Tag: USA

Neil Young | Theme from “Philadelphia”

“… Philadelphia (1993) gives us some star performances and was one of the first mainstream movies to address HIV/AIDS and homophobia with nuance and sensitivity,” (Collider.com). “The film was written by Ron Nyswaner and directed by Jonathan Demme.” From a review from Dan DeNicola: “Graced with splendid performances, this often stirring drama not only has its heart in the right place; it delivers a strong, convincing portrait, as well as a lesson about decency in a story aptly set in the City of Brotherly Love.”

Spoiler alert …

The film’s main character, attorney Andrew Beckett (Tom Hanks) succumbs to HIV after a hard fight not only for his life, but also for his rights after his law firm fired him due to his medical condition. But in the days before the drug AZT became available in the late 90s, HIV was nearly always a deadly disease. The film was quite a breakthrough and earned Hanks his first Oscar. “‘More people have stopped me on the street or come up to me in airplanes or sidled up to me in restaurants to talk about this movie than any other job I’ve done, and almost all of them have said something like, Thank you for doing it,’” (MentalFloss).

The film’s closing theme, Neil Young’s “Philadelphia” and the opening theme “Streets of Philadelphia” (Bruce Springsteen) were both nominated for Best Song Academy Awards in 1994; Springsteen’s track was the category’s winner. The short melody of Young’s track is a gently off-kilter seven measures of 4/4 featuring plenty of leisurely quarter-note triplets. The first and last iterations are in the same key, but there are many modulations among the repeated iterations in between.

The Playmates | What is Love?

“The Playmates, an American rock and roll vocal group formed in the late 1950s, gained immense popularity during the rock and roll era,” (OldTimeMusic). The group mixed doo-wop and rock and roll styles at a time when the pop charts were starting to feel the purchasing power of a new teenaged audience. In 1954, the very first tune on the pop charts from the rock genre, Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock,” set the stage for the genre’s ongoing popularity.

The songwriters of this 1959 release, Lee Pockriss and Paul Vance, also wrote “(Alone) In My Room,” sung by Verdelle Smith, the subject of an earlier post. “What is Love” reached #15 on the US pop charts. During a run time of just over two minutes, the track’s tonality travels up by half-step from F# major up to A major, with the first modulation hitting at only 0:12!

Many thanks to regular contributor Rob P. for this submission!

Boyce Avenue | I Wanna Dance With Somebody

Boyce Avenue, an American cover band based in Sarasota, FL, is comprised of three brothers — Alejandro, Fabian, and Daniel Manzano. The group formed in 2004, has released three studio albums, an boasts 16.4 million YouTube subscribers, making them the most viewed independent band in the world.

Their cover of Whitney Houston’s classic hit features Jennel Garcia on vocals. It begins in Gb and modulates up a half step to G at 2:12.

Bo Donaldson + the Heywoods | Who Do You Think You Are

“One could argue that Bo Donaldson and The Heywoods were not a not a one hit wonder band because of the song “Who Do You Think You Are,” (ClassicRockHistory.com). “The song became the band’s second top 20 hit of their career, thereby kicking them out of the one-hit wonder category. (The track) reached all the way up to number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1974. Its chart success was fueled by their previous hit “Billy Don’t Be A Hero.” The song was written by Des Dyer and Clive Scott. It was originally recorded by the group Candlewick Green in 1973.”

On balance, “WDYTYA” generated a much more positive reaction for the Cincinnati-based band than “Billy Don’t Be a Hero” did. Rolling Stone reports in its 2011 Readers’ Poll “10 Worst Songs of the 1970s” that “U.K. pop group Paper Lace wrote ‘Billy Don’t Be A Hero’ at the tail end of the Vietnam War, but it’s actually about the American Civil War. But much like M*A*S*H was about the Korean War but really about Vietnam, people will forever associate ‘Billy Don’t Be A Hero’ with Vietnam. They’ll also associate it with insipid 1970s drivel. Paper Lace were planning on releasing the song in America, but Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods beat them to it.” Was the tune’s fife-and-drum intro also a tip of the hat towards the growing US Bicentennial history trend? Anyone’s guess.

In any case, it’s not hard to consider Donaldson’s second hit as a bit of a step up from the band’s first hit — and quite a bit easier on the ears. Starting in G Dorian, the tune shifts to C# major at 1:01. Led by a sitar-centric hook, it’s back to the original key for the next verse at 1:23.

Look For The Light (from “Only Murders In The Building”)

“Look For The Light” was written by Sara Bareilles, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul for the third season of the acclaimed Hulu series Only Murders In The Building, which premiered in August. The show stars Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez, and added Meryl Streep (who performs this song with Ashley Park) as a guest star this year.

The track begins in G minor and shifts up to Db at 1:33.

Booker T. + the M.G.’s | Hang ‘Em High

Booker T. and the M.G.’s arranged songs like mathematicians construct proofs: just enough to get the desired result, and nothing more. As the house band for Stax Records in the 1960s, the group appeared on dozens of hit recordings for acts like Sam and Dave, Rufus Thomas, Carla Thomas, Wilson Picket, and Otis Redding. They also had a number of instrumental hits on their own, including “Green Onions,” “Time is Tight,” a cover of the Rascals’ song “Groovin’,” and “Hang ‘Em High.” Their classic lineup consisted of Booker T. Jones, usually playing the Hammond B-3 and occasionally on piano, drummer Al Jackson, Jr., bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn, and guitarist Steve Cropper.

Perhaps the group’s grandest recorded moment came in 1969, when they released the album McLemore Avenue, their reinterpretation of the Beatles’ Abbey Road.

“Hang ‘Em High” (1968) was composed by Dominic Frontiere for the Western of the same name, a vehicle for Clint Eastwood. The first cover of the soundtrack theme was released by Hugo Montenegro; the Booker T. version came out a bit later. Frontiere was responsible for the music for many television shows from the 1960s through the 1980s, such as The Fugitive and The Flying Nun (!). He also composed soundtracks for a number of movies during that period. Just before “Hang ‘Em High”, he wrote the music for the cult classic goth-horror movie Incubus, whose dialog is entirely in Esperanto, and which starred a pre-Star Trek William Shatner.

There are half-steps up at 1:15. 2:11, and 2:39. The tune stays in that key from there on, including during the spartan-even-for-the-MG’s coda that begins at 3:08.

She Loves Me Not (from “Closer Than Ever”)

Closer Than Ever, a musical revue by Richard Maltby, Jr. and David Shire, opened Off-Broadway in 1989. The sung-through shows features songs about aging, midlife crises, second marriages and unrequited love, and many of them are based on the authors’ real-life experiences.

“She Loves Me Not,” the second song in the show, depicts a love triangle of two men and one woman. It begins in C major, shifts down to Bb at 1:05, and returns to C at 2:04.

James Ingram | I Don’t Have the Heart

“If there’s one explanation for why the late James Ingram didn’t get the respect he deserved in life for being one of the great soul singers of the ’80s, it’s probably that most of his signature hits… well, they weren’t totally his,” (Billboard). “Ingram broke through in 1981 with two top 20 Hot 100 hits rightly seen as classics of their period, ‘Just Once’ and ‘One Hundred Ways’ — but both were as a guest vocalist, on tracks that ended up on legendary producer Quincy Jones’ set The Dude. He was nominated for best new artist at the 1982 Grammys, before he’d ever even released a single of his own. Then, his first hit apart from Quincy was 1982’s ‘Baby, Come to Me,’ a duet with Qwest labelmate Patti Austin that rode a General Hospital placement all the way to No. 1 on the Hot 100 in early 1983 — but which ended up being housed on Austin’s Every Home Should Have One album, never appearing on an Ingram LP.”

He later went on to more chart success, but as a duet partner to a very rangy list of artists: Michael McDonald, Kenny Rogers, Kim Carnes, Linda Ronstadt, Barry White, Al B. Sure, El DeBarge, Dolly Parton, and Anita Baker. “All of this combined to make Ingram’s solo showcase ‘I Don’t Have the Heart’ one of the most unexpected Hot 100-topping singles of the early ’90s. ‘Heart’ was something of an anomaly, both within turn-of-the-’90s R&B and within Ingram’s own catalog. Melodically, the single was firmly in his wheelhouse — a massive showstopper co-written by pop-soul vets Allan Rich and Jud Friedman … It’s a torch song by proxy, a stunning expression of empathy … (for the track), Ingram (reached) all the way back to ’70s superproducer Thom Bell, one of the primary sonic architects of Philly Soul, via iconic hits for The Spinners, The Stylistics and The Delfonics.

… We may remember James Ingram better as a co-star than as a solo sensation, and that’s fine: Even just a compilation of his biggest collabs would be more impressive than a single disc of 90 percent of his peers’ solo greatest hits. But ‘I Don’t Have the Heart’ and the #1 chart success it briefly experienced remains a crucial part of Ingram’s legacy, showing how his voice and musical instincts were strong and bold enough to essentially materialize a memorable chart-topper out of nowhere — and giving him a signature hit that no one could claim as anyone’s but his …”

The inversion-heavy track, scored primarily for keyboard and strings, is built in D major overall. After the bridge (2:27 – 2:47), another iteration of the chorus at first leads us to believe that the tune will simply fade out without ever having transcended the borders set within the first few measures. But another run through the chorus at 3:10 finally brings percussion, electric guitar, Ingram’s trademark high wordless falsetto, and a crashing whole-step key change up to E major as the track kicks the power ballad afterburners into gear.

Sarah Vaughan + Count Basie Orchestra | Moonlight in Vermont

“Ben and Jerry’s, Bernie Sanders, and maple bourbon are some of things that Vermont is world-famous for,” (Burlington Free Press). “But for some, what truly puts the state on the global map is (the) jazz standard ‘Moonlight in Vermont.’ An unofficial anthem of Vermont, the tune has been recorded hundreds of times, including by Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Sam Cooke, Sarah Vaughan, and Willie Nelson.

The song was written in 1944 by Karl Suessdorf and John Blackburn … The song’s lyrics are unusual for not rhyming, but instead following a haiku pattern … They also pay tribute to the sycamore tree, which is native to Vermont, but is not among its most common trees … Still, its quirky charm had wide appeal, especially for soldiers stationed away from home for World War II … In the 1990s, a group of lawmakers tried to make ‘Moonlight in Vermont’ the state’s official song, but were ultimately defeated. Some thought the song’s melody would be too difficult for the average person to sing.”

Vaughan performs the tune in Db major in this version, although it generally appears in Eb major (see below). The middle eight travels far afield from the overall key before returning, but this 1957 arrangement of the standard also modulates in earnest up to D major at 2:37.

Camp Isn’t Home (from “Theater Camp”)

“Camp Isn’t Home” is the closing song from the film Theater Camp, which was released this summer. The song is written by Ben Platt and Noah Galvin, who both star in the movie, as well as Molly Gordon, Nick Lieberman, and Mark Sonnenblick. It begins in A and modulates up to B at 2:44.

The film is now available to stream on Hulu.