Tag: USA

Britney Spears | I’m Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman

Featured on Britney Spears’ third studio album, Britney, “I’m Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman” is a coming-of-age song that Spears says is one of her favorites to perform. Writing a review for the Yale Daily News in 2001, Catherine Halaby said the song “comes across as a hybrid of advice to her young female fans on how to deal with puberty, and an explanation of her girly but not childlike attitude.”

The song was not a big hit in the United States, but was more successful in Europe, reaching the Top 10 in Australia, Germany, Ireland, Sweden and the UK.

The tune begins in Eb and shifts up to F for the last chorus at 2:40.

Shelby Flint | Cast Your Fate to the Wind

In 1962, pianist Vince Guaraldi created that rare thing, a hit jazz instrumental, “Cast Your Fate to the Wind”, which reached #22 on the Billboard chart. The recording won a 1963 Grammy for Best Original Jazz Composition. A few years later, Guaraldi enshrined himself in American popular culture as the composer of the songs for the Peanuts TV specials.

On their first date, lyricist Carel Werber went with her future husband Frank, then manager for the Kingston Trio, to a club in Sausalito, where Guaraldi played the song for her. She loved it, and wrote the lyrics during trips over the Golden Gate Bridge.

Singer Shelby Flint had her own Billboard #22 hit, “Angel on My Shoulder”, which she wrote, in 1962. Her vocal version of Guaraldi’s song was released in 1966, reaching #61 on the Billboard charts.

The song starts in Db major, with a modulation to D in the instrumental section at 0:51, closing with another half-step shift up at 1:14. The verse then resumes in D-flat.

Here’s Guaraldi’s instrumental original:

Amy Grant | Baby, Baby

Amy Grant ruled the Contemporary Christian genre when she released her decidedly secular 1991 album Heart in Motion. She’d become “the Michael Jordan of Christian Pop,” according to Stereogum: “When Grant was working on ‘Baby Baby’ she’d only just become a mother. Her daughter Millie was six weeks old … Grant talks about driving around, trying to come up with lyrics, and then coming home and seeing Millie with her babysitter: ‘I sat down at the kitchen counter, and in less than 10 minutes wrote the song to her. Suddenly, all the little silly phrases fit with the music because it was all to her.’ Backstories for #1 hits don’t come much cuter than that …

‘Baby Baby’ topped Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart, as well as the Hot 100. The song also made a respectable dent in the Dance Club Songs chart, and I am really enjoying the mental image of a club DJ trying to find just the right moment to throw on ‘Baby Baby.’… Grant had already won five Grammys before ‘Baby Baby,’ but they’d all been in the gospel categories. But ‘Baby Baby’ got nominations for Song and Record of the Year, and Heart In Motion was in the Album of the Year mix, too.”

The tune starts in F# major, then bounces and sparkles its way until 1:33, when most of the groove falls away, making plenty of room for Grant to glissando her way up to G# major. 2:22 serves up a keyboard solo which feels like another upward modulation, but actually falls back to F#. A 2:52, we slide back up to G# major for the duration.

Ann Hampton Callaway (w/ Liz Callaway) | Moondance

Actress/singer/composer Ann Hampton Callaway makes her MotD debut today with a cover of Van Morrison’s most popular song, “Moondance,” featured on her 2004 studio album Slow. Callaway is joined on the track by her sister Liz Callaway, also a singer and actress. The tune begins in D minor and subtly modulates up a half step in the middle of the second verse at 1:35.

The Roches | Hammond Song

“The Roches were a magical musical act, influenced by barber-shop style tight harmonies, Irish melodies, bee-pop and the Brill Building writers,” (HotPress.com). “They wrote – either solo or in various combinations – songs about: their lives together and apart; sweaty train journeys; cheating husbands; dogs; waitressing; family secrets; trips to Ireland; and, sometimes, even an impossible and improbable relationship.

They didn’t fit in, but by not fitting in they presented the perfect template for all the rest of us who felt we didn’t fit in either. They eventually found a way to fit in by creating – stealing might even be a better word – a space for themselves in a music business distracted and preoccupied by rock, disco, and punk …they were not scared to show their horizons lay way beyond the perceived limits of folk, or any other contemporary music, for that matter.”

A track from the trio’s debut self-titled album (1979), “Hammond Song,” gives voice to the inevitable forks in life’s road and the consequences which follow. The Roche sisters’ keening vocal delivery is immediately recognizable after only a few notes. Their nearly vibrato-free vocal style would be quite unforgiving of any intonation issues, but the Roches’ excellent ears and unfettered originality turned into their force-of-nature delivery into their indelible signature. After a start in Eb major, 2:37 brings a shift to Bb major, and then there’s a reversion to the original key at 3:28. Both modulations slip by during relative lulls in the volume and texture of this otherwise rich vocal tapestry.

Al Jarreau | Teach Me Tonight

“Teach Me Tonight” was written by Gene De Paul (music) and Sammy Cahn (lyrics) in 1953, and has since become a jazz standard, recorded by Dinah Washington, Diana Krall, Sarah Vaughan and Aretha Franklin among others. Jarreau’s cover is featured on his Grammy-nominated 1981 album Breakin’ Away.

Beginning in Db, Jarreau shifts up a half step to D at 2:34.

Reliably Bad | If You Feel (the Way I Do)

Reliably Bad is an eight-piece Funk/Pop band based in Greensboro, NC. From the band’s website: “Specializing in composing innovative original tunes and arranging funk classics … (drawing) influence from artists such as Vulfpeck, Erykah Badu, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, James Brown, The Funk Brothers, Moonchild, J Dilla, and many more. The band was formed in 2018 with the initial intention of bringing danceable music to the college house show scene in Greensboro … Reliably Bad is committed to exploring innovative ways to engage audiences, refine their groove-oriented sound, and continue to build the musical community around them.”

“If You Feel (the Way I Do)” (2019) was released as an instrumental, but this live version with vocals has a lot more moving parts. The classic three-horn instrumentation handles the gentle funk groove with a palpable sense of fun — not least when the drummer comes forward to take the mic with a surprisingly soaring falsetto on a graceful rubato bridge, then runs back behind the kit like a jackrabbit. After the groove resumes, the key shifts from F major to Ab major at 3:27.

John Mayer | Only Heart

“Only Heart” is featured on John Mayer’s second studio album, Heavier Things, released in 2003. “There’s a certain swing-for-the-fences feel and a hurried nature that I think you have when you’re making your first record and have much to prove,” Mayer said in an interview with Billboard when the album came out. “Now that I’m in a higher gear, I don’t have to press so hard on the gas, and I’m loving it.”

The track alternates throughout between G minor on the verses and B minor for the chorus.

UB40 (feat. Chrissie Hynde) | I Got You Babe

“It is a testament either to reggae’s amazing elasticity, the sunny music’s universal appeal, or the efficacy of its modern pop co-option that UB40, a racially integrated octet from Birmingham, England, would — in the wake of Bob Marley — become reggae’s longest-running hit machine,” (TrouserPress). “Not to put too fine a point on it: Marley lived only eight years after making the landmark Catch a Fire album; UB40 is already in its third decade of successful employment.

Significantly, UB40 (the official name for a British unemployment form) has built its empire on laid-back covers of soul and pop classics and gentle love songs, not religion and revolution; there isn’t a single item in the UB40 archive with the international social significance of ‘Redemption Song’ or ‘Get Up Stand Up.’ Ultimately, UB40 is loyal not to a culture but to a beat … the band’s formula is mighty steady: recent albums sound enough like early ones that it would be impossible to guess their order of release.”

In 1985, UB40 and The Pretenders’ frontwoman Chrissie Hynde covered Sonny and Cher’s original 1965 original of “I Got You Babe.” The original was Sonny and Cher’s best-performing single, spending three weeks at #1 on the pop charts; the tune went on to become a worldwide smash hit, achieving top 10 chart positions in Europe, Canada, Africa, and Asia. The UB40 cover reached #1 in the UK, but only #28 in the US. It traded the original’s sturdy 12/8 for a effervescent reggae groove that focused on all of the 16th notes in a measure, shot through with electronic percussion. A half-step key change hits at 1:22.

Many thanks to regular contributor Rob P. for submitting this tune!

James Taylor | Letter in the Mail

An excerpt from TheGreatAlbums‘ review of 1988’s album Never Die Young: “Taylor’s final outing of the ‘80s doesn’t contain any surprises, although the absence of any cover song is a bit of a shock since most of his post-‘Fire and Rain’ hits had been covers and Taylor had seldom released an album without one. Never Die Young is almost equal parts comprised of Taylor’s trademark ballads and easygoing grooves tailor-made for adult-contemporary radio.”

So much for the singles. But “Letter in the Mail” is a gorgeous track buried in the middle of Never Die Young. Taylor’s tunesmithing was so refined by this point that the tune casually modulates between the intro and the first verse. But the subject matter couldn’t have been more serious: rock-ribbed rural America, hollowed out and depopulated, still proudly carrying on as best as possible even after the industrial or agricultural engine(s) of the community have long since departed.

When people used to talk about the country
That’s what they used to mean …

The intro starts in F major, followed by a verse in F# major. At 1:11, the pre-chorus shifts to A major; at 1:39, the chorus shifts back to F# major. At 2:14, another verse appears, this time in G major. 3:09’s pre-chorus is in Bb major. At 3:37, another chorus is back to G major — which is the key that finishes out the tune.