Song: "Grow Old With Me"
Artist: The Postal Service
Album: Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign To Save Darfur
Written by: John Lennon
Year: 2007
Key: Em
Classification: SF2
Lyrical content: let's love each other for as long (or as little) as we have left; vow, interrupted
Where used: verse
Since I started maintaining a year-by-year list of the songs I've been able to identify as using the SFCP in some capacity, a few folks have noticed what seems to be an increase in its popularity in the last few years. I certainly hope so, as that was somewhat at the core of the article that started this mess at the end of 2008. If you're looking for a song emblematic of the sense that the SFCP has been on the rise, you could do a whole lot worse than the Postal Service's "Grow Old With Me."
The reason for that is simple: the song's a cover, and there was no SFCP in John Lennon's version. There didn't need to be. It was already almost unbearably heartbreaking in its original incarnation, which came out in 1984. It wasn't even that Lennon's murder three years earlier altered our perception of the song; outside of his inner circle, there wasn't one single person who wasn't painfully aware from the very first time they ever heard it that the sweet invitation and implicit promise that he was offering to his beloved could never be realized. When it was recorded, the song was a celebration; by the time it reached the public, it was a sad fantasy.
All of that happened without the SFCP. But that was during the early 1980s. By the time the Postal Service took their turn at it in 2007, it was in the thick of a veritable SFCP boom. Whether Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello had that in mind or not, the fact remains that their recording altered the verses to revolve around a SFCP absent in the original, and they did it at a time when the progression was beginning to pick up substantial steam. (If inserting a ubiquitous chord progression into a song written without it isn't reflective of prevailing musical trends, then we are working off of different definitions of "trend.") The resultant version was moody and ominous where Lennon's was warm and open. It's not clear that Lennon himself would have agreed with the darkness that the Postal Service gave to his song, but then, it had already been irrevocably, fundamentally altered before it ever saw the light of day.
Full song: The Postal Service, "Grow Old With Me"
Listen to the SFCP clip for this song
Showing posts with label male. Show all posts
Showing posts with label male. Show all posts
Friday, April 23, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Superdrag, "The Staggering Genius"
Song: "The Staggering Genius"
Artist: Superdrag
Album: Last Call For Vitriol
Written by: Don Coffey, Jr./John Davis/Sam Powers
Year: 2002
Key: Bm
Classification: SF1
Lyrical content: maybe your brilliance can keep you warm; there but for the grace of indie labels go I
Where used: verse
Superdrag was like a secret passed around among fans of power pop in the 1990s. Granted, pretty much every power pop act was like a secret passed around fans of power pop in the 1990s, but Superdrag was one of those bands that everyone at that particular lunch table seemed to know about. Thanks to its stance against corporate radio, folks had an opinion on "Sucked Out" whether they'd heard it or not. Unsurprisingly, that got Superdrag a burst of attention followed by a big old cold shoulder from the industry, which only seemed to fuel the band's contrariness on that particular front, and they ultimately fell victim to a fatal case of bitterness after raging against the machine a little too long. (It wasn't their sole lyrical concern by a long shot, but it was a continuing one, and it stopped looking good on them after a while.) The fact that Superdrag's fourth proper album was titled Last Call For Vitriol wasn't much of a surprise. Nor was its decision (later overturned) to call it quits not long after.
It's a nice little cautionary tale about getting so blinkered by the "industry" component of the music industry that it seeps into the songs themselves, with a spoonful of glorious tuneage helping the medicine go down a little easier. "The Staggering Genius" is a perfect example: its sarcastic bile would be a harsh pill to swallow if it weren't for the way the band is tight and economical, with the guitars slamming hard against the agitated drums as John Davis spits out poison at someone for whom he has not an ounce of respect. The song is all fierce conviction. Superdrag means business here.
What's great about "The Staggering Genius" is the way the band constantly toys with the SFCP. The opening/chorus riff isn't quite it, shifting from the I to the II instead of the V. The verse seems to hit the SFCP square, but it gets skewed in a couple directions at once: the rhythm is a bit trickier than usual, holding off on that final V for an extra breath and then throwing in a ♭VI in passing on the way back to the beginning. Unlike many, many SFCPs, the chords don't just coast from one to the other in a simple, uniform rhythm; instead, each stumbles with its own specific weight, transforming the whole into something compellingly lopsided. And the above ignores the fact that the B minor at the top of the progression is in fact no such thing, abandoned in favor of a streamlined B5 power chord that only heavily implies a minor tonality. In other words, there's a lot going on in a warhorse chord progression that's been used a hundred times without the slightest hint of creativity, and if only for that, Superdrag earns its self-righteousness for once.
Full song: Superdrag, "The Staggering Genius"
Listen to the SFCP clip for this song
Artist: Superdrag
Album: Last Call For Vitriol
Written by: Don Coffey, Jr./John Davis/Sam Powers
Year: 2002
Key: Bm
Classification: SF1
Lyrical content: maybe your brilliance can keep you warm; there but for the grace of indie labels go I
Where used: verse
Superdrag was like a secret passed around among fans of power pop in the 1990s. Granted, pretty much every power pop act was like a secret passed around fans of power pop in the 1990s, but Superdrag was one of those bands that everyone at that particular lunch table seemed to know about. Thanks to its stance against corporate radio, folks had an opinion on "Sucked Out" whether they'd heard it or not. Unsurprisingly, that got Superdrag a burst of attention followed by a big old cold shoulder from the industry, which only seemed to fuel the band's contrariness on that particular front, and they ultimately fell victim to a fatal case of bitterness after raging against the machine a little too long. (It wasn't their sole lyrical concern by a long shot, but it was a continuing one, and it stopped looking good on them after a while.) The fact that Superdrag's fourth proper album was titled Last Call For Vitriol wasn't much of a surprise. Nor was its decision (later overturned) to call it quits not long after.
It's a nice little cautionary tale about getting so blinkered by the "industry" component of the music industry that it seeps into the songs themselves, with a spoonful of glorious tuneage helping the medicine go down a little easier. "The Staggering Genius" is a perfect example: its sarcastic bile would be a harsh pill to swallow if it weren't for the way the band is tight and economical, with the guitars slamming hard against the agitated drums as John Davis spits out poison at someone for whom he has not an ounce of respect. The song is all fierce conviction. Superdrag means business here.
What's great about "The Staggering Genius" is the way the band constantly toys with the SFCP. The opening/chorus riff isn't quite it, shifting from the I to the II instead of the V. The verse seems to hit the SFCP square, but it gets skewed in a couple directions at once: the rhythm is a bit trickier than usual, holding off on that final V for an extra breath and then throwing in a ♭VI in passing on the way back to the beginning. Unlike many, many SFCPs, the chords don't just coast from one to the other in a simple, uniform rhythm; instead, each stumbles with its own specific weight, transforming the whole into something compellingly lopsided. And the above ignores the fact that the B minor at the top of the progression is in fact no such thing, abandoned in favor of a streamlined B5 power chord that only heavily implies a minor tonality. In other words, there's a lot going on in a warhorse chord progression that's been used a hundred times without the slightest hint of creativity, and if only for that, Superdrag earns its self-righteousness for once.
Full song: Superdrag, "The Staggering Genius"
Listen to the SFCP clip for this song
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Attack Attack!, "Stick Stickly"
Song: "Stick Stickly"
Artist: Attack Attack!
Album: Someday Came Suddenly
Written by: Austin Carlile/John Carlo/Johnny Frank/Caleb Shomo/Andrew Wetzel/Andrew Whiting
Year: 2008
Key: C#m
Classification: SF2
Lyrical content: peace and patience through God, without stinting on the volume or speed; John 3:16 (by way of Revelation 13:11)
Where used: outro
They tell me that this type of music is referred to as "crabcore." Spend mere seconds with the video above and you'll figure out why. I wasn't aware that such a thing existed until just recently. Now I share it with you because I must.
I can't tell you how delighted I am that this song uses the SFCP. Just really, really happy.
Full song: Attack Attack!, "Stick Stickly"
Listen to the SFCP clip for this song
Artist: Attack Attack!
Album: Someday Came Suddenly
Written by: Austin Carlile/John Carlo/Johnny Frank/Caleb Shomo/Andrew Wetzel/Andrew Whiting
Year: 2008
Key: C#m
Classification: SF2
Lyrical content: peace and patience through God, without stinting on the volume or speed; John 3:16 (by way of Revelation 13:11)
Where used: outro
They tell me that this type of music is referred to as "crabcore." Spend mere seconds with the video above and you'll figure out why. I wasn't aware that such a thing existed until just recently. Now I share it with you because I must.
I can't tell you how delighted I am that this song uses the SFCP. Just really, really happy.
Full song: Attack Attack!, "Stick Stickly"
Listen to the SFCP clip for this song
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
The Offspring, "The Kids Aren't Alright"
Song: "The Kids Aren't Alright"
Artist: The Offspring
Album: Americana
Written by: Dexter Holland
Year: 1998
Key: B♭m
Classification: SF2
Lyrical content: the streets claim another victim; pretty heavy (for a joke band)
Where used: verse, chorus
I was rolling my eyes at the Offspring by the time "The Kids Aren't Alright" came around. The first two singles from Americana had squandered just about any goodwill I'd developed towards the band in the five years since they had become a big deal. "Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)" wallowed in all of the dumbest clichés of casual racism while convincing itself that it was mocking them, and the appeal of "Why Don't You Get A Job?" seemed to rest entirely on the fact that the first line was "My friend's got a girlfriend and he hates that bitch." So feel free to toss some casual sexism onto that pile, too. Both songs relied on the audience's stupidity. As punishment, they ended up being the Offspring's first entries into the Billboard Hot 100.
"The Kids Aren't Alright" was the followup single, and its impact lay partly in the fact that you're waiting for a punchline that never comes. These aren't happy-go-lucky fuckups that Dexter Holland's singing about. They had the same optimistic hopes for the future as most, only things didn't quite turn out that way. At least two of the characters turn to drugs, but instead of offering blissful withdrawal from the frustrations of the world, they put both Brandon and Mark in holes from which they won't escape. (The fact that Mark's is metaphorical doesn't make it less of a waste.) Meanwhile, the person with the best prospects fails to avoid the same fate as everybody else -- "Jenny had a chance, well, she really did/Instead she dropped out and had a couple of kids" -- and is just as stuck.
To be honest, it's all kind of a bummer, like if you front-loaded every discussion of your high school graduating class with the four biggest burnouts while conveniently ignoring everybody who achieved satisfactory mediocrity and better. And it's not as if Holland points to any root cause for these kids' dead-end lives or offers any sort of solution; he might as well be frantic and wide-eyed, shouting "This street's evil, I tells ya! Eeeeeeeeevil!" But even if lines like "The cruelest dream [is] reality" are maybe a little more overwrought than they need to be, there's something bracing about its fierce earnestness coming so close on the heels of the puerility of the Offspring's two previous singles.
Too bad it turned out nobody cared. Despite the band's track record and the song's reliance on the otherwise-charmed SFCP, "The Kids Aren't Alright" didn't make it to the Hot 100. Maybe it was just too relentlessly breakneck for the SFCP to settle in and turn the song into a proper hit. (To be fair, it did just as well on the Modern Rock and Mainstream Rock charts as "Gotta Get Away," one of the Offspring's two previous SFCP singles.) Maybe it was too serious to hook the folks who listen to pop radio. Whatever the reason, the Offspring learned their lesson and returned to sophomoric jokes and the glamorization of the clueless with their next single, "Original Prankster." It hit #70 on the Hot 100.
Full song: The Offspring, "The Kids Aren't Alright"
Listen to the SFCP clip for this song
Artist: The Offspring
Album: Americana
Written by: Dexter Holland
Year: 1998
Key: B♭m
Classification: SF2
Lyrical content: the streets claim another victim; pretty heavy (for a joke band)
Where used: verse, chorus
I was rolling my eyes at the Offspring by the time "The Kids Aren't Alright" came around. The first two singles from Americana had squandered just about any goodwill I'd developed towards the band in the five years since they had become a big deal. "Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)" wallowed in all of the dumbest clichés of casual racism while convincing itself that it was mocking them, and the appeal of "Why Don't You Get A Job?" seemed to rest entirely on the fact that the first line was "My friend's got a girlfriend and he hates that bitch." So feel free to toss some casual sexism onto that pile, too. Both songs relied on the audience's stupidity. As punishment, they ended up being the Offspring's first entries into the Billboard Hot 100.
"The Kids Aren't Alright" was the followup single, and its impact lay partly in the fact that you're waiting for a punchline that never comes. These aren't happy-go-lucky fuckups that Dexter Holland's singing about. They had the same optimistic hopes for the future as most, only things didn't quite turn out that way. At least two of the characters turn to drugs, but instead of offering blissful withdrawal from the frustrations of the world, they put both Brandon and Mark in holes from which they won't escape. (The fact that Mark's is metaphorical doesn't make it less of a waste.) Meanwhile, the person with the best prospects fails to avoid the same fate as everybody else -- "Jenny had a chance, well, she really did/Instead she dropped out and had a couple of kids" -- and is just as stuck.
To be honest, it's all kind of a bummer, like if you front-loaded every discussion of your high school graduating class with the four biggest burnouts while conveniently ignoring everybody who achieved satisfactory mediocrity and better. And it's not as if Holland points to any root cause for these kids' dead-end lives or offers any sort of solution; he might as well be frantic and wide-eyed, shouting "This street's evil, I tells ya! Eeeeeeeeevil!" But even if lines like "The cruelest dream [is] reality" are maybe a little more overwrought than they need to be, there's something bracing about its fierce earnestness coming so close on the heels of the puerility of the Offspring's two previous singles.
Too bad it turned out nobody cared. Despite the band's track record and the song's reliance on the otherwise-charmed SFCP, "The Kids Aren't Alright" didn't make it to the Hot 100. Maybe it was just too relentlessly breakneck for the SFCP to settle in and turn the song into a proper hit. (To be fair, it did just as well on the Modern Rock and Mainstream Rock charts as "Gotta Get Away," one of the Offspring's two previous SFCP singles.) Maybe it was too serious to hook the folks who listen to pop radio. Whatever the reason, the Offspring learned their lesson and returned to sophomoric jokes and the glamorization of the clueless with their next single, "Original Prankster." It hit #70 on the Hot 100.
Full song: The Offspring, "The Kids Aren't Alright"
Listen to the SFCP clip for this song
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Boston, "Peace Of Mind"
Song: "Peace Of Mind"
Artist: Boston
Album: Boston
Written by: Tom Scholz
Year: 1976
Key: C#m
Classification: SF1
Lyrical content: work sorta sucks; the '60s aren't dead, they just got plugged into a Rockman
Where used: chorus
Boston is a strange case, as far as classic rock albums go. It's an arena-rock record that's largely the product of one man alone in a studio, a peculiar contradiction except to those who would argue that both sides of that particular coin tend towards equally clinical coldness. I'm one of those who doesn't see that as a problem. Yes, Tom Scholz spent more time and energy on surface sheen than anybody in music history not named Corgan, and Boston's typically held up as the zenith of corporate rock, something akin to the final straw before punk had to come in to make things right. Maybe that's true. After all, one of the songs was a rose-tinted remembrance of the nonexistent woodshedding days of the band, which was itself still nonexistent at the time the song was recorded.
But it was indeed the zenith, a delirious triumph of style over substance so complete that substance became irrelevant, which is precisely why people still decry it to this day. With the exception of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, I can't think of a single other album that has managed to put every single one of its songs into at least moderate rotation on classic rock radio. (Even the otherwise dominant Led Zeppelin IV has "Four Sticks" to screw things up in that regard, since it takes an uncharacteristically bold program director -- and I'm not saying it hasn't happened on occasion -- to decide, "I think it's time for a relentlessly circular art-blues dirge in 5/8 time, followed by 'The Long Run.'" Which is ironic, since it was one of the few Zeppelin tunes to actually make it onto either side of a single.)
For "Peace Of Mind," Scholz seems to rewrite the lyrics to Bachman-Turner Overdrive's "Takin' Care Of Business" in a slightly less ham-handed fashion and glue them to a gloss on the Doobie Brothers' "China Grove." (Maybe less a gloss than a blinding, super-industrial gleam.) He also managed to grab hold of the SFCP in one of its earliest appearances, thus becoming one of the few to be able to legitimately claim that he wasn't simply pulling it out of a toolbox of standard chord progressions to serve as a pre-established shorthand for the mood he wanted to create. Scholz clearly recognized that there was something special about the SFCP, though: he not only based his chorus around it, he put the thing right up front (acoustically, even, which would be notable if that weren't simply a part of the trusty formula he'd return to time and again) to ensure that it grabbed the listener right away. Scholz not only knew that the SFCP was its own hook, he knew it before just about everybody else.
Full song: Boston, "Peace Of Mind"
Listen to the SFCP clip for this song
Artist: Boston
Album: Boston
Written by: Tom Scholz
Year: 1976
Key: C#m
Classification: SF1
Lyrical content: work sorta sucks; the '60s aren't dead, they just got plugged into a Rockman
Where used: chorus
Boston is a strange case, as far as classic rock albums go. It's an arena-rock record that's largely the product of one man alone in a studio, a peculiar contradiction except to those who would argue that both sides of that particular coin tend towards equally clinical coldness. I'm one of those who doesn't see that as a problem. Yes, Tom Scholz spent more time and energy on surface sheen than anybody in music history not named Corgan, and Boston's typically held up as the zenith of corporate rock, something akin to the final straw before punk had to come in to make things right. Maybe that's true. After all, one of the songs was a rose-tinted remembrance of the nonexistent woodshedding days of the band, which was itself still nonexistent at the time the song was recorded.
But it was indeed the zenith, a delirious triumph of style over substance so complete that substance became irrelevant, which is precisely why people still decry it to this day. With the exception of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, I can't think of a single other album that has managed to put every single one of its songs into at least moderate rotation on classic rock radio. (Even the otherwise dominant Led Zeppelin IV has "Four Sticks" to screw things up in that regard, since it takes an uncharacteristically bold program director -- and I'm not saying it hasn't happened on occasion -- to decide, "I think it's time for a relentlessly circular art-blues dirge in 5/8 time, followed by 'The Long Run.'" Which is ironic, since it was one of the few Zeppelin tunes to actually make it onto either side of a single.)
For "Peace Of Mind," Scholz seems to rewrite the lyrics to Bachman-Turner Overdrive's "Takin' Care Of Business" in a slightly less ham-handed fashion and glue them to a gloss on the Doobie Brothers' "China Grove." (Maybe less a gloss than a blinding, super-industrial gleam.) He also managed to grab hold of the SFCP in one of its earliest appearances, thus becoming one of the few to be able to legitimately claim that he wasn't simply pulling it out of a toolbox of standard chord progressions to serve as a pre-established shorthand for the mood he wanted to create. Scholz clearly recognized that there was something special about the SFCP, though: he not only based his chorus around it, he put the thing right up front (acoustically, even, which would be notable if that weren't simply a part of the trusty formula he'd return to time and again) to ensure that it grabbed the listener right away. Scholz not only knew that the SFCP was its own hook, he knew it before just about everybody else.
Full song: Boston, "Peace Of Mind"
Listen to the SFCP clip for this song
Friday, September 25, 2009
Neutral Milk Hotel, "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea"
Song: "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea"
Artist: Neutral Milk Hotel
Album: In The Aeroplane Over The Sea
Written by: Jeff Mangum
Year: 1998
Key: Em
Classification: SF2
Lyrical content: the ghost beckons; the heart yearns for that which it does not know
Where used: bridge
I've spent much of the past few weeks immersed in Our Noise: The Story Of Merge Records, commemorating the 20th anniversary year of the label, so the time seems exactly right to talk about Neutral Milk Hotel. And yet. There's been so much said about In The Aeroplane Over The Sea over the years that I almost don't know what else I can add. I can, however, point you to Glenn McDonald's heart-stoppingly great review (one of my two favorite record reviews of all time) and Taylor Clark's excellent Slate piece tracking the whereabouts of the man who pulled a perfect album out of his head and decided, well, maybe that's enough of that. So let me just say this: it seems more obvious as the years go by that this fever dream of a record is one of the greatest albums ever recorded. Less obviously, it should also be mentioned that it is a fantastic album to run to.
That said, I've always had a hard time excerpting from it. So many songs bleed into one another that trying to put something from it on a mixtape, for instance, requires that you either cut the music flat dead at the end of the track or include more than one song. And the problem with that is that you end up with a run of three or four songs in a row, in which case, why aren't you just burning the whole album? It's not just the lack of clean gaps between tracks, though. In The Aeroplane Over The Sea is an album that practically demands to be listened to in a single sitting. The second time I put it on, I had intended (as is my habit) to listen to two, maybe three songs, just to get a sense of them individually outside the flow of the album; the next thing I knew, Jeff Mangum was putting down his guitar and exiting the studio. I once saw someone posit that the album emitted, and I quote, "hypno-rays" while it played. It's not the least plausible theory I've heard.
One of the only songs that's even remotely self-contained is the title track, where we first meet the ghost that haunts Mangum over the course of the album. It's a testament to how subtly and cannily he uses the SFCP that despite the fact that I got In The Aeroplane Over The Sea not long after I first identified the SFCP and listened to it Lord knows how many times in the ten years since, it still took one of the commenters to this blog for me to actually notice that it was sitting right there in the bridge. (Thanks, Benjamin.) I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, since Mangum's accomplishment with In The Aeroplane Over The Sea has nothing to do with inventing radically new chord progressions and everything to do with what he did with them. (It's worth noting right here that the verse progression is also a mainstay: the archetypal doo-wop I-vi-IV-V, albeit used quite differently.) In a way, that's one of the album's strengths: the way Mangum takes a fistful of basic chords and transforms them in a kind of alchemy into a musical narrative that I still haven't fully gotten to the bottom of more than a decade on.
Full song: Neutral Milk Hotel, "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea"
Listen to the SFCP clip for this song
Artist: Neutral Milk Hotel
Album: In The Aeroplane Over The Sea
Written by: Jeff Mangum
Year: 1998
Key: Em
Classification: SF2
Lyrical content: the ghost beckons; the heart yearns for that which it does not know
Where used: bridge
I've spent much of the past few weeks immersed in Our Noise: The Story Of Merge Records, commemorating the 20th anniversary year of the label, so the time seems exactly right to talk about Neutral Milk Hotel. And yet. There's been so much said about In The Aeroplane Over The Sea over the years that I almost don't know what else I can add. I can, however, point you to Glenn McDonald's heart-stoppingly great review (one of my two favorite record reviews of all time) and Taylor Clark's excellent Slate piece tracking the whereabouts of the man who pulled a perfect album out of his head and decided, well, maybe that's enough of that. So let me just say this: it seems more obvious as the years go by that this fever dream of a record is one of the greatest albums ever recorded. Less obviously, it should also be mentioned that it is a fantastic album to run to.
That said, I've always had a hard time excerpting from it. So many songs bleed into one another that trying to put something from it on a mixtape, for instance, requires that you either cut the music flat dead at the end of the track or include more than one song. And the problem with that is that you end up with a run of three or four songs in a row, in which case, why aren't you just burning the whole album? It's not just the lack of clean gaps between tracks, though. In The Aeroplane Over The Sea is an album that practically demands to be listened to in a single sitting. The second time I put it on, I had intended (as is my habit) to listen to two, maybe three songs, just to get a sense of them individually outside the flow of the album; the next thing I knew, Jeff Mangum was putting down his guitar and exiting the studio. I once saw someone posit that the album emitted, and I quote, "hypno-rays" while it played. It's not the least plausible theory I've heard.
One of the only songs that's even remotely self-contained is the title track, where we first meet the ghost that haunts Mangum over the course of the album. It's a testament to how subtly and cannily he uses the SFCP that despite the fact that I got In The Aeroplane Over The Sea not long after I first identified the SFCP and listened to it Lord knows how many times in the ten years since, it still took one of the commenters to this blog for me to actually notice that it was sitting right there in the bridge. (Thanks, Benjamin.) I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, since Mangum's accomplishment with In The Aeroplane Over The Sea has nothing to do with inventing radically new chord progressions and everything to do with what he did with them. (It's worth noting right here that the verse progression is also a mainstay: the archetypal doo-wop I-vi-IV-V, albeit used quite differently.) In a way, that's one of the album's strengths: the way Mangum takes a fistful of basic chords and transforms them in a kind of alchemy into a musical narrative that I still haven't fully gotten to the bottom of more than a decade on.
Full song: Neutral Milk Hotel, "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea"
Listen to the SFCP clip for this song
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Toto, "Africa"
Song: "Africa"
Artist: Toto
Album: Toto IV
Written by: David Paich/Jeff Porcaro
Year: 1982
Key: F#m
Classification: SF1
Lyrical content: tonight she comes; I've been to paradise, but I've never been to Tanzania
Where used: chorus
"Africa" is an excellent example of a song that's so catchy, so fundamentally right musically, that nobody ever stops to consider how little sense it makes. By the band's admission, the lyrics are essentially the result of creating a metaphor for nervous romantic anticipation out of half-remembered guesses about a place they knew little about. The video is hilarious, not because of the fact that musicians with faces for studio work somehow became marquee names in their own right (hey, it was early 1983, approximately one month before Duran Duran showed up to end the careers of guys who insisted on looking like this) but because they're working overtime to accost you with such quote-unquote exotic trappings as tribal drums, masks and one geographically confused gong, hoping that it'll distract you from the fact that the song is so middle-of-the-road that you can practically see the double yellow line underneath it.
Then again, ubiquity can be a powerful thing: after hearing this enough times, with the word "Africa" being thrown at you at key moments, that marimba part (or keyboard approximation of same) starts sounding like the Serengeti and the flute/kalimba solo (this was the early 1980s, so again: keyboard) invokes the technicolor safari utopia of The Lion King a dozen years before the movie existed. These things aren't the products of the band successfully finding a sound to suit its nominal topic or coopting the music of the continent in question for their own purposes, though Lord knows they thought that that's what they were doing; they're the result of Toto pushing through their own agenda -- this is what Africa sounds like, as a concept -- through sheer persistence. With the help of the army of DJs who nudged it to the top of the charts, of course.
The SFCP component of "Africa" is so close to the archetypal usage (used in the chorus for bittersweet anthemic uplift, and it's even in F#m, which for no particular reason I tend to treat as the default SFCP key) that it's a wonder that it took me as long as I did to realize that it incorporated the progression. There it is, though, elevating the song at precisely the right moment, providing both surprise (the verse is in the key of B, so that shift is a neat little jolt right there) and comfort all at once. Part of the power of the four specific chords that make up the SFCP can be heard in the first part of the chorus, where (if the video's an accurate portrayal of everybody's contributions to the song) Bobby Kimball sings only two notes: a high A that's repeated as the chords move through F#m, D and A, followed by a single G# as the band moves to the E chord. That's a total range of a half-step, and it's probably the simplest, most efficient melody that anyone could possibly sing over the SFCP.
Full song: Toto, "Africa"
Listen to the SFCP clip for this song
Artist: Toto
Album: Toto IV
Written by: David Paich/Jeff Porcaro
Year: 1982
Key: F#m
Classification: SF1
Lyrical content: tonight she comes; I've been to paradise, but I've never been to Tanzania
Where used: chorus
"Africa" is an excellent example of a song that's so catchy, so fundamentally right musically, that nobody ever stops to consider how little sense it makes. By the band's admission, the lyrics are essentially the result of creating a metaphor for nervous romantic anticipation out of half-remembered guesses about a place they knew little about. The video is hilarious, not because of the fact that musicians with faces for studio work somehow became marquee names in their own right (hey, it was early 1983, approximately one month before Duran Duran showed up to end the careers of guys who insisted on looking like this) but because they're working overtime to accost you with such quote-unquote exotic trappings as tribal drums, masks and one geographically confused gong, hoping that it'll distract you from the fact that the song is so middle-of-the-road that you can practically see the double yellow line underneath it.
Then again, ubiquity can be a powerful thing: after hearing this enough times, with the word "Africa" being thrown at you at key moments, that marimba part (or keyboard approximation of same) starts sounding like the Serengeti and the flute/kalimba solo (this was the early 1980s, so again: keyboard) invokes the technicolor safari utopia of The Lion King a dozen years before the movie existed. These things aren't the products of the band successfully finding a sound to suit its nominal topic or coopting the music of the continent in question for their own purposes, though Lord knows they thought that that's what they were doing; they're the result of Toto pushing through their own agenda -- this is what Africa sounds like, as a concept -- through sheer persistence. With the help of the army of DJs who nudged it to the top of the charts, of course.
The SFCP component of "Africa" is so close to the archetypal usage (used in the chorus for bittersweet anthemic uplift, and it's even in F#m, which for no particular reason I tend to treat as the default SFCP key) that it's a wonder that it took me as long as I did to realize that it incorporated the progression. There it is, though, elevating the song at precisely the right moment, providing both surprise (the verse is in the key of B, so that shift is a neat little jolt right there) and comfort all at once. Part of the power of the four specific chords that make up the SFCP can be heard in the first part of the chorus, where (if the video's an accurate portrayal of everybody's contributions to the song) Bobby Kimball sings only two notes: a high A that's repeated as the chords move through F#m, D and A, followed by a single G# as the band moves to the E chord. That's a total range of a half-step, and it's probably the simplest, most efficient melody that anyone could possibly sing over the SFCP.
Full song: Toto, "Africa"
Listen to the SFCP clip for this song
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Eagle Eye Cherry, "Save Tonight"
Song: "Save Tonight"
Artist: Eagle Eye Cherry
Album: Desireless
Written by: Eagle Eye Cherry
Year: 1998
Key: Am
Classification: SF1
Lyrical content: "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" (opposite perspective); chart prediction as romantic metaphor
Where used: verse, chorus
One of the problems with designating something the "Sensitive Female Chord Progression" (one of many, many problems) lies in what to do when you inevitably identify your first example of someone with a Y chromosome using it. That honor went to Eagle Eye Cherry, who in 1998 managed to perfectly copy his sister Neneh's career by having one giant hit and then dropping off the face of the earth (or the charts, which might as well be the same thing in this business). So what'd I do in the face of a palpably male performer using a chord progression that I'd previously identified only with women? I shrugged and moved on.
Maybe if I'd picked up on an SFCP song by another male artist first — the Offspring, for instance — I'd've responded differently. But "Save Tonight" makes the transition to recognizing that dudes use the progression as well a reasonably smooth one. Cherry's playing the sensitive-boyfriend card here, begging for a romantic evening before he vanishes the next day (which makes the lyric an eerily accurate analogue to how the song would fare in the real world). There's none of the insistent urging that would suggest that the woman in question is being persuaded to succumb to Cherry's charms despite her better judgement. Whatever's going to happen after the wine has been poured has happened before, and it'll probably happen again once he returns, and he will return.
Truth be told, the whole thing's a bit boring. Cherry picks up on the SFCP right out of the gate and never once drops it. Even "One Of Us" and "Building A Mystery" throw in brief but crucial respites from the relentlessness of cycling through the same four chords ad infinitum. Cherry doesn't bother, and once the full band comes in, you've pretty much heard everything the song has to offer musically. Sure, the chorus features a slightly different melody and adds a vaguely perceptible electric guitar, and a slide guitar plays just enough notes to qualify as a solo, but "Save Tonight" essentially just goes on and on without changing in any substantial way. There's no tension anywhere in the song as a result, and it's not a particularly good sign when you keep looking at your watch as your guy's telling you to make every moment count.
Full song: Eagle Eye Cherry, "Save Tonight"
Listen to the SFCP clip for this song
Artist: Eagle Eye Cherry
Album: Desireless
Written by: Eagle Eye Cherry
Year: 1998
Key: Am
Classification: SF1
Lyrical content: "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" (opposite perspective); chart prediction as romantic metaphor
Where used: verse, chorus
One of the problems with designating something the "Sensitive Female Chord Progression" (one of many, many problems) lies in what to do when you inevitably identify your first example of someone with a Y chromosome using it. That honor went to Eagle Eye Cherry, who in 1998 managed to perfectly copy his sister Neneh's career by having one giant hit and then dropping off the face of the earth (or the charts, which might as well be the same thing in this business). So what'd I do in the face of a palpably male performer using a chord progression that I'd previously identified only with women? I shrugged and moved on.
Maybe if I'd picked up on an SFCP song by another male artist first — the Offspring, for instance — I'd've responded differently. But "Save Tonight" makes the transition to recognizing that dudes use the progression as well a reasonably smooth one. Cherry's playing the sensitive-boyfriend card here, begging for a romantic evening before he vanishes the next day (which makes the lyric an eerily accurate analogue to how the song would fare in the real world). There's none of the insistent urging that would suggest that the woman in question is being persuaded to succumb to Cherry's charms despite her better judgement. Whatever's going to happen after the wine has been poured has happened before, and it'll probably happen again once he returns, and he will return.
Truth be told, the whole thing's a bit boring. Cherry picks up on the SFCP right out of the gate and never once drops it. Even "One Of Us" and "Building A Mystery" throw in brief but crucial respites from the relentlessness of cycling through the same four chords ad infinitum. Cherry doesn't bother, and once the full band comes in, you've pretty much heard everything the song has to offer musically. Sure, the chorus features a slightly different melody and adds a vaguely perceptible electric guitar, and a slide guitar plays just enough notes to qualify as a solo, but "Save Tonight" essentially just goes on and on without changing in any substantial way. There's no tension anywhere in the song as a result, and it's not a particularly good sign when you keep looking at your watch as your guy's telling you to make every moment count.
Full song: Eagle Eye Cherry, "Save Tonight"
Listen to the SFCP clip for this song
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
