USA – Page 5

Survivor | The Search is Over

“Where did Survivor’s soaring power ballad ‘The Search Is Over’ come from? It’s partly a mystery,” (The Tennessean). “The group’s Jim Peterik — who penned the tune with bandmate Frankie Sullivan — believes the title came from something he heard on a news broadcast. But as for that daring key change, which turns every chorus on its ear? Thirty-five years later, Peterik still doesn’t know how he came up with it, or why it works so well. But it did: ‘The Search Is Over’ became one of Survivor’s biggest hits, and a staple of its concerts.”

Peterik: “‘The Search is Over’ is still on the radio partly because it really has a message that sometimes you take for granted what’s right in front of your eyes, and you have to go full circle around the world to come back to where you started … one of my favorite royalties, and it’s not money — It’s the stories. ‘I got married to that song, and that’s our song.’ I get, ‘It was at my father’s funeral.’ Even Alcoholics Anonymous meetings use that song. ‘The search is over.’ You’ve got it right here.”

Built in a slightly de-tuned Eb major overall, the beginning of the chorus shifts to C major at 0:55. But partway through the chorus, the tonality returns to the original key (1:10). The pattern continues from there. Be forewarned: the video is 100% industrial-grade ’80s! Many thanks to regular contributor Rob P. for submitting this tune.

Neil Diamond | Hello Again

“If 1980’s Bob Gaudio-produced The Jazz Singer marks the point at which Diamond crossed over from respected, rugged torch balladeer to schmaltzy cabaret act, he could take solace in phenomenal sales,” (BBC). “His biggest in the States, it shifted over six million. This despite the fact that the film which it soundtracked, in which Diamond starred as a Jewish singer opposite one Laurence Olivier, was generally panned. (It was a conceptually bizarre remake of the Al Jolson classic.) Still, it spawned songs as emotionally domineering as ‘Love on the Rocks,’ ‘Hello Again,’ and the patriotic (and therefore enormously commercial) ‘America.’

Neil’s acting gained him nominations for both a Golden Globe and the first ever Razzie Award for Worst Actor (he won the latter). To add painful injury to insult, he’d recently been wheelchair-bound for months, having had a tumour removed from his spine. So for all its gaudy sentimentality, The Jazz Singer was a personal triumph over adversity. If he now traded in the tingling presence of his earlier, rawer recordings, he hit on a polished soft-rock sound that even today is being rehabilitated by hungry ironists. ‘Hello Again’ is a Lionel Richie-style weepie, the lady in question awkwardly addressed as ‘my friend.’ It became Diamond’s calling card for the next few years.”

‘Hello Again,’ released as a single in 1981, was co-written by Diamond and Alan Lindgren, hit #70 on Billboard’s year-end singles chart. After a cinematic intro whose sustained chords at first seem to be written in G major, 0:17 brings an apparent shift to F major. But at 0:25, C major takes over. Neil’s voice is beyond center-stage — it’s absolutely primary, with a gentle piano-and-strings ensemble backing him up. At 3:11, a half-step shift up to Db major unfolds. Many thanks to our regular contributor Rob P. for this submission!

Sparks | Amateur Hour

The US-based brother act Sparks, founded by Ron and Russell Mael, “are the epitome of the genre-defying act,” (Nialler9). “Over the course of a career spanning four decades they’ve released 23 albums and undergone several major metamorphoses … their stylized sound and sensibility varies radically from album to album … Yet while there are chapters of the Sparks saga that aren’t to everyone’s taste, these chameleonic fluctuations should be seen as symptomatic of a determination to constantly evolve.

While there is frivolity in some of Sparks’ songs, there’s nothing frivolous about the audacious aesthetic decisions they’ve made in their attempts to find new ways of presenting their work … While a tendency toward radical change characterizes the music of Sparks, there are also elements that have remained consistent throughout. It is these facets that make Sparks so special … never willing to sacrifice aesthetic convictions for the sake of mass success, their integrity and resolute sense of adventure remains intact … This is why numerous bands from New Order to Nirvana have lauded them and why they continue to be contemporary and significant.”

“Amateur Hour,” a track from 1974’s Kimono My House, features a rhythmic concept known as a hemiola in classical music terminology; it isn’t very common in pop music! A hemiola occurs when a short phrase is repeated, but doesn’t fit perfectly with the meter of a piece — so it’s slightly rhythmically displaced each time it’s consecutively repeated. For this track, the concept is most clearly stated in the opening bars, by the guitar: the four-note upward step-wise melody is repeated multiple times, but begins both on and off the beat due to the displacement. It’s repeated later in the vocals during the choruses … a lot. At 2:08, the track shifts up a full step from Bb major to C major.

Lee + the Leopards | Trying to Make It

“Lee and the Leopards, like many Toledo groups, were swept up in the explosion of the Motown powered Detroit R&B/soul explosion of the early 1960s,” (DooWopBlogg). “The group started around 1961, and included Lee Moore as the namesake and lead singer, George Miller Ross, Prentiss Anderson, and James Porter … The group had brought some of their own songs, but (Motown’s founder) Berry Gordy wanted them to sing some of the in-house songs. The group went back to Toledo and they reworked one of the songs ‘Come Into My Palace.’ The group returned to Detroit a few days later and within a day, they had the song recorded at Motown.

… The record was a big hit on WOHO and WTOD in Toledo and also on Detroit stations. The group did some promotional shows with WTOD. The record was picked up by Laurie records because the Motown operation did not have a full scale national promotional system. The group recorded a second 45 at Fortune, and a final 45 for K-Lee label from Adrian, MI. For the last record, the group recorded their own song “The Gypsy Said” backed by a band called the Rivieres from Adrian. When the record came out, the label credited the Rivieres instead of Lee and the Leopards. Some of the copies had stickers for Lee and the Leopards. After the group ended, Prentiss Anderson spent many years backing up various Motown related groups.”

“Trying to Make It” (1962) is primarily a blues in G minor. But the tune’s midsection is a brief bridge (1:26 – 1:42) that’s mostly in G major.

Stan Getz | Crazy Chords

“Saxophonist Stan Getz came up at the very end of the swing era, a star soloist with Woody Herman’s orchestra in the late 1940s,” (NPR). “From the start, Getz was known for his rapturously beautiful ballad playing, much admired by peers like John Coltrane … It’s hard to overstate what a terrific tenor saxophonist Stan Getz was because there’s nothing dated about his style. He had a light, gorgeous tone that might convey great tenderness. He made swinging sound utterly natural and necessary. And he had an enviable melodic imagination as an improviser. His inspiration Lester Young famously said a good solo tells a story. And Getz could spin a tale.

Stan Getz fell into a lucrative career as the American standard bearer for a new musical fad, Brazil’s bossa nova, even before he scored big with “Girl From Ipanema.” Suddenly, Steaming Stanley really was out of step, replaced by his own more laidback self. He still improvised solos like a poet. But with so many tenors and others jumping on the bossa nova wagon, now everyone was copying him. So much for being old-fashioned.”

Well before Getz’s fame as an interpreter of bossa nova, his track “Crazy Chords” was released in 1951. After a short intro, the tune starts in earnest at 0:07. The 12-bar blues blazes by so fast that the second chorus hits at 0:17 — and the third at 0:28 and so on. Each chorus brings the tonality up by a half step, but Getz’s ideas (and those of his pianist, Al Haig) routinely bridge the borders between each chorus.

Marvin Gaye + Tammi Terrell | Ain’t No Mountain High Enough

“Listen to this track by Motown titan and smooth as silk soul-pop provider Marvin Gaye, along with his vocal counterbalance, and no slouch in the soaring vocal department herself, Tammi Terrell,” (The Delete Bin). “It’s ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,’ a single from writing partnership and real-life couple Ashford & Simpson. The song was a top twenty hit single in 1967, released on the Tamla label, a sister label of Motown, eventually appearing on the Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrell joint album United.

The song was thought of by its writers as being their golden ticket into the Motown stable, even turning down Dusty Springfield who wanted to record it herself. Ashford and Simpson held it back , and it was eventually offered as a duet to Marvin Gaye, and to Tammi Terrell who made it one of the most prominent songs of the Motown catalogue, and an important record of the whole decade. Later on, Diana Ross would record it when she split with the Supremes and went solo in 1970. It would be a number one hit, and become a signature tune for her.Yet, it’s the alchemy that the Gaye-Terrell version offers that makes this the definitive version of the song.

… Their collaboration yielded several hits of the classic Motown era, including ‘Ain’t Nothing Like The Real Thing,’ ‘You’re All I Need To Get By,’ and ‘Your Precious Love,’ also all Ashford & Simpson songs. They would record three albums together over the next two years, with this period being looked upon by many as one of the finest in Marvin Gaye’s career, with Terell contributing significantly to that success.

But, there was something very wrong. Terrell had suffered migraines for many years, and one night during a concert in Virginia, Terrell stumbled on stage and collapsed in Gaye’s arms … Later, it was discovered that she was suffering from malignant tumours in her brain.” No treatments were successful in the long term, and “Tammi Terrell died in March of 1970 at the young age of 24, the same year Diana Ross recorded her version of this song. Retrospectively, ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’ is an anthem to Terrell’s determination to succeed despite her cancer diagnosis … The song’s epic quality would attract cover versions from many. But, this original version is the one by which all others must be judged, including Diana Ross’, largely due to the sheer defiant vitality that Tammi Terrell brought to the performance. Marvin Gaye would of course continue to make his mark as one of the most gifted vocalists of his generation. But with Terrell gone, this vital phase of his career was at an end, with that combination of voices bursting with personality never to be repeated.”

Packing a complex arrangement and a true wall of sound into its spare 2.5-minute length, the track climbs to its bridge at 1:18, then shifts up from D major to Eb major at 1:37.

Gabriel Kahane | To Be American

Composer/singer/songwriter Gabriel Kahane’s “To Be American” is a track from his from his 2022 album, Magnificent Bird. “Kahane both mines and interrogates nostalgia in the song, which he wrote during the roiling, national tumult of October 2020,” (Nonesuch.com). “‘It’s fitting,’ he says, ‘that a song preoccupied with the past would feature musicians who are some of my oldest friends. This song, as much as any on the album, is a showcase of my musical community.’ The elegiac anthem features an all-star band of Andrew Bird, Caroline Shaw, Punch Brothers’ Chris Thile and Paul Kowert, and percussionist Ted Poor.

Magnificent Bird, Kahane’s fifth solo LP … chronicles the final month of a year spent off the internet … Kahane revels in the tension between quiet, domestic concerns, and the roiling chaos of a nation and planet in crisis … In October 2020, the final month of his tech sabbatical, Kahane set out to write a song every day. ‘I wanted to create an aural brain scan at the end of this experiment,’ he explains, ‘and to give myself permission to write about small things, rather than trying to distill the enormity of the moment into grand statements … My internet hiatus grew out of a belief that at root, our digital devices reinforce the fiction that convenience and efficiency have intrinsic value. That has implications with respect to climate crisis, to inequality, to our (in)ability to see ourselves in each other, to build the kinds of coalitions necessary to make a more just world. I wanted to leave it all behind not as a further expression of techno-pessimism, but rather in search of a positive alternative.’

… Hailed as ‘a stunning portrait of a singular moment in America’ by Rolling Stone, the album chronicled an 8,980-mile, off-the-grid railway journey in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election. ‘I wanted unmediated interaction with strangers, so I took that trip without my phone. Somewhere in New Mexico, I remember thinking, Wow, this is really transformative. I should do this for more than thirteen days.’”

“To Be American” begins with an intro and verse in Bb major, but shifts up to C major at 0:26; at 0:39, there’s a return to the original key. More key changes follow throughout. For all of Kahane’s skill in creating inventive textures as a classical composer, as well as his second career walking a complex line between classical and pop-adjacent contemporary music, this video sheds light further downstage — on his melody lines and lyrics.

for Steven

A video overview of Kahane’s cross-country 2016 rail journey:

Tom Petty | Mary Jane’s Last Dance

“Tom Petty wrote dozens of hit songs over the course of his four-decade career as frontman of the Heartbreakers, but not all of them impressed his bandmates. At least not right away,” (Ultimate Classic Rock). “Such was the case with ‘Mary Jane’s Last Dance,’ a song that Petty started one day and didn’t finish. ‘I wrote all but the chorus,’ he recalled for 2005’s Conversations With Tom Petty. ‘I just had the loop going around and around and really had most of the words and everything. And I played the tape for Rick [Rubin] and he liked it a lot and suggested I write a chorus. So I tried to finish it up while I was making [1994’s] Wildflowers, and there were maybe five years between the writing of the verses and the chorus.’

… For those who hastily assumed ‘Mary Jane’ was a reference to marijuana, Petty cleared that up later on. ‘I don’t think I was writing about pot,’ he said in 2005. ‘I think it was just a girl’s name. I can’t imagine that I’d write a song about pot. I don’t think there’s enough there to write about [laughs].’ Though it took years for ‘Mary Jane’s Last Dance’ to take its final form, it clearly paid off. By the time Petty died in 2017, the band had played the song live in concert over 500 times, and it’s remained an important touchstone of their catalog.”

Starting with an intro and verse in an uptuned A minor, the chorus (first heard from 1:09 – 1:31) shifts to A major — somewhat obscured by a prominent minor v chord (E minor).

Patti Labelle | If Only You Knew

“Written by Dexter Wansel, Cynthia Biggs, and Kenneth Gamble, ‘If Only You Knew’ became the Patti Labelle’s first #1 R&B hit as a solo artist,” (Songfacts). “Wansel – who also collaborated with Biggs on the track ‘Shoot Him On Sight’ from LaBelle’s previous album, The Spirit’s In It – didn’t think the mid-tempo ballad was that great, but LaBelle disagreed. ‘She loved it from the very beginning and saw the potential, that there were a lot of lonely people out there who loved other people and didn’t really know how to say it,’ he recalled in The Billboard Book Of Number One R&B Hits. ‘She felt like she could say it for them.’

LaBelle found fame as the leader of the progressive soul trio Labelle, who had a big hit with ‘Lady Marmalade’ in 1974. Following their split a couple years later, she worked hard to build a solo career that earned her critical acclaim, but she struggled to make the charts. After releasing her first four albums with Epic, LaBelle signed with Philadelphia International Records, pinning her hopes for a hit on the label’s founders, Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff. The songwriting and production duo was behind many of the hottest soul singles of the ’70s, including ‘If You Don’t Know Me By Now,’ ‘Love Train,’ and ‘Me and Mrs. Jones.’ Her first album with PIR didn’t yield any hits, but she finally scored on I’m In Love Again (1983). Aside from being her first R&B chart-topper, “If Only You Knew” was her first solo crossover hit, peaking at #46 on the Hot 100.” The track also climbed all the way to #1 on the Cash Box US Black Contemporary Singles chart.

The intro is in E major, but there’s an early shift to C# major when the verse starts at 0:29. The chorus (0:58) returns to E major; the alternating pattern continues throughout.

OK Go | Here It Goes Again

“Dancing in a beautiful synchronicity has long been part of OK Go singer Damian Kulash’s life,” (The Guardian). ” … he recalls his formative years in Kulash Alarm System, with big sister (and current choreographer and video director) Trish Sie. ‘I was seven and Trish must have been 11,’ he says, ‘and every morning when we’d wait for the school bus, we’d do this heavily thought-out dance routine outside our house, shouting, KULASH! ALARM! SYSTEM! like Kraftwerky robots.’

2006’s ‘Here It Goes Again’ has been viewed a staggering (68 million) times. ‘We saw that by dropping our instruments in the middle of the show and breaking into dance, it completely broke that fourth wall of expectations in a rock show … I love cultural products where you can see the effort people have put in to make something weird and unlikely.’ … Kulash points out that the ‘one take’ operates in a unique position in the current climate. ‘In the hypermediated world that we live in, we immediately go into ‘suspension of disbelief mode’. Like we see so much impossible shit in commercials, on films, in music. We assume artifice in everything we consume.'”

“Here It Goes Again,” a tune whose popularity is driven by a video that is arguably the band’s best known, was the fifth single from the 2005 album Oh No. The tune is built primarily in C major and C mixolydian, but during the nearly wordless bridge (1:40 – 1:59), there’s a shift to Eb major before a return to the original key. Eb also makes another appearance for the closing chord.