1967 The Doors: “Crystal Ship” Scott McKenzie: “San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair)” 1976 Boston – “Peace of Mind” 1977 Iggy Pop – “The Passenger” 1982 Toto – “Africa” 1985 Heart – “What About Love” 1987 Heart – “Alone” Loverboy – “Love Will Rise Again” The Smiths – “You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby” 1988 Midnight Oil – “Beds Are Burning” Roxette – “Listen To Your Heart” 1989 Alice Cooper – “Poison” Ani DiFranco – “Fire Door” Starship – “It’s Not Enough” 1990 Jeff Lynne – “What Would It Take” Yanni – “Almost A Whisper” 1992 Bad Religion – “Generator” Gin Blossoms – “Until I Fall Away” 1993 The Smashing Pumpkins – “Disarm” Therapy? – “Screamager” 1994 The Cranberries – “Zombie” The Offspring – “Gotta Get Away” The Offspring – “Self Esteem” 1995 Ani DiFranco – “Shy” Guster – “Window” Jewel – “Foolish Games” Joan Osborne – “One Of Us” 1996 Social Distortion – “Don’t Drag Me Down” The Waifs – “Brain Damage” 1997 Sarah McLachlan – “Building A Mystery” 1998 Eagle Eye Cherry – “Save Tonight” Jewel – “Hands” Madonna – “The Power of Good-Bye” Neutral Milk Hotel – “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea” 1999 Melissa Etheridge – “Angels Would Fall” The Offspring – “The Kids Aren’t Alright” The Red Hot Chili Peppers – “Otherside” Britney Spears – “Born To Make You Happy”
1967 The Doors: “Crystal Ship” Scott McKenzie: “San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair)”
1976 Boston – “Peace of Mind”
1977 Iggy Pop – “The Passenger”
1982 Toto – “Africa”
1985 Heart – “What About Love”
1987 Heart – “Alone” Loverboy – “Love Will Rise Again” The Smiths – “You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby”
1988 Midnight Oil – “Beds Are Burning” Roxette – “Listen To Your Heart”
1989 Alice Cooper – “Poison” Ani DiFranco – “Fire Door” Starship – “It’s Not Enough”
1990 Jeff Lynne – “What Would It Take” Yanni – “Almost A Whisper”
1992 Bad Religion – “Generator” Gin Blossoms – “Until I Fall Away”
1993 The Smashing Pumpkins – “Disarm” Therapy? – “Screamager”
1994 The Cranberries – “Zombie” The Offspring – “Gotta Get Away” The Offspring – “Self Esteem”
1995 Ani DiFranco – “Shy” Guster – “Window” Jewel – “Foolish Games” Joan Osborne – “One Of Us”
1996 Social Distortion – “Don’t Drag Me Down” The Waifs – “Brain Damage”
1997 Sarah McLachlan – “Building A Mystery”
1998 Eagle Eye Cherry – “Save Tonight” Jewel – “Hands” Madonna – “The Power of Good-Bye” Neutral Milk Hotel – “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea”
1999 Melissa Etheridge – “Angels Would Fall” The Offspring – “The Kids Aren’t Alright” The Red Hot Chili Peppers – “Otherside” Britney Spears – “Born To Make You Happy”
The whole list is here.
Here’s one more from the Red Hot Chili Peppers “Snow (Hey O)”
I struggle writing my book analyzing songs by Rufus Wainwright because I keep forgetting who I am writing the book for. I simplify the language so that regular music lovers can appreciate it, but then I address issues that are more appropriate to graduate music analysis seminars for composers or music theorists.
What is it that non-musicians want to know about music? I fear that these music lovers don’t know the questions to ask––so I need to ask interesting questions.
What do classical musicians want to get out of a book that analyzes songs by a pop songwriter? My guess is that we want to see that there are similar compositional methods a classical composer might use, showing up somewhere in the music. Good voice leading along with an organic use of a theme in a pop piece impresses a classical musician.
Who am I writing for? Both audiences.
Sigh.
[Early American doll, photo by RB]
Having finished my composition projects for the summer, I am finally returning to finishing my book on Rufus Wainwright. Having bought Robert O. Gderdingen’s terrific publication “Music in the Galant Style” I have found the book format that I’d like to have for my book: one with relatively large type, but most importantly, a hardback book that can stay open at the piano without breaking the binding. I will have as many musical examples as I am able. Each essay will have a lyric/melody/form analysis — see below.
I was shocked to see how much I’ve already finished. But in that I’m smarter now than when I originally wrote all this I’ll be revising and tweaking each essay.
My new working title is RUFUS WAINWRIGHT: ANALYTIC ESSAYS ON SELECTED EARLY SONGS. I am debating whether to keep or toss a bevy of miscellaneous chapters about Rufus, but otherwise I will focus on analytic observations and less on dish or biography.
In the illustration below, I include the lyrics, the melodic form with respect to repeated melodic figures (a, b1, c, etc.), and the formal structure (A, B, verse, chorus, etc.). Look up and down the left side of the diagram. You see abcd and their variants appearing from left to right. Each letter and its variant have their own column. What this allows the reader to see and understand is exactly when melodic figures are new or repeat. And what we see over and over in Rufus’s music is that they usually repeat, and there are limited melodic figures in each song. If you look at all the a1 figures and the lyrics to the right, you’ll know that they all have the same melody. Now look at a2; and then b; and then c; and finally d. I include a complete transcription at the end of most essays.
Statistically the “a” figures appear most frequently (12 times); the “b” figure 6 times; the c figures 8 times; and the “d” figure is rarest at 3 times. The “a1″ and “a2″ figures are the melodic hooks as well as the title of the song, “Pretty Things.” The “b” figure is a simple melodic turn that joins a1 and a2. The “c” figure is an oscillating 4th, and the “d” figure is a falling 4th that signals the end of the section.
As you look at this illustration, you see that the yellow and blue section together make up one big chunk. This chunk is repeated again, but then varied in its third appearance. Can you see what has changed?
An early Leonard Cohen song revisited in a live performance in San Sebastian in 1988. Cohen’s performance here hasn’t changed much from his original recording. A dark and galloping song. There is no dominant in the opening verse. His sexy flat-six chord has three notes of a French augmented-6th chord (F A B) with a ringing E before it finally resolves to the dominant; a distinctively Spanish sound. Chord progressions that feature a fall from flat-six to the dominant include IV6 to V, the three augmented-6th chords, McCartney’s parallel bVI-flat7 to V7 (”Honey Pie”), and now this chord, which could be described as a flat-six with a flat 5 and a major 7th. The F A moves down to E G#, while the B E are common tones between the two chords. I propose we call this a Spanish flat-VI chord. It is a common progression in Flamenco guitar literature. This harmonic progression is the most violent move in the song.
Last month I wrote about the very popular chord progression from the 50s: I vi IV V and played you a video of seven versions of that song. In case you didn’t read it:
Paul McCartney said that he and John Lennon always tried to make their songs “a little different” implying that they prefer to not repeat themselves. One of the most popular chord progressions of the time before the Beatles came on the scene was the I vi IV V chord progression (a common variant is I vi ii V). For you non-music theory nerds out there, think of the famous “Heart and Soul” song from the 50s.
Compare this looped chord progression to what Lennon and McCartney do here. Instead of the I vi IV V we get the almost-Russian variant: I vi iii V. And part of me wonders — the part of me that knows how to musically “push buttons” — is it that sexy and profound “iii” chord that is making those girls scream and cry? I think then answer is yes. But the fact that the Beatles were too poor to afford a third microphone for George, and so he always had to share with Paul. And that microphone sharing was just as sexy for those girls as the chords, and as the “oooooh”s and as those cute long-haired boys from England.
Here are the lyrics with the chords above them. I had never appreciated how sophisticated the progression is. And this EARLY Beatles. It was their interest in continuing to “make it different.”
Paul McCartney said that he and John Lennon always tried to make their songs “a little different” implying that they prefer to not repeat themselves.
One of the most popular chord progressions of the time (1950 – 1963) before the Beatles came on the scene was the I vi IV V chord progression and its common variant: I vi ii V. For you non-music-theory-nerds out there, think of the famous Hoagy Carmichael song “Heart and Soul.” What you will hear is this four chord pattern that goes through the whole damn song. And people like that. I am terrified to imagine that more people probably know this song than anything by Beethoven.
I guarantee you: if you play this at work, there will be a crowd gathering around your computer with people dancing in the aisles. Including your manager who will likely join in. What is it about a chord progression that makes us all get along? Well, this one did in the 50s. I’m sure my readers can tell me more songs that feature this progresion. Perhaps I’ll recommend some enterprising graduate student into taking it on as a doctoral thesis!
At any rate, all I can tell you is to EMBRACE YOUR INNER HEART AND SOUL and if this is the only song you can play at the piano, dammit, play it! You’ll feel better!
I found a perfect video to help demonstrate this: 7 versions of the song (I know, you’re going to curse me for the rest of the day. I could have picked “Sherie” or “Earth Angel” but I prefer this one). [The chord progression in C major would be: C am F G repeated over and over. Transpose it to whatever key fits your voice.]
HEART AND SOUL
Heart and soul, I fell in love with you Heart and soul, the way a fool would do, madly Because you held me tight And stole a kiss in the night Heart and soul, I begged to be adored Lost control, and tumbled overboard, gladly That magic night we kissed There in the moon mist Oh! but your lips were thrilling, much too thrilling Never before were mine so strangely willing But now I see, what one embrace can do Look at me, it’s got me loving you madly That little kiss you stole Held all my heart and soul
Heart and soul, I fell in love with you Heart and soul, the way a fool would do, madly Because you held me tight And stole a kiss in the night
Heart and soul, I begged to be adored Lost control, and tumbled overboard, gladly That magic night we kissed There in the moon mist
Oh! but your lips were thrilling, much too thrilling Never before were mine so strangely willing
But now I see, what one embrace can do Look at me, it’s got me loving you madly That little kiss you stole Held all my heart and soul
In a later post, I’ll comment on how the Beatles twist this harmonic tradition into a whole new realm with “She Loves You.”
Here is a lip sync performance of The Byrds singing their UFO hymn, “Mr Spaceman” on The Smothers Brothers show, and judging by the way the band looks, it’s 1967–the year of their NOTORIOUS BYRD BROTHERS where David Crosby had been kicked out of the band. (Funny. It is indeed David’s high harmonies on the recording you hear here.) A sultry Gene Clark, soon to put out his first album, is playing rhythm guitar. Chris Hillman, who had recently met the talented and naughty Gram Parsons, is on bass. Michael Clarke, cute and drunk, is on drums. Roger McGuinn is playing his signature 12-string Rickenbacker. I love the psychedelia of this early music video. (The sound doesn’t line up with the image here, and the print is very lo-res, so I’d love to know whether there is a hi-res master out there somewhere.)
Chord motion is interesting here. In the verses, the chords all ascend (G A D repeated 2 times each verse); and in the chorus they descend (D C Am G repeated 2 times each verse). McGuinn keeps a high G pedal on his 12-string giving the impression that a banjo is playing. I love the eccentric cadence of ( ii I supertonic, tonic) accompanying the end of the chorus “won’t you please take me along for a ride.”
One of my favorite songs to sing in the past few years has been “Complainte de la butte,” which I found on the Moulin Rouge! soundtrack, sung by Rufus Wainwright. I knew that he didn’t write it and read that it was chosen for the soundtrack because of its reference to the Moulin Rouge, central to the movie’s imagery. In my recent infatuation with the films of Jean Renoir, I rented his “French Cancan” (1954). In the overture I heard fragments of “Complainte…” and thought I was imagining things. But no, by the end of the film, the tune was one of the core mood carriers in the film, often associated with an organ grinder.
The accordion-like oom pah pah encapsulates the sound of Parisian street musicians of the time. Its’ verse has a bass line that falls and rises in steps until it finds the dominant and starts over. It is the dramatic climb to the subdominant minor in the bridge that gives the song is emotional depth. The constant falling and rising bass lines give the song an overall nostalgic feel. The melody of the verse is almost conversational, but the bridge opens up with the long melodic lines that we all love to sing.
Here is Marcel Mouloudji singing “Complainte…” in 1955, the cover that made this song popular in the 1950s. This is the complete song–Rufus omits the introduction in his performance.
Here is a fan video of Rufus Wainwright singing the song last summer (July 2006) at the Cactus Festival, Bruges Belgium.
En haut de la rue St-Vincent Un poète et une inconnue S’aimèrent l’espace d’un instant Mais il ne l’a jamais revue Cette chanson il composa Espérant que son inconnue Un matin d’printemps l’entendra Quelque part au coin d’une rue La lune trop blême Pose un diadème Sur tes cheveux roux La lune trop rousse De gloire éclabousse Ton jupon plein d’trous La lune trop pâle Caresse l’opale De tes yeux blasés Princesse de la rue Soit la bienvenue Dans mon cœur blessé Les escaliers de la butte sont durs aux miséreux Les ailes des moulins protègent les amoureux Petite mandigote Je sens ta menotte Qui cherche ma main Je sens ta poitrine Et ta taille fine J’oublie mon chagrin Je sens sur tes lèvres Une odeur de fièvre De gosse mal nourri Et sous ta caresse Je sens une ivresse Qui m’anéantit Les escaliers de la butte sont durs aux miséreux Les ailes des moulins protègent les amoureux Mais voilà qu’il flotte La lune se trotte La princesse aussi Sous le ciel sans lune Je pleure à la brune Mon rêve évanoui
En haut de la rue St-Vincent Un poète et une inconnue S’aimèrent l’espace d’un instant Mais il ne l’a jamais revue
Cette chanson il composa Espérant que son inconnue Un matin d’printemps l’entendra Quelque part au coin d’une rue
La lune trop blême Pose un diadème Sur tes cheveux roux La lune trop rousse De gloire éclabousse Ton jupon plein d’trous
La lune trop pâle Caresse l’opale De tes yeux blasés Princesse de la rue Soit la bienvenue Dans mon cœur blessé
Les escaliers de la butte sont durs aux miséreux Les ailes des moulins protègent les amoureux
Petite mandigote Je sens ta menotte Qui cherche ma main Je sens ta poitrine Et ta taille fine J’oublie mon chagrin
Je sens sur tes lèvres Une odeur de fièvre De gosse mal nourri Et sous ta caresse Je sens une ivresse Qui m’anéantit
Mais voilà qu’il flotte La lune se trotte La princesse aussi Sous le ciel sans lune Je pleure à la brune Mon rêve évanoui
English Translation: En haut de la rue St-Vincent Up on St-Vincent street un poète et une inconnue A poet and a stranger fell in love for a moment But he never saw her again he wrote this song Hoping that his mysterious woman On some spring morning may hear him on some street corner
The moon, all too fair, in your russet-red hair sets a sparkling crown The moon, all too red with glory, is spread on your poor, tattered gown The moon, all too white, caresses the light in your world-weary eyes Princess of the street, do allow me to greet you, my broken heart cries
The steps of Montmartre, all uphill, are hardest on the poor The sails of the mill, like wings, shelter all paramours
I feel, beggar-girl, your fetters, they curl as they seek out my wrists I feel your young breasts, your thin little waist I lose my regrets I taste on your mouth the feverish breath of a half-starving waif And with your caress I sense drunkenness erasing my life
And see how she skips, the moon how she drifts, The princess in tow Da da da da da da da da da da My reveries grow
The steps of Montmartre, all uphill, are hardest on the poor The sails of the mill, like wings, shelter all paramours ………… As a bonus, here is a guest appearance by Edith Piaf (in “French Cancan”) singing an excerpt from “Serenade du Pave.”
The Rolling Stone has a regular section in its online magazine dedicated to new artists called ARTIST TO WATCH. In it they have photo equations that best describe what to suspect if you don’t have the courage to hit the play button on the sample song, and that song in this blurb is called “The Architect“. The artist is Wedge (aka Tommy Wedge). Right at the top of the article, before any text has appeared, we see this photo equation:
So (Cocteau Twins – 80’s hair) + Sigur Ros = Wedge (pictured below).
My mind reels with the possibilities of this way of describing music. There could be an entire blog dedicated to just such an exploration. A late night music nerd party would kick into high gear with such improvisational jousting.Here is a cue from the film NIGHT LIFE that I had to fight the director for. He wanted a guitar and harmonica. I said I wanted Mozart meets Rossini in the morgue. So that equation would be: (Mozart + Rossini) – blues.
MP3: Play audio file (morgue.mp3)
Last night I met, face-to-face, the brilliant and multi-talented PK, of Loose Poodle fame. We overlapped one year at the New England Conservatory from 1976-1977 and thought we knew each other. We’ve corresponded via emaiil and blogs for the past year, and knew each other that way, but when we sat and looked at each other for a while we realized that we didn’t really know each other. No matter: we do now, and we have a huge amount to talk about. There wasn’t enough time to cram it all into the three hours we spent chatting, but we’ll pick up where we left off upon his return this summer.
The other day, PK asked three questions related to, or inspired by, my Joni Mitchell post. PK’s question #1: What IS the difference between “song writing” and “composing”? Are they the same act to be lumped together as one?
It seems that perhaps a music historian would be best equipped to answer this question tracing how instrumental music slowly veered away from vocal music. That was then, and this is now. Nowadays, it seems that a songwriter primarily writes word based music. I say “primarily” only because there are, at least, two time-honored methods of writing songs. The first method starts with the words, as the words convey what it is the songwriter wishes to say. The melody honors the words rhythm and feel, or not, but it is always written knowing that the music is to be sung with words. In the second method, the songwriter gets a tune in his or her mind and attaches words to that melody.
There are two other song-generating techniques worth mentioning: one is a looping chord progression (”Gloria,” “Just like me,” “Louie Louie” and you could include the 12-bar blues) where the songwriter melodically jams over the chord progression. These usually make for the worst vocal melodies, but provide a good harmonic background for (instrumental) melodic improvisation. The last technique is rare and has its roots in Ravel’s “Bolero” where a rhythmic figure or motive is set in motion and everything else jumps on top of it. Songwriters rarely attempt large-scale compositions. When they do, they are “concept albums” like “Sgt Pepper,” or rock operas like “Tommy,” which are in reality, a bunch of songs that sound cool together.
A person known as a “composer” is one who writes for both instrumental and vocal forces. Instrumental music has no foreground feature–like a text, or images, or underscore to a film, ballet, or play. Instrumental music relies on its own melodic, motivic, or hierarchical organization to indicate “what the music is all about.” Not all listeners have the ability to follow this not-about-anything-but-itself musical syntax. (I would imagine that most of the world prefers music with words to music without words.) Composers also write vocal music, but a much wider range of vocal music: songs (usually with piano or orchestra, not rock band), choral pieces, cantatas ( collections of arias, recitatives, and choral numbers), madrigals, opera, and sometimes musical theater.
So it would seem that the songwriter is more of a specialist in one compositional method. They are usually miniaturists as songs are usually 2 to 5 minutes long. Songs have a lot of repetition in them, helping the listener to remember its material even better. Classical instrumental music rarely has the kind of large-scale repetition common to popular songs. The texture of popular songs is usually well defined with little contrapuntal interference. Songs are usually “about” something, such as love, or no love, or springtime and so forth.
Your thoughts?
