“Time Is A Healer” was featured on American singer Eva Cassidy’s first studio album, Eva By Heart, released one year after Cassidy’s death from melanoma at age 33. The track, with music by Diane Scanlon and Greg Smith and lyrics by Cassidy, is characteristic of Cassidy’s style — a full-throated soprano infused with bluesy soul and passion. Her work has been met with posthumous success, charting in the top 10 across Europe.
The tune starts in E major and modulates up to F# for the final chorus at 3:22.
Vocalist Gladys Knight, according to IMDB, won the Ted Mack & the Original Amateur Hour talent show (1948) at age of seven. She later built a lasting career with her longtime backup singers/dancers, “The Pips,” comprised of her brother and two of her cousins. Perhaps best known for the tracks “Midnight Train to Georgia (1973) and 1985’s “That’s What Friends Are For,” Knight was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. She’s won seven Grammy Awards out of her total of 22 nominations.
All of the Pips have now retired. But The Guardian reviewed one of Knight’s 2019 concerts, remarking on her extraordinary energy and enduring appeal: “Uplifting anthems came laden with poignant nostalgia on a night where the vivacious veteran showed no sign of stopping … an astonishing 58 years after ‘Every Beat of My Heart’ hit the US charts … she is still clearly having fun, telling her euphoric audience: ‘We’ve been hanging out for, errrr … many, many years’ to ripples of laughter. Moments later, she quips, ‘I feel it coming on. Be careful not to hurt yourself.’”
“Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me,” written by Jim Weatherly, was released during the very heart of Knight’s prominence (1974); it became a huge hit in the US (#3, Pop; #10, Adult Contemporary; #1, R&B) and also went into the top ten in the UK and Canada. Knight sails a high tonic note from the new key over the transition into the modulation at 1:43 — along with her warm and slightly raspy tone, a true trademark.
“Best known for the empowering 1966 chart-topper ‘These Boots Are Made for Walkin’,’ Nancy Sinatra managed to create a sound and style all her own, fully separate from that of her famous father” (AllMusic). “She returned to the singles chart with her fusion of rock, country, and pop over a dozen more times … Though Sinatra last reached the U.S. Hot 100 in 1969, her strong-willed, go-go boots-wearing persona endured through acting roles alongside Elvis Presley and Peter Fonda, a 1981 country album with Mel Tillis (Mel and Nancy) (and) a memoir (1985’s Frank Sinatra, My Father) …”
In the late 60s, she worked with Lee Hazlewood on what became a string of hits — most notably ‘These Boots,’ which garnered three Grammy nominations and went gold. Hazlewood is said to have suggested to Nancy, “‘You can’t sing like Nancy Nice Lady anymore. You have to sing for the truckers.’ She later described him as ‘part Henry Higgins and part Sigmund Freud,'” (Financial Times).
Certainly representative of Sinatra’s sound but not a single until 1970, “Highway Song” (originally released in 1967) charted only in the UK, where it reached #21. The tune modulates up a half step at 2:01. Many thanks to Jamie for this contribution!
Featured in the 2019 Disney film Frozen II, “Show Yourself” recounts Elsa examining her past and the source of powers. The song has compared to the anthem “Let It Go” from the hugely successful 2013 movie Frozen, and hits on many of the same themes of self-acceptance and discovery. Composer Kristen Anderson-Lopez said that her 14-year old daughter was sobbing after the first time she heard the song. “It feels like you’re telling me I can follow my gut and find my own path,’” Anderson-Lopez remembered her saying. “That’s the success of this movie for me. If she can’t hear it from her mom in daily life, she can hear it from her mom through a Disney movie she wrote.”
The music combines cinematic depth and musical theatre sophistication, incorporating other motifs from the score and reflecting Elsa’s evolution over the course of the number. Beginning in F# major, a modulation to G major leads into the second verse at 1:51, followed by a shift to Eb minor at the bridge at 3:27. A modulation up to Ab sets up the final chorus at 3:51.
“Miracle,” featured on Whitney Houston‘s 1990 album I’m Your Baby Tonight, was her 13th top ten hit, reaching the ninth slot on the Billboard Hot 100. While many interpreted the song to be about a girl who regrets having an abortion, Houston denied this was the case. “I think about the air we breathe, the earth we live on. I think about our children, ” she said in an interview with Jet magazine. “I think about a lot of things, things God put here for us to have, things that we need and we take for granted. I think all of these things are miracles and I think we should try to take better care of them.”
Canadian performer Anne Murray’s “A Little Good News” was written nearly four decades ago (1982), but its sentiment still resonates clearly today. “Written by Tommy Rocco, Charlie Black, and Rory Bourke, the heartfelt country ode finds Murray singing about one’s despair over the inhumanity, cruelty, and distress she often reads about in newspapers and hears on the news,” (CountryThangDaily). “Charlie Black remembered the day they wrote the song. The three songwriters were sitting around with their cup of coffee while watching [coverage about] the 1982 Lebanon War … and every news story was worse than the one past it, making them shake their heads of how bad things were. It was at that moment when Black said, ‘Wow, we sure could use a little good news today.’”
Anne Murray released the song in 1983 as the lead single from the album of the same name. A true crossover track, it reached #1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart, sustaining that rank for 20 weeks — but also reached #11 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart and #74 on Billboard Hot 100. The tune was awarded a Grammy for Best Female Country Vocal Performance and the Country Music Association’s Single of the Year.
There’s an early unprepared half-step modulation at 1:39. Many thanks to Ziyad for another great submission!
“Despite 40 years in the music business, details about Roy Lee’s life are rather scarce,” (Sir Shambling’s Deep Soul Heaven). Born in 1938, “reportedly in Heard County, Georgia” (current county-wide population: just over 11K), he worked with groups such as the Brassetts, the Ohio Untouchables, and Piano Red, “for whom he wrote and sang ‘Mr. Moonlight’ … Since the Beatles covered Johnson’s song, it’s an easy assumption that this number has brought him the biggest pay checks he’s ever received … Johnson has been an intriguing figure on the southern soul scene for decades, always on the road gigging, and this cult soulman’s records are never less than interesting.”
Of “The Dryer” (1973), contributor JB adds: “While the arrangement of this tune makes it sound like a bog-standard James Brown song, it has a far higher MPM (mods per measure) quotient than any James Brown song I’m aware of.”
After a start in G minor, 0:42 brings a shift to E minor; a jump back to G minor lands at 1:07, another step back to E (this time major) at 1:42. Thereafter, cascading half-step modulations follow in rapid succession: by the time we complete this tune of barely two minutes, we’ve cycled all the way up to A major.
Last Sunday the 74th annual Tony Awards were presented at the Winter Garden Theatre, belatedly recognizing Broadway shows from the pandemic-shortened 2019-2020 season. Marc Shaiman penned the opening number for the ceremony celebrating the return of live theatre to the Big Apple. Key changes at 1:39 and 2:21.
“I’d Rather Be Sailing” is from the 1998 Off-Broadway musical A New Brain, with music and lyrics by William Finn. The show, which traces the story of a composer grappling with an illness he fears may be terminal, is autobiographical. Finn himself was diagnosed with arteriovenous malformation (AVM) in 1992, and made a successful and full recovery. This song, performed here by Jonathan Groff and Aaron Lazar, is sung in the show by Gordon, the composer, and his boyfriend Roger, daydreaming about day spent on the sea. A half step modulation from F to Gb occurs at 1:32.
“Pat Metheny’s love of Brazilian music comes into full bloom on 1987’s Still Life (Talking); it’s not the only stylistic element at play here, but it’s the most striking one,” (Apple Music). “The band is highly polished and coupled with Metheny’s crystalline production, the sound of the title track — and the rest of the album — sparkles.” Sierra Music describes “In Her Family,” the album-closing track, “one of Pat’s most haunting, pensive, and beautiful ballads.”
After a start in Ab minor, a simple, largely stepwise melody is greatly magnified by a bridge which takes flight over sweeping multi-key terrain (1:22-2:12). At 2:12, we’ve reverted to the original key, with short melodic phrases once again allowing the harmonies to take center stage.
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