Tag: UK

Sting | When We Dance

As quoted on his own website, Sting describes “When We Dance” (1994): “‘I wanted to bookend the Greatest Hits album with two new songs. It’s presumptuous, because you don’t know if a song’s going to be a hit, but ‘When We Dance’ seems to be going in the right direction. I’d never tried to write a hit before, a song designed to be played on the radio. This is basically a generic ballad, but it took me a year to write. I had no main idea for the song, so I came up with this love triangle. I love you and you love him. It has a flattened fifth at the end of the first line. It’s an unusual, uncomfortable sound, which suits the situation in the lyrics.’

A classic Sting ballad with a twist, the song was released as a (UK) single in October 1994 where it performed extremely well spending seven weeks on the chart and peaking at the #9 spot. It was less popular in the US, where its one week chart residency was at the #38 position.” The song became his only solo top 10 hit in the UK.

E major provides the setting for the tune’s first portion: a placid background for the twist of the knife that is the “flatted fifth” (which many would instead call a #11). 2:30 brings a side-step into a key change to F# major at 2:32.

John Lennon | #9 Dream

“On first listen, the beautifully syrupy pop ballad that is John Lennon song ‘#9 Dream’ seems as though it couldn’t be further from its numerical cousin, The Beatles’ ‘Revolution 9’ (FarOut). With its lush string sections, glittering acoustic guitar arpeggios, and exuberant melodies, this 1974 track, taken from Walls And Bridges, sees John Lennon at his most uninhibited.

Like many of John Lennon’s best works, ‘#9 Dream’ emerged fully formed in that brief intersection between sleep and wakefulness. ‘That was a bit of a throwaway. It was based on some dream I had,’ Lennon would recall in 1980. … The writing process was effortless, a welcome contrast to the usual grind that he ritually submitted himself to. ‘That’s what I call craftsmanship writing, meaning, you know, I just churned that out,’ he said. ‘I’m not putting it down, it’s just what it is, but I just sat down and wrote it, you know, with no real inspiration, based on a dream I’d had.’ … The dreamlike atmosphere Lennon wanted to capture motivated him to pay a lot of attention to the textural quality of ‘#9 Dream’. The vocals, for example, sound as though they have double-tracked at least five or six times, giving Lennon’s voice a choral quality.”

The verses are in C major, with a shift to E Dorian for the chorus (first heard between 1:14 and 1:56). The modulation doesn’t announce itself in advance — in fact, the downward chromatic motion of the melody at the very start of the chorus suggests a feeling of unexpectedly falling, but somehow enjoying the journey nonetheless. The post-chorus section never quite settles into one single tonality or tempo, its speed spiraling downward as it goes. At 2:10, the cycle begins a second time.

The Kinks | All Day and All of the Night

“With its thumping power chords and shredding solo, ‘All Day And All Of The Night’ – recorded in September 1964 – is often cited as the jump-off point for punk and hard rock,” (LouderSound) “But early Kinks were a band forged by American rock’n’blues. Their third single, “You Really Got Me,” which borrowed heavily from The Kingsmen’s Louie Louie, made No.1 in the UK in 1964. The distorted guitar riff by Ray’s brother Dave was a revelation. But it was the follow-up that really created the metal/punk blueprint. ‘The one that started it was All Day And All Of The Night,’ Ray Davies explains.

The secret to The Kinks’ early guitar sound was Dave Davies’s brainwave of slashing the speaker cones of his amp with a razor. ‘As it vibrated, it produced a distorted and jagged roar,’ he commented later … Record label Pye, however, weren’t too enamoured with The Kinks’ latest sound, and initially rejected the song for being ‘too working class.’ … Whatever its social standing, ‘All Day And All Of The Night’ was a ferocious blast of rock’n’roll. It gave The Kinks their second major hit and cemented them in the US as one of the key bands of the British Invasion. “

Contributor JB adds: “Listening to The Kinks with fresh ears, nearly 60 years after they first hit the charts, it’s amazing how far ahead of their time they were.  If they had come along in the ’80s, they would absolutely have been in the vanguard of the grunge movement. But because they came up during the British Invasion and their sound wasn’t as melodic as the Beatles (or even the Stones, on albums like Flowers), they were relegated to the second tier.”

After starting in an uptuned G minor, there’s a shift to D minor for the first chorus at 0:28, reverting to the original key at 0:42 for the next verse and the pattern continues from there.

Foreigner | Urgent

For its fourth album, 4, late 70s/early 80s pop/rock stalwarts Foreigner brought in producer Mutt Lange, later to become much more famous for his work with UK pop/rock band Def Leppard and country chanteuse Shania Twain (who became Mrs. Lange for a time). “Feeling the need for an outside influence on keyboards, Jones and Lange brought in the then-unknown Thomas Dolby, who described the experience as ‘very productive.'” (UltimateClassicRock). “He noted in his 2018 memoir The Speed of Sound that ‘I gained the utmost respect for (Foreigner guitarist) Mick Jones, a thoroughly decent bloke, as well as for Mutt Lange’s amazing production skills. I’ve never worked with a more fastidious producer. He would make me go over and over my parts, adjusting the inflections on every single note until it was exactly perfect. Some simple strings of notes took hours and hours to record.’

‘When he brought in sax legend Junior Walker for a solo on ‘Urgent’ and recorded at least a dozen versions, Mutt had the wisdom to recognize that the very first solo Junior blew, rough edges and all, was The Take,’ said Dolby.

In 2016, Dolby said ‘Urgent’ had at least some of its roots in a demo tape he’d sent to Lange earlier, in the hope of securing his own publishing deal. ‘He was a very big fan of some of the sounds I used in a song of mine called Urges … He asked me to put it one of (Foreigner’s) backing tracks. … A while later, they added the vocals, which were Urgent, urgent. … I raised my eyebrows slightly – but you know, I’m glad to have influenced them in a positive way.’ (It) was the first of five singles spawned from 4, four of which broke the Top 40.”

The studio version didn’t feature a modulation — but not so for a 2006 live version, performed in Germany. After a leisurely intro not found on the original, the song begins in earnest at 1:39. Mick Jones is still the center of the band’s sound, but the rest of the personnel has shifted over the years. However, the 2006 band did an admirable job of honoring the band’s central lead vocal and sax sounds. At 5:32, the band moves the key up a minor third, returning to the original key at 6:05.

The studio version, a staple of MTV’s debut era:


The Dolby tune, despite being thoroughly marinated in UK New Wave sensibilities, has some clear similarities in mood and texture:



Jay Ungar + Aly Bain | The Lovers’ Waltz

“Aly Bain was born on May 15 1946 in Lerwick, Shetland, Scotland,” (WorldMusicCentral). “Lerwick is a small, enchanting town on the Shetland Islands. Aly began learning fiddle at the age of eleven. Tom Anderson, his teacher, is acknowledged as one of the true masters of Shetland music. Aly developed a highly dramatic style of playing, matching his great tone and technical ability with genuine emotion. Alert to the musical potential of the dynamic interaction between Irish and Scottish traditions, he helped establish the Boys of the Lough. The group is now recognized as one of the best in the tradition.”

Fiddler Jay Ungar was “a Bronx kid” while pianist Molly Mason “grew up in Washington State,” (JayAndMolly.com). “He was raised on pop music of the 1940s and ’50s. She had a fondness for traditional fiddle music and ’30s and ’40s popular tunes. He hung out in Greenwich Village coffeehouses and roamed North Carolina and Tennessee in search of traditional players. She played clubs and colleges on the West Coast and took a liking to the jazzy sound of the Swing Era. Since joining forces—both artistically and romantically (the two would marry in 1991)—Jay Ungar and Molly Mason have become one of the most celebrated duos on the American acoustic music scene.” Ungar is probably best known for co-writing “Ashokan Farewell” with Mason — a tune which was featured in the Ken Burns series The Civil War and certainly feels like it was written a century or more before its 1982 debut.

Ungar, Bain, and Mason collaborate here on “The Lovers’ Waltz,” also written by Ungar and Mason. Starting in G major, the tune alternates between solo and duo fiddle lines and a solo by an uncredited guitarist as the key shifts up to D major at 1:47.

Squeeze | Up the Junction

Squeeze’s “Up the Junction,” released in 1979, “is an unusual song in that it has no chorus, and the title appears only in the last line.” (Songfacts). “When Chris Difford wrote it, the song had about 16 verses. Glenn Tilbrook, Squeeze’s other guitarist: ‘The lyric was a story that had no obvious repeats, and I thought it read perfectly well as it was. I was thinking of something like Dylan’s ‘Positively 4th Street‘ as a template when I wrote the music.’ Difford explained: ‘I imagined it would never be a hit and we’d have to take it off the album. And the record company said that they disagreed, and it was that second #2 record (after ‘Cool For Cats’)…’

‘Up The Junction’ is a British phrase meaning you’re screwed. In this song, a guy gets his girl pregnant, becomes a drunk, and is left on his own when the girl leaves him and takes the child. The song begins with the couplet I never thought it would happen/ With me and the girl from Clapham. Difford recalled to Q magazine: ‘I still can’t believe we rhymed that, but the language in the song reflects the way we used to talk to each other. Glenn’s is an extraordinary collection of chords and the riff is unforgettable. The first time we played it I remember thinking, God, this is great. It was everything I loved in music – Bob Dylan in a sweet wrapper.’

After a start in E major for the first group of the long collection of verses, the bridge arrives at 1:10, shifting to D minor halfway through (1:19). At 1:30, the next verse enters in D major before rising back to E major at 1:50.



Pettin’ and Pokin’ (from “Five Guys Named Moe”)

“Five Guys Named Moe” premiered on London’s West End in 1990 and on Broadway in 1992. The musical, with a book by Clarke Peters, features the music of saxophonist and songwriter Louis Jordan, who was known for helping to bridge the transition from jazz to rock ‘n roll in the 1950s. The show has been revived by numerous regional theaters over the last decade. There are modulations at 0:41 and 1:11.

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.

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.

Archie Churchill-Moss | Odi + Nancy

“Archie Churchill-Moss has been the boy to watch for some time, first drawing acclaim in the Jim Moray/Sam Carter ensemble, False Lights, as well as in his trio with Tom Moore and Jack Rutter, now slimmed down into the more experimental and hauntological duo, just he and Tom Moore’s violin (At The Barrier) … Like most box players, Moss is largely versed in dance music, especially those from the English and French repertoires. This selection of tunes are all of his own composition, written over his years as an artist. Undoubtedly doffing a cap to those traditions, this is dance music, but with a deeper undercurrent of complexity, stretching the harmonic and melodic limits that are usually attached to such styles. In his own words, to ‘explore the various tonal centres the accordion is capable of navigating.’

Moss has stated he wants this to be recognized as a danceable record, and, whilst I get that and can see that, I confess it would be a brave ceilidheer choosing to navigate some of the steps offered here, suspecting, really, that this more dance music for the mind, maybe with headphones on, or in the car. (To be fair, the latter is where I listen to most of my dance music anyway.) Certainly, the instrument has been taken to its limit and Moss thrashes out some remarkable life from it.”

Starting in F major, “Odi + Nancy” (2023) perks along with a steady beat fostered by years of playing for dancers. The melody is rangy at times and the harmonies quite modern — 7th chords are a common element — but the overall feel is something straight from the well-worn floor of an ancient village dance hall. At 1:59, there’s a surprising shift to F# minor.

For an idea of the sheer dexterity needed to coax so much sound out of such a small instrument, check out this live performance of some sprightly reels: