“Steal With Style” is from the 1975 Broadway musical The Robber Bridegroom, adapted by Alfred Uhry (book & lyrics) and Robert Waldman (music) from a 1942 novella by Eudora Welty. The score is one of only a handful in Broadway history to be bluegrass-inspired — the band consists of a guitar, fiddle, mandolin, banjo, and harp. The show was revived Off-Broadway in 2016 starring Steven Pasquale, featured here, and is regularly performed at regional theaters.
The song alternates between E major and E minor throughout before ultimately modulating to G major at 2:25 for the final chorus.
“Just Look Up” is an original single written and performed by Ariana Grande and Kid Cudi for the Oscar-nominated 2021 movie Don’t Look Up. The songwriters and other members of the film’s creative team, including director Adam McKay and Nicholas Brittell, who is also nominated for his score, discussed the song a behind-the-scenes video.
The tune starts out in A and shifts up to Bb major in a standard direct modulation at 2:42.
“The phrase ‘MGM musical’ shimmers with nostalgia, but what does it evoke, exactly? Technicolor dreams of tuneful romance? Backlot depictions of Times Square, Paris or the Scottish Highlands, along with occasional bursts of realism, as when the 1949 “On the Town” managed to sneak in a few days’ location filming in New York City? Yes, all that. Also, orchestral swells and mile-wide Gene Kelly and Judy Garland smiles, and a deathless handful of triple threats who really could sing, act and dance. But the ‘MGM musical’ label misleads. So many MGM musicals, the famous ones, were treated to royal budgets and top talent, while so many others had to settle for smaller budgets, mismatched contract players and lesser material. For every ‘Singin’ in the Rain‘ or ‘The Band Wagon‘ there’s a lesser-known commodity — or outright oddity — revealing a different story, more about the musical genre’s struggles to remain vital than the onscreen romantic complications taxing our patience in between numbers.
One of the strangest is ‘Athena,’ … a contemporary riff on MGM’s big musical draw that year, ‘Seven Brides for Seven Brothers‘ … Crooner and sometime actor Vic Damone, a diffident MGM staple of the day, paired off in ‘Athena’ with Debbie Reynolds. They’re treated to the duet “Imagine,” a melodically unpredictable standoutin the Hugh Martin/Ralph Blane score … There are compensations, as there are in other offbeat, youth-craze MGM titles of the era … Damone may have been a mite bland, but he could sing.”
According to the trailer, the film was categorized as a romantic comedy — but not quite like the rom-coms viewers became accustomed to in the 1990s! Apparently much of the action took place in the family home of Reynolds’ character; the family were health and wellness enthusiasts. The movie took that premise and ran with it, dropping a Mr. Universe bodybuilding contest into the film (see trailer, below) … as one does.
Jamie A., the former host of Cinema Songbook on Martha’s Vineyard’s WVVY FM, submitted the tune. He adds more detail: “This movie actually started out as an idea for a film with Esther Williams, about a goddess come to life on Earth. But studio bosses were trying to force her out because her films were too high budget, and they sabotaged her last film at MGM, ‘Jupiter’s Darling’ (worth a view—a musical about Hannibal’s march on Rome with elephants!). The concept changed drastically when Jane Powell and Debbie Reynolds took over.”
Damone’s feature is in A major, transitioning to Reynolds’ section in Gb major at 1:12.
“I See The Light,” written by composer Alan Menken and lyricist Glenn Slater for the 2010 animated Disney film Tangled, was nominated for Best Original Song at the Golden Globe and Academy Awards, and won the Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media.
The film is based on the Brothers Grimm Rapunzel fairy tale, which served as inspiration for Menken to venture into a folk rock idiom for the score. “I wanted folk rock on this,” he said in an interview with Collider. “I thought about her long hair and the freedom she wanted. I immediately thought about Joni Mitchell’s ‘Chelsea Morning’ and all that folk music that I love. Cat Stevens and that energy. I just felt like that would be, on a gut level, a fresh palette to bring to this. So, that was really our way into the score.”
The track, performed by Mandy Moore and Zachary Levi, begins in C and modulates up to Eb for Levi’s verse at 1:39.
“Someone Like You” is from the 1990 musical Jekyll & Hyde, featuring a score by Frank Wildhorn and Leslie Bricusse. Eder originated the role of Lucy in her Broadway debut and was nominated for a Drama Desk award for her performance. She is now an acclaimed solo concert artist and has released 18 studio albums.
The song, which comes at the end of Act 1 as Lucy is questioning her love for Jekyll, modulates at 2:43.
“Look What You’ve Done To Me” was originally written for the 1980 motion picture Urban Cowboy. Penned by Scaggs and legendary producer David Foster, the tune peaked at #14 on the Billboard Top 100, and features background vocals by The Eagles.
The song fluctuates between E minor for the verses and instrumental interludes, and its relative major, G, for the choruses.
“‘Up Where We Belong’ was written for the movie An Officer and a Gentleman and won the Oscar for Best Original Song in 1983 and a Grammy for Best Pop Performance by Duo or Group With Vocal in 1983,” (Songfacts). “Island Records boss Chris Blackwell liked the idea of Cocker recording the song with Warnes, but Cocker was on tour in the Pacific Northwest at the time.
No problem: he simply flew to LA one afternoon, recorded the track with Warnes that evening, and flew back to resume the tour. Warnes and Cocker stood next to each other when they recorded this in the studio, where they had a great chemistry that carried over to live performances. ‘Off stage, I never saw him,’ Warnes said in a 2018 Songfacts interview. ‘But on stage he understood exactly what we were doing … He wasn’t going to step on my note and I wasn’t going to step on his. We felt free to take chances.'”
At 2:52, a late bridge brings a half-step modulation which carries on for the short remainder of the tune.
“One of the most acclaimed R&B artists since 2016, the year her first EP found a rapt audience, H.E.R. has been celebrated for vulnerable yet assured love ballads and sharp protest songs alike,” (AllMusic). “The singer/songwriter maximizes the power of her honeyed vocals as a simultaneously poetic and straightforward lyricist, shifts to convincing MC mode on a dime, and is also a guitarist and producer. H.E.R. (2017), I Used to Know Her (2019), and Back of My Mind (2021), her three full-length recordings, have each featured platinum singles, including ‘Focus,’ ‘Could’ve Been,’ and ‘Damage.’ She has won four Grammys, most notably Song of the Year for ‘I Can’t Breathe’ (2020).”
H.E.R.’s track “Hold Us Together” is from the 2020 film Safety, which follows “the story of Ray-Ray McElrathbey, a freshman football player for Clemson University, who secretly raised his younger brother on campus after his home life became too unsteady,” (IMDB).
The gospel-infused ballad modulates up a half step at 3:27 via a hinge that features only the lead vocal as the accompaniment temporarily falls away. Many thanks to Ziyad for yet another of his many submissions!
*This is the fourth installment of our weeklong series on “Do You Hear What I Hear”
The cast of the TV show Glee released their second Christmas soundtrack album, Glee: The Music, The Christmas Album Volume 2, in 2011, featuring ten covers and two original songs. Alex Newell and Lindsay Pearce are the featured vocalists on “Do You Hear What I Hear,” which modulates from C up to D at 1:58.
Oscar Hammerstein, a mentor of Sondheim’s, “taught him that in writing lyrics ‘the whole point is to underwrite not overwrite, because music is so rich an art itself.'”
In his hands? Rich indeed. His innovative harmonies and textures aside, “Sondheim raised the status of the musical, which had often been considered comforting and unadventurous family entertainment, and used it to explore adult relationships in all their complexity,” (The Guardian). Andrew Lloyd Webber: “The musical theatre giant of our times, an inspiration not just to two but to three generations, [whose] contribution to theatre will never be equalled.”
Fellow musical theatre composer Jason Robert Brown remembers: “I was 16 years old when I played Charley in Merrily We Roll Along at my summer camp in upstate New York. I suspect that everything I know about how to craft musical theater scores comes from having spent those four weeks inside that show, getting to know it as an actor, as a pianist, and as a young writer having stumbled upon the keys to a creative life I didn’t know was possible … Aspiring to work at that level is the most delightfully impossible task I could have ever set for myself. I hope I never get all the way there,”(Buzzfeed).
Here’s the inimitable, much-missed Marin Mazzie singing “Losing My Mind” from Sondheim’s Follies (1970). This performance is just exquisite; the key change at about 3:00 is a highlight.
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