Tag: USA

Del Shannon | Runaway

“Runaway” by Del Shannon is an “eerie, aching, chart-topping 1961 single” according to the AV Club. “Few songs in popular music are so enduring yet ethereal. ‘Runaway’ is a moody song for a brooding scenario, one that seems to instantly sublimate into a glum, haunting fog. Written by Shannon and his keyboardist, Max Crook, it outlines in tear-streaked detail a guy who’s lost his girl. Guys losing girls is a primary preoccupation of pop songwriters, then and now, but ‘Runaway’ nudges that theme to a preternatural level. ‘As I walk along I wonder / what went wrong,’ he begins the song, not bothering to mention where he’s walking or why.

The not-so-secret weapon of ‘Runaway,’ though, is its keyboard. Crook joined Shannon’s band in 1959, and soon after he began toying with a riff on his Musitron, a self-built version of the clavioline that served as a precursor to the analog synthesizer. Modifying the instrument with spare parts from television sets and household appliances, Crook used his invention to turn his riff into the spooky, unsettling hook of ‘Runaway.'” The single went to #1 in the US and was a true international smash hit as well, hitting Top 5 in Australia, Canada, Chile, Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, the UK, among others.

The intro, verses, and iconic keyboard feature sections are in Bb minor; the choruses (first heard at 0:31) shift to Bb major.

Parachute | What Side of Love

“What Side of Love” is featured on Wide Awake, the fourth studio album by the Virginia-based rock band Parachute, released in 2016. “While pleasing critics has never been Parachute’s M.O., they certainly know their way around big melodic hooks,” said critic Timothy Monger, reviewing the record for AllMusic. The gospel-tinged song was written by lead vocalist Will Anderson with James Flannigan and Sean Douglas. Starting in Bb, the tune shifts up to C at 2:45.

Yebba | How Many Years

“Dawn (2021) doesn’t sound like the debut of a burgeoning pop sensation hopping onto trends,” (New York Times). “The album has a rich retro palette, draws deeply from jazz and R&B and is set in a dusky register that gives Yebba’s flexible voice room to roam … The album’s title doesn’t just refer to the break of day; it was her mom’s name, too.” Yebba’s mother died by suicide just as the artist was rising towards her current prominence. “’I feel like now I get to be 26, instead of always being so immersed in grief … I no longer feel like my life is some chore that I haven’t completed — that my mom is hanging over my head. There are new ways to honor her.’”

“The retro and the contemporary find a nice equilibrium throughout Dawn, but the draw is still Yebba’s voice and the way she massages every note into a sigh,” (The New Yorker). “She possesses an explosive melisma on par with some of the great power-pop divas of the past, but finesse is her strength. She allows the depth and purity of her tone to reverberate, even in the quieter moments. The album’s opener, ‘How Many Years,’ lets threads of whisper-song fray into a gossamer veil, mirroring her apprehension and her doubtfulness … The greatest triumph of Dawn is that Yebba never loses her sense of self in remembrance. A tragedy of this magnitude threatens to overwhelm a début’s statement of identity, but Yebba won’t allow her story to be defined only by what happened. Instead of romanticizing her grief, she pushes through it, untangling a mess of emotions in search of closure.”

“How Many Years,” co-written by Yebba, seems to embody its lyric Where can I run when the ground moves beneath my feet? After the music begins at the 0:50 point, the verses change harmonic direction every phrase or two, all the more profoundly because the shifts happen during phrases rather than between them. However, the melodic shape of the choruses is constant — stated and re-stated with increasing emphasis, perhaps in an attempt to counteract shifting tonalities. The first chorus (1:31) is in Bb major; the second (2:37), in E major; the third (4:04) is something of a harmonic question mark, augmented and artfully blurred by subtle reharmonization.

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We’re including a live track as well as the heavily produced studio track, simply because they stand in such stark contrast to each other.

Stevie Wonder | If You Really Love Me

You watched the Grammy Awards recently, and wondered how Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo, barely out of high school, could be sitting alongside veterans like Lady Gaga and Bonnie Raitt.

But consider Stevie Wonder. When Where I’m Coming From was released in 1971, it was his thirteenth album, dating back to 1962, and he’d already had a string of hits. If you’ve seen the documentary Summer of Soul, you’ll know he appeared at the Harlem Cultural Festival in 1969 along with other A-list acts, like Nina Simone and Gladys Knight. All that — and he’d not yet turned 21 when the album was released.

“Where I’m Coming From” marks a bridge between Stevie’s previous releases, which were imbued with the Motown Sound (you know it when you hear it), and his later “classic” albums of the 1970s, where exercised freedom in songwriting and production. The song here from that album, “If You Really Love Me”, was the last he recorded with the Funk Brothers at Motown’s Hitsville studio in Detroit. Even then, Stevie played drums, synth bass, and piano on the track. Like the other songs on the album, it was written with his then-wife Syreeta Wright, who also sings on the track. The production is by David Van De Pitte, who’d had other hits for Motown. The song reached #8 on the Billboard 100 chart.

The song features distinct A and B sections. The A section is sprightly, uptempo, featuring a contemporary-sounding brass lead-in. Stevie’s vocal is layered with overlapping overdubs. Just when we got going, the slower, almost *rubato* B section begins at 0:36. Besides the vocal, there’s just the synth bass, and a bit of piano. At 1:08, we’re *a tempo* back to the happy A section. Again, it’s a short-lived delight: we’re back to the B section at 1:36. We return to the A section at 2:05 (with hand-claps this time) for the remainder of the song.

Harmonically, the A section is in F major; the B section begins with D
major, and shifts to D minor.

A more complete analysis is here:

Britney Spears | Where Are You Now

“Where Are You Now” is from Britney Spears’ second studio album, Oops!…I Did It Again, released in 2000. The album debuted at number 1 in fifteen countries and has gone on to become one of the best-selling albums of all time. Starting in A major, the tune modulates up to B for the interlude following the second chorus at 2:42, and then shifts up another half step to C for the final chorus at 3:13.

Hall and Oates | Laughing Boy

“For all the success that this Philadelphia-based duo would experience later on in their career, Daryl Hall and John Oates struggled to find a commercial footing early on,” (ClassicRockReview.com). “That’s not to say that they didn’t produce interesting and creative music as demonstrated brilliantly on their second album, Abandoned Luncheonette, released in late 1973. Despite only reaching #33 on the album charts during its initial run, this album slowly grew in stature and would finally reach platinum-selling status about three decades after its release.

For Abandoned Luncheonette, the group and production team moved from Philadelphia to New York where their disparate influences of folk, rock, and soul were refined with the help of expert session players to forge the album’s musical tapestry as well as the group’s signature sound for the next decade.”

In addition to one of their breakthrough hits, “She’s Gone,” Abandoned Luncheonette featured “Laughing Boy,” a ballad which showcased Daryl Hall’s vocals and keyboard skills. An unusually high percentage of the tune’s sonic real estate features chromatic basslines; for example at 0:08, we start out with a bassline alternating between C and B; at 0:31, we’re down to Bb, then D/A before the pattern breaks. The short chorus (0:57 – 1:10) is built around F# minor, which makes the tritone jump to C Lydian at the start of the next verse quite distinctive. There’s not a strong feeling of tonality to begin with, so modulation isn’t really on the menu per se, but that tritone shift (which recurs several times) is quite the statement!

Carole King | Beautiful

“Beautiful,” featured on King’s breakout 1971 album Tapestry, became one of her best-known songs and is the title song in the 2014 Broadway musical based on King’s life. Reflecting the message in the lyric of finding hope and determination even amidst darkness and hardship, the key fluctuates fluidly between C minor and its relative Eb major. Prior to the last verse, the tune modulates up a half step to C# minor (and E major) at 1:35, where it remains till the end.

Maurice Cahen | Impromptu #1 for Flute and Guitar

Guitarist and composer Maurice Cahen was born in Saint Germain en Laye, France. He began studying classical guitar while playing jazz in the Paris area. He traveled back and forth to Spain, where he discovered his love for traditional and contemporary Spanish music. In 1982, Maurice moved to the United States to study at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, followed by studies with Charlie Banacos and Dimitri Goryachev. Since then, he’s collaborated with various Boston and New York based musicians and has published original chamber music for flute and guitar, including the Impromptu #1.

Cahen has toured Israel with The Little Big Band and later toured Brazil with his own quartet and duo. Since then, Maurice has created numerous ensembles: Reflection, Brazilian Serenade, and various duos and trios featuring his original work, improvisation, etc. and exploring many styles, instrumentations, and genres (Classical, Latin, etc.) Maurice is currently studying North Indian Classical music and sitar technique with Jawwad Noor.

Impromptu #1 for flute and guitar, featuring Cahen on guitar and MotD co-curator Elise MacDonald on flute, begins in an overarching B minor and D major, but shifts to B major at 1:03. After touching on several other keys of the moment, we return to B minor and D major at 1:44.

Average White Band | You’re My Number One

Released in 1982, “You’re My Number One” was a track from the Average White Band’s album Cupid’s In Fashion. ” … the group decided to keep things a bit funkier on this release … ” (Soulfinger). ” … they brought in some cool cats like Dan Hartman to write ‘You’re My Number One’. Say what you will about Hartman, but that man can make a fun song … AWB could do LA pop without losing their soul … “

Hartman is perhaps best known for his own release “I Can Dream About You” (which reached #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1984 and #12 on the UK Singles chart in 1985). He wrote and/or produced many other successful tunes for other artists, including “Living in America” for James Brown (1986), as well as tracks for a wide-ranging list of artists including The Plasmatics, Steve Winwood, Tina Turner, Joe Cocker, Dusty Springfield, and Bonnie Tyler. Hartman passed away from HIV in 1994 at the age of only 43.

1980s LA pop could hardly have a better standard-bearer than this track. Its funk foundation, nimble horn section, glossy production, and an entire instrumental verse devoted to a sax solo all belie the fact that Average White Band is from … Scotland! The modulation kicks in at 1:46.

Liz Story | Things With Wings

Pianist Liz Story studied music at Hunter College and at Juilliard. “Although she was an accomplished pianist, (she) lost interest in a music career until she saw Bill Evans play one night at the Bottom Line in New York,” (MusicianGuide). “That concert opened up performance possibilities that she had never considered. ‘What hit me was the improvisation. I had the impression that improvising music had died in the 18th century, that it was a musical feat people knew about in some other time,’ she told DownBeat. ‘All these lights went on. I had, for the first time, a clear idea of what I would do in music.’

The timing of Story’s entrance onto the music scene was fortuitous. She arrived when a new form of music, popularly dubbed New Age, was gaining wide acceptance. William Ackerman helped pioneer New Age music through his Windham Hill label, which he formed in 1976 to release his first album of guitar music … Story recorded her first solo album, Solid Colors, for Windham Hill in 1983. High Fidelity reviewed the album: ‘ … a virtually flawless technical capacity, a fine gift for melody, a great sense of creative passion … a performer-composer with the melodic power to move an audience.’ Story claims that she desires simplicity in her compositions. ‘When I sit at the piano, complexity dissolves. I want music to somehow move me, simple and stripped down as it may be. I wonder at the possibility that a melody of three notes can turn the heart.'”

Story’s 1983 track “Things With Wings” begins in F major; at 1:03, there’s a modulation to F# major, then a reversion to the original key at 1:46.