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Key + Peele | The Power of Wings

When it comes to comedy duo Key and Peele, “the title comedians are surprisingly good singers,” (Screenrant). The sketches on Comedy Central’s Key & Peele series “ran the gamut from touching on politics or race to skits on famous movies or TV shows. The pair also had some spot-on parodies of music artists, from the hilarious ‘Ray Parker Theme Songs’ – where the Ghostbusters singer reveals a catalog of horrible, unused themes for other movies – to ‘Outkast Reunion,’ where Andre 3000 and Big Boi awkwardly cross paths. Key & Peele remains a treasure trove of great sketches, with the show coming to an end back in 2015. While Keegan-Michael Key has continued to act, Jordan Peele has mostly retired from performing to step behind the camera, reinventing himself as a horror auteur with movies like Get Out.”

Wendell, a nerd and comic book fan of the highest order, is a recurring K+P character. But “Wings” took him to the next level of fantasy: If a Lord of the Rings Fandom Con had a baby with a power metal band, this video might be the result.

Unfortunately, the video’s modest budget is drained very visibly to zero dollars just before the bridge. Thereafter, even the half-step modulation at 1:53 and an “E for Effort” aren’t enough to save Wendell.

Jeff Beck | You Know, We Know

In its review of Jeff Beck’s Flash, Rolling Stone ranks it as “one of Beck’s best ever, a record of awesome guitar prowess and startling commercial daring. It is also irrefutable proof that his kind of flash never goes out of fashion.”

Trading on the huge cachet he’d built up during the 1960s and 1970s with garden variety music fans and tech-obsessed guitarists alike, Beck rested on his laurels a bit in the 80s: 1985’s Flash was his first release in five years. His work with The Yardbirds in the late 60s was legendary, but “while he was as innovative as Jimmy Page, as tasteful as Eric Clapton, and nearly as visionary as Jimi Hendrix,” explains AllMusic, “Jeff Beck never achieved the same commercial success as any of those contemporaries, primarily because of the haphazard way he approached his career. After Rod Stewart left the Jeff Beck Group in 1971, Beck never worked with a charismatic lead singer who could have helped sell his music to a wide audience. Furthermore, he was simply too idiosyncratic, moving from heavy metal to jazz fusion within a blink of an eye … releasing only one album during the course of the ’90s. All the while, Beck retained the respect of fellow guitarists, who found his reclusiveness all the more alluring.”

“You Know, We Know,” the closing track of Flash, is based on a simple hook. After an intro in C major, the hook is first stated at 0:33, along with a rasping unprepared modulation to C# minor. Another jarring key change to D minor drops at 4:35. The mid-80s production fingerprint of Chic’s Nile Rogers, catching perhaps the most synth-centric sound of the entire decade, couldn’t be clearer on this track. Robert Christgau’s snarky review gave the album a B grade, opining that Beck “turns in the best LP of his pathologically spotty career by countenancing Rodgers’ production on five tracks. So what do we have here? We have half a good Nile Rodgers album, more or less.”

Talking Heads | Nothing But Flowers

After its initial waves of success in the late 70s and early 80s, the future of Talking Heads seemed more precarious. But you wouldn’t know it from the sound of “Nothing But Flowers,” a single from the 1988 album Naked, the band’s final release. The energetic, bouncy track bears the clear signature of several guest musicians from Africa. But Naked turned out to be the band’s final album. “It was touch-and-go for the band ever since their fourth album, Remain In Light, was released in 1980.” (Songfacts) “After that one, David Byrne embarked on various projects and it wasn’t always clear if or when he would re-convene Talking Heads.” The band broke up in 1991.

Songfacts contines: “The lyrics describe a post-apocalyptic world in which modern technology has been largely eliminated. Lead singer David Byrne, as the song’s protagonist, is torn between his appreciation for nature’s beauty and his dependency on such disappeared items as lawnmowers and fast food. It’s kind of the opposite of Joni Mitchell’s ‘Big Yellow Taxi,’ where they paved paradise and put up a parking lot. Here, nature has re-claimed the land, and now the shopping malls are covered with flowers. Throughout the video, strong visual elements make the band’s origins at Rhode Island School of Design clear. The 1991 Bret Easton Ellis novel American Psycho opens with an epigraph quoting some lyrics from this song: And as things fell apart / Nobody paid much attention.”

Starting in C major, there’s a shift to D major partway through the chorus at 1:31, then a return to C major for another verse at 1:47. At 3:15, the second half of another split chorus is elevated up to D major, remaining there for the balance of the tune. Along the way, several short sections are propelled by the frisson of departures from the primary keys (for instance, 0:59 – 1:06).

Jennifer Warnes | Right Time of the Night

Written and originally recorded by songwriter Peter McCann, “Right Time of the Night” was made a top ten hit by Jennifer Warnes on her eponymous 1977 album. Warnes wrote new lyrics for the second verse that she believed were more appropriate for a female performer, but McCann rejected her revision and wrote his own, which eventually made it onto the record. The track is Warnes’ most successful solo hit. Starting in Bb, the tune modulates up a whole step to C at 2:11.

Sting | Sister Moon

Derived from Shakespeare’s Sonnet #130, the title of Sting’s second solo album …Nothing Like the Sun (1987) doesn’t appear as the title of one of the album’s songs, but rather only as a lyric in the tune “Sister Moon,” the tenth of twelve tracks.

In an interview with Spin, Sting noted that the album was the first which he’d recorded in all-digital format — a novelty at the time: “Although recording digitally was difficult and kind of alienating, it allowed me more flexibility in terms of arrangement … and that drove me crazy. I could change the key, add whole sections to the song when it was already finished, change the tempo, everything. But basically I knew there was a core in each song that worked that you couldn’t destroy.” Q Magazine‘s review of the album focused on the artist’s growing maturity after his years of rock/reggae/pop with the Police and a debut solo album from two years earlier: “It’s a measure of what makes solo Sting special that after so many years in the hype machine, living a lifestyle based on god only knows what riches in the bank, he has finally found the will and the voice to sing simply and affectingly … “

This 2021 performance of “Sister Moon” was recorded remotely for the Sanborn Sessions, an echo of host David Sanborn’s groundbreaking 1980s music TV series Night Music. The tune begins in F# melodic minor, with plenty of emphasis on the natural 7th degree of the tonic chord. 2:02 brings a shift to A# minor at the chorus, but at 2:25, we return to F# minor well before the chorus ends.

The Grass Roots | Temptation Eyes

“Temptation Eyes” is featured on The Grass Roots‘ 1970 compilation album More Golden Grass. The tune spent 18 weeks on the charts, and lead singer Rob Grill dubbed the tune his favorite song the band ever released. The key fluctuates between A minor on the verses and A major on the choruses.

Linda Ronstadt | Still Within the Sound of My Voice

“For well over four decades, Jimmy Webb’s songs have helped shape the American musical landscape,” Rolling Stone‘s Anthony Decurtis writes. “And ‘landscape’ is the operative term. A native of Oklahoma, Webb imbues his songs with a cinematic expansiveness and a musical sophistication that smooths the edges of his rootsy sources. They sometimes evoke specific places – ‘Wichita Lineman,’ ‘By the Time I Get to Phoenix’ – but more often Webb’s songs summon an internal realm of the imagination. Yearning and regret loom large in Webb’s songbook, as does a particular kind of American loneliness, the emotional flip side of the country’s obsession with individualism.”

The Webb tune “Still Within the Sound of My Voice” is clearly related to the title of the 2019 documentary which recounts American singer Linda Ronstadt’s sweeping career. “She didn’t write her own songs, but she owned the ones she performed with rare authority,” (New York Times) ” … someone uses the word ‘auteur’ to describe Ronstadt’s relationship to her material, and it doesn’t seem exaggerated. Starting out in the ’60s at the crossroads of folk and rock,” over time, she performed styles from New Wave, Great American Songbook standards, Gilbert and Sullivan operetta (on stage and in film), and Canciones de mi Padre, “an album of traditional Mexican songs that explored a family heritage many of her earliest fans and collaborators never knew she had.” Ronstadt retired in 2011 due to Parkinson’s disease, which has profoundly affected her voice. But the documentary seems to speak most to her groundbreaking influence on many facets of contemporary music.

The 1989 release, a long overdue MotD debut for Ronstadt, is on the gentle side of the artist’s releases, but still features moments of her famously effortless belt. It begins in C major for verse 1, shifts to Eb major chorus at 1:07, touches briefly back down on C major at 1:22, then travels on to Ab major at 1:25. At 1:43, we’re back to C for verse 2, and the cycle repeats. At 2:43, there’s an interlude Ab major; at 3:15, chorus 3 steps up to F major. 3:43 brings an outro in Bb major as the tune fades toward the horizon.

Theme from “Barney Miller”

The Boston Phoenix reviewed the sitcom Barney Miller (1975-1982) as best-in-class TV. “Aside from The Honeymooners, Barney Miller was the sit-com that most approximated a one-act play. Almost every episode took place in one room of a rundown, filthy police station in Greenwich Village. Barney Miller managed to develop its main characters without showing their home lives (or their bare butts), thanks to perceptive writing and scenes that were long enough for actors to breathe.”

The theme is introduced by and built around the electric bass. NoTreble, one of the internet’s most comprehensive sites for all things bass-centric, profiles the session musician whose sound was featured: “As a member of the Wrecking Crew, Chuck Berghofer helped change the sound of popular music. His big, warm bass sound has laid the foundation for artists from A to Z with recordings by Frank Sinatra, Glen Campbell, Christina Aguilera, Frank Zappa, The Beach Boys, Diana Krall, Robbie Williams, and more. It has also set the mood on over 400 movies like Rocky, True Crime, Bird, and The Majestic.”

ArnoldFaberVibeman.com adds: “The team of Jack Elliott and Allyn Ferguson wrote this theme. Elliott was musical director for the Grammys for thirty consecutive years, Judy Garland‘s musical director, and creator of the Henry Mancini Institute as well as composer of many, many television and movie scores. Ferguson was among the founders of the Dick Grove School Of Music, musical director for Julie Andrews, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, and Johnny Mathis, as well as scoring for countless TV series and movies … When you heard that funky solo bass line, you knew what you were in for! (It) has all the elements of the show in that opening line and then, as soon as you get into the groove, all hell breaks loose with that trumpet. It’s hip, cornball AND nostalgic all at the same time.”

Clocking in at just over a minute, the theme features two modulations. At both 0:42 and 0:52, there are minor third shifts upwards.

Dionne Warwick | Walk On By

“Walk on By,” written by Burt Bacharach with lyrics by Hal David, ended up as a sizeable early-career hit for vocalist and Bacharach favorite Dionne Warwick (1964). JazzIz.com reports that it was originally a B-Side for “Any Old Time of Day,” but prominent NYC DJ Murray “The K” felt that “Walk on By” was the superior song, and played it instead.

“His insistence paid off. ‘Walk On By’ became a hit and went on to become one of Warwick’s most famous songs. It has also been covered by many artists, including numerous jazz artists, earning it jazz standard status. For example, guitarist Gábor Szabó included his own instrumental cover version of the song on his debut album as leader, Gypsy ’66 (1965). Vocalist George Benson released a jazzier version of the track on his 1968 album Giblet Gravy. More recently, it was featured on pianist and vocalist Diana Krall’s album Quiet Nights (2009). Bacharach thought of his songs as ‘three-and-a-half minute movies, with peak moments and not just one intensity level the whole way through.’”

You could listen to this tune for decades and never realize that you’ve been walked through a modulation multiple times — yet also feel that there’s a certain something which propels the song’s motion forward with unusual force. After starting in A minor, there’s a shift part-way through the verse (0:15) to the closely-related key of D minor. In keeping with Bacharach’s polished style, the shift happens just as the title is mentioned for the first time. At 0:54, we move on to verse 2 and the cycle repeats. There are many brilliant live performances of Dionne Warwick performing this classic, but we chose this one for the sound quality.

The Sylvers | Hot Line

“There were so many Sylvers,” Stereogum reports. “There were 10 Sylvers siblings … If you watch the Sylvers on any of the big TV shows of the era — The Midnight Special, Soul Train, American Bandstand — they make for a breathtaking spectacle: All these kids, most of them with towering afros, all doing complicated and busy dance routines while belting out some almost absurdly catchy music, looking like the damn Polyphonic Spree.”

Other than their smash #1 hit “Boogie Fever” (1975), perhaps the group’s best known single is 1976’s “Hot Line,” which made it to only #5. Stereogum continues: “The Sylvers played some kind of crucial connective role within pop music, acting as a bridge between early-’70s Motown and the disco explosion that followed. The Sylvers’ success couldn’t last, and it didn’t … In different permutations, the Sylvers kept recording until 1985, when they finally broke up.”

With a super-saturated arrangement and a tempo that percolates in the high 130 BPM range, this tune was hardly in need of a boost. But a half-step modulation does indeed drop at 2:01, with all of the siblings’ voices united in a huge syncopated kick.