modern Rock Tracks Chart, performed well on college radio, and has been the alternative rock band’s best-performing release to date. The tune bounces back and forth between C major and Eb major throughout (starting at 0:27), with the exception of an early instrumental bridge from 1:24 – 1:43, which plays by its own rulebook.
Also stranger than fiction: the tune was later covered by Broadway stars Kristin Chenoweth and Ellen Greene for the TV series Pushing Daisies (see second video below).
1979’s “All of My Love” by Led Zeppelin is a rock ballad co-written by the band’s lead vocalist, Robert Plant, and Zeppelin’s bassist John Paul Jones. The tune was written in honor of Plant’s son, who tragically died of a sudden illness as a pre-schooler. From PopMatters‘ review: “the saddest and most heartfelt Zeppelin song … which hauntingly enough sounds like a foreshadowing of a band on the path to an impending and unforeseeable dissolution.” Indeed, the hugely popular band broke up the very next year in the wake of drummer John Bonham‘s death.
A direct whole-step modulation hits at the 4:25 mark.
The first single from John Mayer‘s second album, Heavier Things (2003), was the mid-tempo tune “Bigger Than My Body.” Billboard reported that the tune “delivers a contagious melody, an exhilarating arrangement and lyrics that are thoughtful and touching without stooping to sentimentality or bombast.”
Primarily built around E major, the tune’s bridge centers around F major from 2:39 – 3:06, then reverts to E major.
Elton John‘s iconic 1973 album, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, sold over 30 million copies worldwide and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. The album featured “The Ballad of Danny Bailey,” a tune which seemed so authoritative that many fans thought it was about a real person. But AllMusic‘s review debunks that myth: the subject of the song was fictional.
The track starts with pivots between B minor and C major, builds to pivots between E minor and F major at 0:25, continues to grow in intensity with pivots between A minor and Bb major at 0:31, all supporting a melody ascending in pitch and intensity. At 0:49, the chorus is based on D major, but only tenuously — the lack of harmonic stability seems to reflect the song’s unsettling story. This complex song qualifies as “filler” between the far better-known hits on this legendary album.
This labor of love is a hilarious re-make of Metallica‘s iconic 1991 track, “Enter Sandman.” Andy Rehfeldt retained only the lead vocal from the original release while re-recording all of the other tracks. The tune has been pushed from its original key of E minor upwards into its relative major key of G major; the original dark metal sound shifts to lightweight, sunny “smooth” jazz. In addition to the full re-harmonization underneath the lead vocal (which stays in its original range), a section of the instrumental bridge (2:42 – 3:00) modulates up a full step before returning to G major.
From MotD fan JB comes this contribution: 1986 saw the release of August, Eric Clapton‘s best-selling album. One of the album’s singles was “It’s In the Way That You Use It,” a tune co-written by The Band’s guitarist Robbie Robertson and featured in the hit film The Color of Money. A whole-step direct modulation hits at 2:35.
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