“Only Us” is from the Tony-winning musical Dear Evan Hansen, which had its closing performance on Broadway this past weekend. The tune is performed here by Ben Levi Ross (who played Evan, Connor, and Jared on Broadway) and Taylor Trensch (who played Evan) in a new arrangement by music director Alex Lacamoire. Beginning in B, a modulation up to Db leads into the second verse at 2:06. That is followed by an unorthodox pivot up a perfect 5th to Ab for the final chorus at 2:48, where it remains until the end.
Tag: USA
Renee Zellweger & Sam Smith | Get Happy
“Get Happy” was the first song composer Harold Arlen and lyricist Ted Koehler wrote together, and was made famous by Judy Garland in the 1950 film Summer Stock. In 2019, actress Renee Zellweger starred in the movie Judy, a biopic of Garland’s life, and recorded this arrangement for the soundtrack with singer Sam Smith.
The tune features a succession of three half-step modulations: from the original home key of G up to Ab at 1:08, rising to A at 1:52, and finally landing in Bb at 2:26.
Madonna | Vogue
“The underground — any underground — tends to find peculiar and unintended routes into the spotlight,” (Stereogum). “Madonna was always a creature of New York club culture, and it wasn’t particularly out of character for her to get interested in a particular facet of that culture, which kept evolving after she got famous. But it was pretty weird that Madonna managed to take a small slice of the deep underground and mainstream the absolute hell out of it. And it was also pretty weird that Madonna pulled this off with a would-be B-side that got stapled onto the hoochie-coochie retro-cabaret album that she’d recorded as a tie-in with her big summer-blockbuster movie … Madonna was prescient about a lot of things, but she can’t have predicted the ripple-effects of all the moves that she made. ‘Vogue’ wasn’t even supposed to be a single, but it became one of the defining smashes of a hall-of-fame career. That happens sometimes.” The single reached #1 in the spring of 1990 and remained there for three weeks.
The Guardian further describes the drag scene of the late 1980s: “Contrary to popular belief, Madonna did not invent voguing. (Her hit song) was a euphoric celebration/appropriation of a dance form that emerged from the Harlem ballroom scene in the 80s. ‘Balls are part of a broader history of black queer performance and spectacle that stretches back at least to the early days of the 20th century,’ says Madison Moore, assistant professor of gender, sexuality and women’s studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. Poet and playwright Langston Hughes described these balls in his 1940 autobiography The Big Sea as ‘spectacles in color’.”
After an intro and a verse in Ab major, the chorus shifts to Ab minor at 1:40, with a brief but dense series of syncopated compound piano chords layered over the bass, which never migrates away from the tonic throughout the entire tune. Since the melody also centers around the tonic, the harmonic variety of those compound chords is pivotal. At 1:56, verse 2 reverts to Ab major; the pattern continues from there.
Tell Her (from “13: The Musical”)
“Tell Her” is from the Broadway musical 13, with music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown. The stage version premiered in New York in 2008, and the show was recently adapted into a movie by Netflix and released on the platform last month.
“Tell Her,” performed here by Eli Golden, Gabriella Uhl and the ensemble, comes near the end of the show and features multiple modulations. Beginning in G, the song shifts up a third to Bb for the second verse at 1:04, and then rises again a half step to B for the verse three at 1:52 before returning to G at 3:08.
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.
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