Tag: USA

America the Beautiful | United States Navy Band

“Jazz is America’s music and the U.S. Navy Band Commodores, the Navy’s premier jazz ensemble, have been performing the very best of big band jazz for the Navy and the nation for 50 years,” (US Navy Band). “Formed in 1969, this 18-member group continues the jazz big band legacy with some of the finest musicians in the world … The list of guest artists who have appeared with the Commodores reads like a who’s who of jazz and popular music: Ray Charles, Branford Marsalis, Clark Terry, Grover Washington Jr., Chris Potter, Jerry Bergonzi, Eddie Daniels, James Moody and many more.”

In an interview with the Navy’s publication Fanfare, alto vocalist Chelsi Vanderpol detailed some of her preparation process: “I get the opportunity to solo pretty regularly and, absolutely, I still get nervous! I think we all do — I don’t think that goes away. I just think you get better at hiding it … Einstein says something about energy not being able to be destroyed, but rather changed from one form to another. I think about that and try to change that nervous energy into power and excitement to share my message with the audience. I think what we do is so important and I think people need to hear it.”

“America the Beautiful” had a rather roundabout origin: Its lyrics were written by Katharine Lee Bates and its music was composed by church organist and choirmaster Samuel A. Ward over several years during the 1890s, although Bates and Ward never met. The song wasn’t published until 1910. Among its many covers, the tune is perhaps most closely linked with Ray Charles, whose 1972 rendition was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2005. The Navy Band’s arrangement, recorded here in 2019, rises a whole step at 2:16.

Good Morning (from “Singin’ in the Rain”)

“’Making Singin’ in the Rain and childbirth were the two hardest things I’ve ever done,’ Debbie Reynolds wrote in her 2013 memoir, Unsinkable,” (Slate). “’The movie was actually harder, because it hurt me everywhere, mostly my brain and my feet.’ Reynolds was only 19 when she was cast alongside Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor in what would become one of the greatest Hollywood musicals … But she had no training in dance, and she was about to share the screen with two of Hollywood’s greatest hoofers. ‘I wasn’t a dancer,’ Reynolds wrote, ‘and I had three months to learn what Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor had been doing for years.’

Reynolds’ preparation was arduous, and Kelly, who co-directed Singin’ with Stanley Donen, was a stern and unforgiving taskmaster who had opposed Reynolds being cast in the part. At one point, according to Unsinkable, she wound up crying under the piano in one of MGM’s rehearsal rooms, where she was comforted by no less than Fred Astaire. ‘You’re not going to die,’ Astaire told Reynolds. ‘That’s what it’s like to learn to dance. If you’re not sweating, you’re not doing it right.’” It’s riveting to watch Reynolds, well known as a triple threat, keep up with dance legends Kelly and O’Connor — particularly given that the number was shot over a single 15-hour day.

“Singin’ in the Rain (1952) is the best musical of all time, according to the prestigious American Film Institute,” (The Guardian). “West Side Story came in at number two, followed by The Wizard of Oz and Cabaret.”

After a start in B major, we shift to G# major at 1:01. Several other key changes follow, beautifully presented by full orchestra.

Eddie Holman | This Can’t Be True

“Eddie Holman (born in Norfolk, Virginia in 1946), is an American singer who performs in several genres such as R&B, soul, pop and gospel, and best known for the now-oldies music classic hit ballad ‘Hey There Lonely Girl’ in 1970,” (MentalItch.com). He began his music career as a child, “performing at prestigious venues such as the Apollo Theater and even Carnegie Hall. Holman graduated with a degree in music at Cheyney State University (now Cheyney University of Pennsylvania) in Philadelphia. Part of the vibrant Philly soul scene, Holman eventually developed his signature vocal style.

In 1965, he released his first hit with ‘This Can’t Be True’ which peaked at #17 on the US R&B chart … ‘Hey There Lonely Girl’ (1969) was his biggest hit, reaching #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in early 1970. (The release was) actually a remake of the Ruby and the Romantics’ 1963 hit ‘Hey There Lonely Boy.’”

After a first half that’s a funhouse mirror of compound chords, the tune modulates at 1:51. But throughout, the main course is certainly Holman’s stratospheric yet seemingly effortless falsetto, kicking in each time he sings the title line. Contributor JB adds that the track “sits right in the liminal area between 1950s Doo-Wop and 1960s Soul.”

Jonas Brothers | Pom Poms

“Pom Poms” was the lead single for the planned 2013 album “V,” which would have been the fifth studio album for the Jonas Brothers. The band broke up prior to the album coming out, but ultimately released six songs intended for the record.

Ironically, “Pom Poms” was one of the last songs they recorded. “It’s one of those things I feel like most artists do. They make the whole record and sort of find out the different palette of the tones they have for it and then sort of feel like they are missing a piece and that’s where we were kind of at when we wrote ‘Pom Poms,’ said Nick Jonas in an interview. “We had a lot of songs that were a bit darker in tone and we needed a brighter song and something that was really just fun and this song just kind of happened. It was toward the end. From the minute we finished it, we felt it was the right song to lead with.”

The song starts in G# minor and shifts up a step at 2:46

One Knight (from “Wonderland”)

Frank Wildhorn’s musical Wonderland, based on the Lewis Carroll story Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, played on Broadway for a month in 2011, plagued by a poor and confusing script. In his review of the production for The New York Times, critic Charles Isherwood called the score a “competent rendering of various pop styles.” This song, sung by the White Knight, comes early in Act 1 and modulates from F# major to A at 2:56.

Good Charlotte | Wondering

“Wondering” is the fourth track on the 2002 album The Young and the Hopeless by the American rock band Good Charlotte. After their first record did not sell as well as they hoped, the group decided to let inspiration guide them for this release. “Nothing about that record was pre-meditated, we were just having fun, and trying to do the best we could to achieve that goal,” lead guitarist Benji Madden said. “We’d gone out into the world and felt both the positive and the negative. And on The Young And The Hopeless we decided to really take a direction and stand up for ourselves, in a way.”

The track shifts from B up a whole step to C# at 3:00

Hometown Hero’s Ticker Tape Parade (from “Dogfight”)

Benj Pasek and Justin Paul’s musical Dogfight is based on the 1991 film of the same name, and tells the story of a group of young men in the 1960s preparing to deploy to Vietnam. The musical premiered Off Broadway in 2012 and received an Outer Critics Circle nomination for Best Score. This song, the opening number of Act 2, starts in F major and wanders briefly through F# and G coming out of the bridge at 2:24 before ultimately landing in Ab at 2:34.

Demi Lovato | The Middle

“The Middle” is the ninth track on American singer Demi Lovato’s debut studio album, Don’t Forget, released in 2008. AllMusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine described the record as “the kind of pop that feels disposable but winds up sticking around longer than its more considered cousins.” The song begins in E minor and shifts up a step to F# minor for the last chorus at 2:17.

Cole Fortier | Such Unlikely Lovers (Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach)

Here’s a first: a submission which not only includes an exacting level of theory detail, but is a live performance by the contributor, leading a quartet! Cole Fortier is an undergrad at the SUNY’s Crane School of Music. Thank you for such a detailed description of this genius tune’s structure, Cole!

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From Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello’s masterwork album, Painted from Memory (1998), comes the track “Such Unlikely Lovers.” It’s a truly unique and incredible song for many reasons.

First, it seems to be the one lyric on the album where everything goes right for the main character! While this album is an epic and stunning meditation on heartbreak, the upbeat and colorful narrative of this song brings the variation of levity and charm to the ordeal. Costello said that he heard the music that Bacharach presented to him for this track and immediately envisioned a lyric based around a chance romantic encounter on the street. The sense of spontaneity, optimism, and energy in the lyric is reflected so excitingly in the music. This song grooves so hard — more than almost any other song on the album. The constantly shifting tonality and subtle meter changes (a Bacharach trademark) truly embody the spontaneous spirit that drives the song.

As the song begins, it’s difficult to discern the key; the riff essentially vamps between a Gsus chord and an Fsus chord (Eb/F to be specific). The vocal then enters on a C minor chord, which contextualizes the previous Eb/F chord as being a part of the key signature of C minor. More specifically, this section of the song can be interpreted as C Dorian with the raised sixth scale degree of the A natural. The most intriguing harmonic shift happens very quickly though as an F#min7 chord occurs on the word “gray” (0:24) and subsequently resolves to a Bmin9 chord. This modulation from C minor to B minor is masterfully handled through carrying over the common tone of the A natural from the C Dorian mode to the F#min7 chord. The entire modulatory sequence repeats again at the lyrics “when you look how you feel” (0:30) — but this time, the song continues on in a tonality much more closely associated with B minor than C minor (starting at “Listen now”, 0:40). After the chorus, the opening riff returns at 1:17. Weirdly enough though, the opening riff is played 2.5 steps down and is never played in its original tonality again.

The smooth and nuanced modulation patterns in “Such Unlikely Lovers” through the use of common tones really show the genius of Bacharach’s writing while also supporting the energized and spontaneous lyric that Costello wrote. 

Talking Heads | With Our Love

On the Talking Heads’ album More Songs About Buildings and Food, “You can hear (producer Brian) Eno’s ‘studio as instrument’ approach in all sorts of sonic details.” But in comparison to the band’s early days as regular performers at spartan punk-centric clubs like CBGB’s, ” … these increasingly intricate aesthetics never threaten to overthrow the music’s pleasure center: an involuntary compulsion to move your body … Talking Heads were sorting out how to engage simultaneously with the mind and the soul (or at least the hips)—how to be both art-rock and dance music,” (Pitchfork).

Salon called the album “a backwards exorcism of frozen-brittle guitars, smeared textures, and super-ecstatic vocals. The record brought forth an essential darkness and didn’t try to extinguish it. These were songs about emotions that lurk, about the secret part of ourselves that knows people can see right through us on buses, planes, and subways, all sung by a disjointed, ferocious, manic, shivering guy named David Byrne. It was a kind of State of the Union address, examining the nation’s health from a dozen different angles, including the sky.”

Sharing real estate on the 1978 release with “Take Me to the River,” a languorous track which became the band’s first hit, is the up-tempo “With Our Love.” The verse is built around G minor, with prominent Bb minor chords. 0:30 – 0:37 brings an off-kilter section featuring Db minor and Cb minor chords before a return to the original G minor section. At 0:45, the chorus alternates between E minor, G major, and A minor chords. 1:36 starts the cycle again. The tune’s driving forces of groove, lyric, and texture seem to transcend any expectation of traditional rock chord progressions; it doesn’t so much modulate as it fails to ever settle into a specific tonality in the first place. Disjointed, ferocious, and manic, indeed.