USA – Page 56

Guys ‘n’ Dolls | There’s a Whole Lot of Loving

“Yes, we have reached the stage where a song from a McVitie’s fruit shortcake TV ad can be recorded and released as a hit single.” (Music Sounds Better With Two). “The song itself has nothing to do with cookies and a lot to do with the natural hugeness of the United States (the songwriters were American). It’s a proper song, not a jingle fleshed out. The loving going on is abstract; the love could be for anyone, but it’s heartfelt and the wholesome goodness of the song’s sing-a-long style matches the Hoover Dam mention. It could be straight out of a musical, though usually there’s a bit more plot in a stage song.

I don’t know if this was expected to be a hit – but it was. So, what to do? On very short notice, a group of male and female singers were put together so they could appear as Guys ‘n’ Dolls for promotional purposes – miming the song and dancing on variety shows … There was no time to re-record the song with the new group, however. It worked, at least at first … This scam, if you like, did have one unintended consequence. A few years after their being relieved from Guys ‘n’ Dolls, Theresa Bazar – the female of the pair – approached the studio bass player, one Trevor Horn, to see if he would be interested in working with her and David Van Day, the male of the pair. He was and so they did – as the duo Dollar. And so from late 1974, the tiny seeds of something different were being sown.”

The intro features a few psychedelic-adjacent instrumental touches before it kicks into its full “Up With People”/The Bicentennial is Approaching — Look Busy! vibe in earnest at 0:33. At 1:45 and 2:30, the string-saturated key changes are unsubtle enough to drive your Great Aunt Mildred’s V8 Buick Electra through — with room to spare.

Cher | Love and Understanding

“Love and Understanding” was featured on American singer Cher’s 1991 album Love Hurts. Written by MotD regular Diane Warren, the track reached the number 3 spot on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart.

The song’s intro begins in the key of A minor and 12/8 time before abruptly shifting to a 4/4 rock groove in the relative C major at 0:14. The verse stays in C before pivoting back to A minor through a V7 chord for the chorus at 1:00. A full modulation up a step to B minor occurs at 2:50, leading into the final chorus. Finally, a short outro at 3:54 recalls the opening 12/8 motive.

Glasys | Back to Reality

“GLASYS (Gil Assayas) is a pianist, synthesist, producer and vocalist who melds many genres and influences including Electronic Music, Alternative Rock, Jazz, Classical and Video Game Music,” (from Glasys’ site). “This album (Tugging on My Heartchips) is mainly inspired by the Gameboy games from my childhood. As a kid, the only gaming console I had was the original gray Gameboy, which I spent countless hours playing.

Some of those games had incredible soundtracks (Zelda: Link’s Awakening and Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge are two examples) and I’d often turn on my Gameboy just to listen to the music! No joke, some of those themes would make me tear up. I tried to capture those magical, nostalgic feelings in this 7-track album.”

After starting with a theme in an A dorian scale, the same passage is repeated in C# dorian at 0:59 on “Back to Reality” (2023). At 1:39, a bridge falls gradually downward, leading us back to A dorian at 1:54; the pattern repeats from there. Throughout the video, the virtual and the real world fight for prominence, until the timbre shifts from electronic keyboards to acoustic piano at 3:19, visiting the same territory with more expression and rubato. However, the digital world seems to get the last word as the end fade brings a subtly deflating tonality (4:20).

I’ll Make a Man Out of You (from “Mulan”)

“I’ll Make a Man Out of You” is featured in the 1998 Disney film Mulan. Written by composer Matthew Wilder and lyricist David Zippel, it is sung by Donny Osmond in the movie and on the soundtrack.

This track is one of the few well-known Disney favorites that is not a ballad. “We knew it needed to be masculine and muscular and hence the drums, all the military aspects of what were factored into a very odd pop song,” Wilder said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. “I knew I wanted it to sound large and I knew what the tempo and the cadence of the piece was,” he continued. “I had a very extensive Asian sample library. I was sort of mixing and matching East meets West where I was taking drum cadences from traditional Chinese drums and then marrying that with military snares, etc. and just kept building and building and building so it became this cacophonous effect of a Chinese marching American band.”

The song begins in E minor and modulates up a whole step to F minor at 2:03.

Barry Manilow | I Write The Songs

“I Write The Songs” was written by Bruce Johnston, a member of the Beach Boys, and released on his 1977 solo album Going Public. Barry Manilow’s cover, recorded in 1976, won Song of the Year at the Grammy Awards and reached the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100. Cash Box, a now-defunct music trade industry magazine, wrote that “the melodic, ballad-like beginning grows into an operatic crescendo, all done in clear production that all age groups will appreciate.”

There is an unusual modulation up a major third from F to A for the penultimate strain of the chorus at 2:34, and then Manilow takes it up one more step to B for the last chorus at 3:00.

Jim Croce | Time in a Bottle

Jim Croce was “a songwriter with a knack for both upbeat, catchy singles and empathetic, melancholy ballads” … (AllMusic). “Croce appealed to fans as a common man, and it was not a gimmick — he was a father and husband who went through a series of blue-collar jobs. And whether he used dry wit, gentle emotions, or sorrow, Croce sang with a rare form of honesty and power. Few artists have ever been able to pull off such down-to-earth storytelling as convincingly as he did.”

“Jim Croce wrote this reflective song the night that he found out his wife, Ingrid, was pregnant,” (Songfacts) … “She recalls a mix of terror and delight in Jim’s reaction when she told him the news. The child was a boy named Adrian, who grew up to become the singer-songwriter A.J. Croce … ‘Time In A Bottle’ hit #1 in America 14 weeks after Croce was killed in a plane crash. Croce started touring after he completed his last album, I Got A Name. On September 30, 1973 a plane carrying Croce and five others crashed upon takeoff as he was leaving one college venue to another 70 miles away … The single entered the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart for the week ending December 1, 1973 and finally reached #1 for the week ending December 29, a little over three months after he died.”

The verses are in D minor, but the choruses (heard first between 0:56 – 1:17) shift to D major. Quite unusually, the title is mentioned only at the beginning of the first verse, rather than during the chorus.

T-Pain | Best Love Song

“Best Love Song” was released as the first single from American singer/rapper T-Pain’s 2011 album Revolver. It features singer Chris Brown and the R&B group Once Chance. It reached the 33 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 and was used in the premiere of the TV show Hart of Dixie.

Beginning in G, the track shifts up to A at 2:50.

Weather Report | A Remark You Made

“Weather Report were one of the earliest jazz fusion groups to emerge at the beginning of the ’70s,” (AllAboutJazz). “They were rare in that, like Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters, they didn’t have a guitarist to light the fire and excite the audience as was the case with Mahavishnu Orchestra and Return to Forever; instead, they relied, in addition to pure instrumental virtuosity, upon intelligent compositions. The band’s founding members were none other than Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter, two exceptional musicians who had already contributed considerably to Miles Davis’ continuing evolution throughout the ’60s and into the early ’70s; some of the great trumpeter’s most pioneering achievements might not, in fact, have been possible without them.

Now, forty years after the event, Heavy Weather (1977) was the Weather Report’s major commercial breakthrough; arguably their finest album ever, it succeeded in breathing new life into a genre that was challenged to compete against the latest pop/rock fads of the time. Part of the LP’s success, it must be said, was due to the group’s enlisting of John Francis ‘Jaco’ Pastorius, fretless electric bassist extraordinaire; a man who forever altered the perception of his instrument and whose self-titled 1976 Epic Records debut caused such a sensation that, at the time, many considered it to be one the greatest bass albums ever recorded.”

Heavy Weather‘s “A Remark You Made” isn’t full of the fireworks of the album’s uptempo tracks, such as “Birdland” or “Teen Town.” But it nonetheless clearly showcases the expert interaction among the band’s master musicians. After a start in Eb major, the plaintive main theme comes from the Jaco Pastorius’ fretless bass as the tonality flips to the relative minor, C minor, at 0:31, then continues for a gently atmospheric solo from bandleader Joe Zawinul’s keyboards until 1:11. Continuing in Eb major, Wayne Shorter’s fluid tenor takes the spotlight, joined here and there on the melody by Jaco (3:49) until the bass returns to holding down the roots (4:06) under a protracted solo from Zawinul that borders on hypnotic, cycling through only two chords. At 5:39, Jaco re-states the opening theme, then repeats it over and over; the upgoing lyrical melody is underlined all the more by the downward chromatic motion of the bass line itself, which ranges from C down to G before jumping back up to C during each cycle (starting at 5:39-5:50). At 6:21, A Db major chord wakes us from our sustained idyll; serving as a bVII of Eb, it delivers us back into the original Eb major.

for Scobie

21st Century Limited | Your Smallest Wish

Even five decades after its active years, it’s rare to find a band with as tiny a remaining footprint as 21st Century Limited. A “Los Angeles soul group who released a couple (of) singles and appeared on the Blacula soundtrack in the early 1970s,” (Discogs) … “Three-fifths of the band went on to The Wattsline” — Quincy Jones’ vocal backing group during the mid-70s.

The October 23, 1971 issue of Billboard apparently saw great things for the band’s future, predicting that “Your Smallest Wish” would reach the Soul Singles Chart. But from there, the trail grows cold.

JB, who unearthed this tune for us, calls the rare single a “veritable harmonic ransom note.” After a start in F major, there’s a pre-chorus transition at 0:30, then a chorus in C major at 0:39. The pattern continues from there. Then a bridge/break (1:52) leads to a pause in the groove and another chorus at 2:06 — this time in D major, which lasts for the balance of the tune.

Burt Bacharach | The Look of Love (feat. Diana Krall)

We usually wrap up our week with an up-tempo rock or dance tune, but this week we’ll continue to look back at the singular career of legendary songwriter Burt Bacharach, whose work has been a frequent feature on MotD. Bacharach’s work not only featured a broad harmonic vocabulary — including plenty of modulations. It generally stepped lightly through complex harmonic and meter transitions which only fully came to light after several listening sessions, rarely “telegraphing” themselves in advance. Bacharach generally avoided cliché half-step or whole-step key changes; rather, he favored transitions between closely-related keys, which don’t hit the listener like a brick upside the head, but a bit more like the sun gradually peeking through the clouds. He hid all the seams and made the final result sound effortless.

Bacharach studied composition with composer Darius Milhaud, one of the members of the informal but influential guild of progressive French composers, “Les Six.” Key changes and meter changes were not special effects for Bacharach, but rather organic tools for expression. Composer/pianist Ethan Iverson reports that Milhaud “told Bacharach that he shouldn’t worry about dodecaphony and keep composing those nice melodies.”

Iverson continues: “In his 60s songs, Bacharach undoes conventional pop from deep underneath the surface. ‘Hooks’ are almost always a bit asymmetrical, but Burt’s are truly lopsided. In the background of his radio-friendly hits, there is an echo of bebop logic, an echo of Schoenbergian logic.” Lyricist Hal David, Iverson suggests, “searched a surreal and overcast meadow for unexpected rhyme and reason.” Iverson continues by saying that jazz musician Dave Frishberg, when learning to write memorable themes, studied “the ‘4 Bs’: The Beach Boys, the Beatles, Brazilian, and Bacharach. (‘Brazilian’ means Jobim, Gilberto, Mendes, etc.)”

“The Look of Love,” originally released by Dusty Springfield in 1967, was covered by jazz vocalist/pianist Diana Krall for a 2012 performance at the White House as part of the In Performance at the White House | Burt Bacharach + Hal David: The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song PBS broadcast in May 2012. While Bacharach was present for the performance, Krall’s emotional mention of David hints at the ill health of the lyricist, who lived only a few more months. Krall’s version of the #22 US pop hit, which features plenty of “Burt-isms” in her piano work, is in Bb major overall, but shifts to Bb minor from 3:59 – 4:10. The modulation is situated in the heart of an outro that seems lit only by hushed twilight (3:59 onward), during which Krall communes with her bassist as the two negotiate the subtle ritardando that brings the tune in for a landing. The final Bb major tonic chord rings out at 4:10, complicated by the quintessentially Bachrachian #11 tension Krall repeats several times.