Song #314 of 9999 Title: Speaking With the Angel Artist: Ron Sexsmith Year: 1995 Album: Ron Sexsmith
I'm getting started late tonight so I'm going to make this brief and just let you listen to the best songwriter you've never heard singing a song from the best album you don't own. (If you're one of the enlightened few, good for you—spread the word!) Canadian Ron Sexsmith is a songwriter's songwriter. Who loves him? Elvis Costello, Paul McCartney, Nick Lowe, Ray Davies, Leonard Cohen, Elton John—just those guys. His songs have been remade by a number of artists, most successfully Rod Stewart ("Secret Heart"), k.d. lang ("Fallen") and Emmylou Harris ("Hard Bargain"). Yet, Sexsmith himself has achieved only modest success despite sustained accolades from peers and critics. "Speaking With the Angel" is from Sexsmith's 1995 debut, which is filled with amazing songs in spare settings. It was written for his son when he was just three months old and is the song that first brought him national attention. It's one of the most beautiful and moving songs I've ever heard. I hope you enjoy it!
Song #313 of 9999 Title: Your Latest Trick Artist: Dire Straits Year: 1985 Album: Brothers in Arms
Brothers in Arms, Dire Straits' most successful album, has a bit of a split personality. The songs that rocketed the record to #1 in virtually every civilized country (and Australia ;) are upbeat video-friendly concoctions guaranteed to send everyone to the dance floor at your sister's wedding ("Money for Nothing," "Walk of Life"). But if you keep working your way through the CD (and this was one of the first records to really be designed for the single-sided play of a CD, having been recorded and mastered entirely on digital equipment—DDD!), you find a melancholic mood ring of tunes that ranges from lullaby ("Why Worry") to lamentation ("Brothers in Arms"). The songs are looooong, meant to be digested, not swallowed whole. Two-thirds of them crack the five-minute mark and four are seven minutes or longer, allowing plenty of room for Mark Knopler's unique finger-picked electric lead guitar. "Your Latest Trick" falls mostly into the latter category of songs but had enough commercial appeal to hit the singles charts in a few of the countries I mentioned (not released in the US, surprisingly). To me, the song sounds like a sequel to "Sultans of Swing" with Knopfler and Co. finding themselves back in a late-night bar playing jazz, but this time it's of the smooth Latin persuasion and Knopfler has handed the lead to saxophonist Michael Brecker. If you've heard this song a lot, that sax lick may be sounding a bit stale, but it you haven't, it's pretty crisp. And even though there are a lot of things occurring throughout the course of the song (including some really subtle distorted guitar workand fairly complex chord voicings in the electric piano) the arrangement sounds pretty spare, allowing Knopfler's understated delivery to quietly reflect the city-at-sleep setting of the lyric. See you tomorrow in 1995.
Song #312 of 9999 Title: Take on Me Artist: A-ha Year: 1985 Album: Hunting High and Low
A few days ago, I talked about the unusual descending 7th interval in the synth line of Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill." A lot of music theory teachers use songs like this as so-called "cue tunes" for training students to recognize and sing intervals. (As an aside, I'm not one of them. To me, there's a big difference between sol-mi as a major sixth and re-ti as a major sixth. But I digress.) Almost universally, the cue tune for an ascending major 7th is "Bali Ha'i" from South Pacific, which opens with an octave leap and then a descent to the major 7th. It's not a great example, but there just weren't any better options. Until now!
"Take on Me," from the Norwegian band A-ha has so many things going for it: the infectious synth line that proceeds the first verse, the still-noteworthy music video, and the bubbly rhythmic jets that propel the song forward. But of course, it's the soaring chorus that steals the show with lead singer Morten Harket impressively spanning two-and-a-half octaves within eight bars and unknowingly ruining the evenings of future karaoke bar patrons everywhere. While I've always appreciated the pure glee associated with singing this chorus, I never noticed how valuable it is as an interval source. Right off the bat, Harket gives us an ascending major 7th with the first two words of the chorus (Take[A2] on [G#3]). In the second line, he begins with a perfect 5th, but I suggest listening to "me" to get the major 6th (Take[A3] me on [F#4]). In the third line, he provides an ascending minor 6th (I'll[C#4] be gone[A4])! And then for good measure, the last two words of the chorus (a[A4] daaaaaaaaaaay [E5]) demonstrate a perfect fifth. These are some of the hardest intervals to learn and here they are all in one place! Takk Morten Harket!!
Song #311 of 9999 Title: Life in a Northern Town Artist: The Dream Academy Year: 1985 Album: The Dream Academy
Have to work fast and keep it short tonight so not much on detail or analysis. Just a song. That's it. OKAY????? One thing I like about the Second British Invasion of the 1980s is that there weren't really any supremely dominant bands like those of the 1960s. No-one was monopolizing the scene like The Beatles or The Rolling Stones. Yes, there was Duran Duran, Eurhythmics, Culture Club and Wham!, but none were so big that they completely overshadowed Big Country, Modern English, A Flock of Seagulls and Echo and the Bunnymen. As such, there are a lot of pop gems from the early 80s released by so-called "one-hit wonders" that are worth revisiting. One of my favorites is "Life in a Northern Town" by The Dream Academy. I can't really say why this song resonated with me so much in 1985 since I had absolutely no point of reference for the "northern town" described in the song. But the cool sounds of the cello, English horn and kettledrums give the song a wintry aura that made me feel as though it could have been written for my northern town. In fact, the cities featured in both versions of the video (West Yorkshire and Newcastle-upon-Tyne) look as dreary and depressing as my town!
Song #310 of 9999 Title: Stay Up Late Artist: Talking Heads Year: 1985 Album: Little Creatures
Little Creatures brought Talking Heads their greatest level of success, spawning two hit singles in "And She Was" and "Road to Nowhere." The record is decidedly simpler than their previous records, drawing more on country and gospel than on the art rock of their earlier records. But David Byrne's quirkiness and unique sense of humor remained intact and are gloriously on display in my favorite track from the record, "Stay Up Late." Told from the perspective of an older sibling, the song unfolds in short phrases that form a call and response with the descending piano accompaniment. It's hard to tell if the older (but presumably still very young) child is acting maliciously or playfully when he suggests waking the baby from his sleep but it is clear he/she is intrigued by this new "plaything" provided by his mother. The lyric is masterfully efficient, as Byrne uses amazingly few words to convey the broad range of feelings (fascination, jealousy, joy, etc.) a child must feel when introduced to a new younger brother. Musically, the song teeters between major and minor. Every chord in the verse is major, but the progression descends like a minor scale from tonic to dominant (A-G-F-E). The chorus does the same, omitting the F, and emphasizing the minor 3rd between the G and E. During the verse, Byrne sings a melody that seems to deliberately muddy the tonal waters, often landing in the cracks between a minor and major third. For a very clear picture of this, listen to the harmony vocal at 1:37, which is kinda minor, kinda major. During the "all night long" section, the song finally gives in as the tonic chord shifts to A minor, where the song eventually ends.
Title: Russians Title: I Believe in Father Christmas
Artist: Sting Artist: Emerson, Lake and Palmer
Year: 1985 Year: 1975 Album: The Dream of the Blue Turtles Album: N/A - single release only
Drat drat drat! I hate when I miss an opportunity with my blog. A few weeks ago, I posted two songs by Green Day recorded ten years apart and called it "Transition Monday." I could have done the same thing with the two songs I'm featuring today but I didn't think of it. So okay, I could just feature them together on TWOsday, right? But that was yesterday and I used two Marillion songs from the same album—WEAK. *sigh* So okay, what's the connection between "Russians" and "I Believe in Father Christmas"? It's Sergei Prokofiev of course! Melodies quoted from the Russian composer's 1934 film score for the Soviet film Lieutenant Kijé show up in both of these hits. For Sting's lament on the Cold War, he borrows a solemn melody from the second movement of the five-movement concert suite called "Romance." Prokofiev wrote the melody while living in Paris but finding himself longing for his homeland. (He would move back to Russia in 1936.) Unlike the angular melodies and shifting tonality of his early works, the melodies in Kijé are lyrical and contained. Sting uses the melody as a bit of propaganda, tugging at the listener's heartstrings while having just sung the line "I hope the Russians love their children too." In 1985, this seemed like a bold statement; now, it seems kind of cold-hearted and crass. It's one thing when your synth patches sound dated, but what happens when your message follows suit? Perhaps if the USA and its allies had helped the countries of the Soviet Union land on their feet instead of letting them fall into poverty, this song could have a more positive legacy. Greg Lake's "I Believe in Father Christmas," recorded several times over the years as a solo work and with his bandmates Keith Emerson and Carl Palmer, utilizes the primary melody from movement four of Lt. Kijé, the "Troika." A troika is a sleigh pulled by three horses or a Russian dance involving a man and two women who mimic the movements of horses pulling a sleigh. The melody has become strongly associated with Christmas and Lake uses it to good effect in his song, also a lament, about the commercialization of Christmas. Despite its triumphant ending and Lake's wish for all to have a Happy Christmas, he ends the song by grumping "the Christmas you get you deserve." Heh.
One of the biggest hits during 1985 was "Sussudio" by Phil Collins, who was apparently so popular he didn't even have to use actual words anymore to sell records. It's a terrible terrible song and also a number one hit! For many of us, Phil Collins' success as a solo artist represented the terminal end of Genesis (who were already beginning to sound like a Phil Collins solo project) and we naturally went looking for a replacement. We found one in Marillion. Marillion achieved only mild success in the United States despite charting several hit singles in the UK. "Kayleigh," marked by a syncopated minor key progression finger-picked on an electric guitar and painfully earnest lyrics, is reputed to have spawned a temporary influx of girls named Kayleigh in the UK; while "Lavender" borrows a 17th-century English folk song to evoke childhood memories (not mine, but someone's somewhere!). Both songs are wrought with emotion and the song arrangements are designed to tug on every heartstring you're willing to provide. Listening to these two tracks now (contiguous on the LP, but in separate videos here), it's hard for me to fathom why I liked them so much almost 30 years ago, but for whatever reason, they connected on a visceral level with this sensitive teenage boy. *shrug*
