This is probably why some pairs don’t stay together (including L/M?) – they feel choked by their role; it doesn’t really fit them… or maybe in some cases it really does fit them, but they just don’t see it that way.

John Lennon has certainly received his due over the last 50 years, posthumously even more so. And, as acclaimed as he is, Paul McCartney has at times been in Lennon’s artistic shadow; often quite unfairly. Lennon is seen as the ‘rebel’, Paul as the more conventional, ‘establishment’ type. Although there’s truth to this, it has to do with their images as much as their songwriting.

When it comes to writing melodies, however, McCartney is generally considered the genius of the two.

There’s some justification for this. McCartney’s tunes are in the tradition of the great melodists – rangy, a lot of step motion interspersed by thrilling leaps, strong rhythmic momentum… Think of his antecedents – Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, many of the great popular pre-rock and roll songwriters who focused on melody. Or think of Lennon/McCartney’s contemporary, Brian Wilson (probably the greatest pure melody writer of that generation).

Then think of McCartney’s Yesterday, Michelle, When I’m 64, Fixing A Hole, For No One, Maybe I’m Amazed… you could make a long list.

Lennon’s songs and melodies are a little gnarlier (no surprise there) but at times at least as rangy, melodic, and satisfying.

One of the reasons it’s easy to miss this is that Lennon often wrote melodies, or parts of melodies, that depended on a single note, or one note with slight variations and changing harmonies underneath – listen to the Chorus of All You Need Is Love, the Verse of Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, the first lines of the Verses of I’m Only Sleeping, the Verse of Julia… This was a trademark of his songwriting.

Also, some of John’s most famous songs – Imagine, Give Peace A Chance, Woman, etc. – are quite simple melodically.

I’m not going to do what I described in the first paragraph and take anything away from McCartney – whose greatness as a songwriter and musician speaks for itself – but at his best Lennon was right up there with anyone in terms of writing consistently surprising, even soaring (but always singable) melodies when he chose to.  Listen to (or just hum to yourself) If I Fell, Girl, In My Life, It’s Only Love, Across The Universe…  Consider how lively, interesting, and unusual are the melodies of She Said She Said,  Tomorrow Never Knows, and Strawberry Fields Forever.

I think Lennon thought of himself as more of a rocker and less, as McCartney did, in the larger tradition of popular song, so John was at times less focused on pure melody. But when he wanted to bring it, Lennon was up with the great ones.

If you’re not acquainted with the songs mentioned above, please listen to them. Also, check out my friend John Stevens’ book – The Songs Of John Lennon: The Beatles Years by John Stevens.

And listen to the melody in the video below.

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Let me say right now that, in terms of songwriting, my questions above don’t matter at all, and never did. They might matter in regard to a particular artist’s voice and production… but not to their songs.

Take Bob Dylan, for example. He’s written songs in many genres that have been covered in every imaginable style by innumerable artists. But when he sings them, it always sounds like ‘Bob Dylan music’.

That’s not exactly untrue about Billy Joel – you do know it’s him singing. There’s nothing wrong with Billy Joel as an artist. Some of his recordings are superb. But the styles of his musical presentation and production, not to mention songwriting, can vary wildly. And it’s hard not to notice that many of the songs (though far from all) are ‘Billy Joel in the style of…’.

Even with these caveats, I come not to bury Billy but to praise him to the skies.

As time went by I started to hear the songs themselves more clearly and become aware that he was one of the greatest composers of popular song melodies that I’d ever heard. I’m talking about Richard Rodgers-level (which is the highest level there is, and few have attained it. I’m not counting Brian Wilson, maybe the greatest popular song melodist, because a lot of his best songs were so complex that they barely were popular songs – who’s going to cover Surf’s Up? Heroes and Villains?). I started to understand that Billy’s songs, especially because of their melodies, would outlast most of the other, more critically acclaimed songs of his era and beyond.

As I’ve written before, melody writing is the least understood and hardest to define aspect of songwriting. Not that the words aren’t critical too, but more than any other aspect, melody is what makes a song outlive its time.

What makes a good melody? A great one? There’s no formula; you can’t define it. To paraphrase Justice Stewart, you just know it when you hear it.

Forget Billy’s tacky ‘80s videos. Listen – just for the melodies – to Allentown. Listen to Uptown Girl. New York State of Mind. Leave A Tender Moment Alone. Movin’ Out. The Longest Time. His best melodies soar.

His roots in the songwriting traditions of the American Songbook, the Brill Building, DooWop, Classical music, and Rock ’n Roll (and who knows what else) seem to enable him to draw on any and every source to write melodies that surpass the tunes of almost all of his contemporaries. He’s like a rock ’n roll George M. Cohan (google him!).

Billy’s no slouch at harmonizing either. There’s a lot of unexpected motion and subtext in the way his harmonies move under the melodies. I got curious about the chords for Leave A Tender Moment Alone (listen below). Then I got lazy… so I looked online to get started and found that all of the chords listed there were wrong. Outrageously wrong! So I figured them out – they’re below. A bonus, for reading this far.

Also, Billy’s melodies tend to have a lot of notes. I always felt a little sorry for him – he wrote these fabulous melodies and then had to come up with twice the amount of words that most of us do (because: so many notes!). Though I don’t see his lyrics as being quite up to the level of his music, they’re generally very good. They sing well, his craft is excellent, sturdy, and he certainly always wrote from the heart (true of his music too).

You don’t have to seek out Billy Joel songs. You can’t avoid them! But the next time you hear one, pay special attention to the melody (and its harmonies). You’re listening to a master.

Leave A Tender Moment Alone
Verse:
||: Ebmaj7 | Dmin7 | Cmin7 /F | Bb | Ebmaj7 | Dmin7 | Cmin7 /F | Bb |

| Ebmaj7 | Dmin7 | Cmin7 /F | Bb | Ebmaj7 | Dmin7 | Cmin7 /F | Bb |
| Fmin | G7 /B | Cmin /Bb | Abmaj7 Eb/G | Fmin | G7 /B | Cmin /Bb | F/A |
|| Ebmaj7 | Dmin7 | Cmin7 /F | Bb | Ebmaj7 | Dmin7 | Cmin7 /F | Bb :||
Bridge:
| Amin7 | D7 | Ebmaj7 G/D | Cmin7 | G/B G | A7 | Dmin7 Dbmin7 | Cmin7 ||

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One major reason for the staying power of his songs is that great melody never goes out of style. And the more I hear Brian’s melodies the more I appreciate their haunting beauty, and the more his stature rises in my book – and it’s always been high.

I watched a documentary recently that focused on his early songs for The Beach Boys. I was struck by Brian’s individuality, his harmonic and melodic daring, in even his earliest pieces, before he’d developed a songwriting voice that was completely his own (in later masterpieces like ’Surf’s Up’, ‘Heroes & Villains’, and ‘’Til I Die’ ).

I’m going to look at two fairly ‘typical’ early Brian songs – ‘Surf City’ (written and produced for Jan & Dean) and ‘Don’t Worry Baby’ (The Beach Boys). Both songs combine basic rock and roll chords (for most of the song) with some real curveballs that only Brian could’ve thrown.

A lot of ’Surf City’ (listen below)  is a simple blues in Ab. But it starts out with a signature hook; they sing “Two girls for every boy” (this was 1963, folks) over these chords:

| B | E F# | Eb | Eb |

An unusual (to put it mildly) and interesting way to get into the key of Ab! The Verse chords:

|| Ab | Fminor | Ab | Ab | Ab | F minor | Ab | Fminor |

| Db | Bbminor | Gb | Eb | Eb ||

Check out how he goes from 8 bars of straight-up ‘50s RnR into the brief harmonic journey in thirds (in bars 9-13) that takes him out of key to the Gb chord and then back in again (Eb). All done so smoothly you might not notice.

Nobody was writing rock and roll songs with chord changes like these! (We still aren’t.)

The Chorus starts out as a straight ahead 12 bar blues…

|| Ab | Ab | Ab | Ab | Db | Db | Ab | Ab | B | E F# | Eb | Eb ||

…but when he gets to the 9th bar, instead of hitting the V chord as expected Brian hits a ‘B’ chord (way out of key) and revisits the introduction described above.

I want to emphasize that, within a basically diatonic song, when big moves out of key work it’s almost always because the melody works. The listener follows the melody. If that makes sense you’ll follow the chords anywhere.

‘Don’t Worry Baby’ is known to any Brian Wilson/Beach Boys fan for its aching, soaring melody and the universal and heartfelt sentiment of the Chorus. Not to mention Brian’s poignant high vocal. (Listen below.) The song starts out in one key, changes key for the Chorus, and then returns to the first key for the Verse.

This in itself isn’t so unusual, but what is less common is the way it’s ‘baked in’ to the song. It’s not an imposed modulation. You couldn’t play the song without it (another one like this is The Beatles’ ’Penny Lane’).

‘Don’t Worry Baby’ starts out with a chord progression and melodic contour that’s very close to ‘Be My Baby’ by Phil Spector (a big influence on Brian, mainly as a producer – and he wrote this one with ‘Be My Baby’ in mind). But what Brian does is much more sophisticated (not taking anything away from the classic, but compositionally simpler, ‘Be My Baby’).

The chords of the first 8 bars are identical to ‘Be My Baby’ and the Pre-Chorus chords similar too. But Brian, switching the order of ‘Be My Baby’s’ Pre-Chorus chords, moves into a new key for the Chorus.

Verse || E | E | A | B | E | E | A | B |
Pre-Chorus || F#minor | B | G#minor | C# ||
Chorus || F# | F# | G#minor | C# | F# | F# | G#minor | C# | E/B B ||

The way he comes back to the home key in that ‘extra’ 9th bar of the Chorus always gets me.

Again, the reason this all works musically is because of the melody. Play or sing the melody of ‘Don’t Worry Baby’ without the chords. Note the winding, rising and falling drama of its musical story. Note the trademark Brian big leaps – twice jumping up a flat 6th in the Verse and twice up a flat 7th in the Pre-Chorus. Beautiful.

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A simplified way of thinking about it (although these elements always overlap) is, the words go to the head, the melody and music go to the heart, the rhythm goes to the body.

Of course melody doesn’t tell a literal story. But a good melody often takes you on a condensed journey with a satisfying Act 1, Act, 2, and Act 3. Just like in a traditional movie or play, Act 1 presents the situation; Act 2 – the longer part in the middle – develops the conflict, usually reaching a climax at the end of the Act; and Act 3 restates the themes and all issues (harmonic and melodic, in this case) are usually resolved.

This is far from the only way to put together a melody. In fact, the examples here are pretty traditional and old-school. But they’re great illustrations of the idea that, to work, A Good Melody Tells A Story (it doesn’t just wait around for the words to do the storytelling).

I’ve found the simplest way to illustrate this is in your basic 8 bar melody, which often includes 4 phrases (2 bars each) –

1) Statement of the main theme (Act 1);

2) Restatement with slight variation (Act 2a);

3) Main Variation (Act 2b);

4) Restatement and/or Resolution of the main theme (Act 3).

Conceptually, pretty straightforward. Some examples (think about them without the words):

Yesterday (Paul McCartney) – Starts with a simple 3-note descending phrase. Next it rises up by scale tones to a higher statement of that  phrase. Then descends by scale tones to a lower restatement. Then a final phrase that resolves with three notes going in the other direction (down-up-up).

Reason To Believe (Tim Hardin) – First phrase: statement of theme. Second: slight variation. Third: A longer, passionate phrase that leads to the highest point (both melodically and emotionally). Fourth: resigned resolution.

Allentown (Billy Joel) – Tremendous soaring melody. The first two phrases are structurally very similar to those in Yesterday. But the third phrase is double the usual length, allowing it to either loop around – back to another verse – or add a 2 bar phrase (bars 9 & 10) that restates the first phrase (and the title). Listen below.

Smoke On The Water (Deep Purple) – not the vocal melody; the guitar riff! Think about it… Statement – slight variation – restatement – resolution. All with 4 notes.

There are thousands of other examples of all different styles and genres. I don’t recommend that your melody always follow the patterns above. But thinking about melodies as having a drama of their own can add a lot of interest and emotion, and help yours stand out.

(I’ve put together a free video that covers a lot of ways to approach and get more creative with melody on this page: https://tonyconniff.com/ask-tony-videos/. Scroll down!)

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Though less so now than in the past, most songs still work this way. Looking at it crassly, but not inaccurately, if my song was a jingle for a commercial, the Title phrase would be where the product name would go. It’s the takeaway.

I want that Title phrase in the most advantageous place possible, which means putting the most important words in the song at the most memorable spot in the melody, and vice versa.

The Title usually goes at or very near the beginning of the Chorus… or at its end… or in both places. As journalists say: ‘Don’t bury the lede’. If the Title is ‘buried’ in the middle of the Chorus it’s harder to remember.

If I already have a Title I need it sitting at the most conclusive part of the melody. I want it at the same place, usually with the same words and music, every time around. If that’s not working out I usually have to either change the melody or the Title lyric to fit (I’ve done both, many times).

For maximum effect, the high point of the melody (by no means always the highest note) and the words of the Title need to peak at the same moment.

(ps Please remember – the Title I’m referring to here is the phrase we want the listener to walk away singing. It’s not the words at the top of the lyric sheet, those words being, technically, the ‘Title’. This line can be anything and have nothing to do with the lyrics of the song or what the listener hears and takes away.)

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Although they’re known for their 3 or 4 chord rock and roll songs, there’s always an inventive, unexpected twist or two in them. This week I’m going to look at a few examples of this, as well as one simple device they use very well.

For best results I suggest you listen to the songs before you read, or as you read. I especially recommend that you play and sing the songs through a few times if you can. This’ll be well worth your while. (Listen at the bottom of the page here.)

Part 1: Surprising Twists

My favorite is in ‘Street Fighting Man‘ (below). After going back and forth in unexpected, rhythmically jagged ways between the I and IV chords (‘C’ and ‘F’ – tuned a little flat) in the Verse, they explode into the V chord (‘G’) for the Chorus (see Part 2 for more on this). So far pretty normal – I, IV, and V in the key of ‘C’.

But then (here’s the twist) the Chorus climaxes on a ‘D’ chord with an F# in the melody – way out of the key of ‘C’. Then, when it settles back into ‘C’ again for the next Verse, it’s also very exciting. The move out of key – and then back in – definitely gives the song a kick in the ass it wouldn’t otherwise have.

Note also that there’s a bar cut off of the ‘normal’ length of almost every section – the Verse is two 5 bar sections, the Chorus is 7 bars.

In ‘Brown Sugar‘ (below) they add more twists to the 3 or 4 chord routine. The Verse uses ‘C’ and ‘F’ chords (with a single ‘Bb’) then, as in “Street Fighting Man’, they jump to the ‘G’ chord (V) for the Chorus.

But the Intro, which is used after each Chorus throughout the tune, has these chords: | Eb | C | Ab Bb | C |. Another really powerful out-of-key move that adds another dimension by providing a break that also makes the 4 chord Verses and Choruses feel fresh every time they return.
(And remember that we’re just talking about the music here – the lyric is way past its sell-by date.)

Part 2: The Exploding V Chord

Both songs mentioned above enter their Choruses using a similar approach.

In their different ways, the Verses of both songs bounce back and forth between ‘C’ and ‘F’ chords (I and IV), building enough tension so that when they finally  hit the ‘G’ chord (V) for the Choruses, it’s explosive. Check it out! Same thing in both songs. So simple; so powerful.

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A common example: I find myself well into the writing of a new song and I discover that the Chorus is low in my voice and the Verse is higher. Often this isn’t what I want – more frequently (not always) the Chorus works better when it’s higher than the Verse.

To deal with this I try changing the key, sometimes by as much as a 4th or a 5th. This reverses the low-high situation. Sometimes this solves the problem – the range of the Chorus melody is now higher than the Verse and it’s still singable.

Anther typical example is when the lowest notes of a song are too low for me (and other singers) to sing, or the high notes are too high. If both are true then I’ve really got a problem – the melody range may just be too wide for most singers (including me!).

But if only one of these are true – low notes too low, or high notes too high – I try raising or lowering the key I’m writing in. (Since I usually write with a guitar, I often slide a capo around to experiment with other tonalities.)

When I find a better key and I’m sure I want to change, I learn the song and play it in the new key. (Later on, if I perform or record the song, especially with a band, the key can change again.)

If I raise or lower the key and everything sounds fine, the issue is often resolved. If it isn’t, I have to ask myself if this needs to be a song that only singers with unusually wide ranges can sing. If not, I have to narrow the melody’s range.

Sometimes you think you’re having a melody problem, but that may not be the case. It might be a key problem.

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(Sometimes the melody’s story is very different from the story in the words – it can function as subtext to the lyric).

Any good melody has drama. It starts somewhere, takes a journey, developments happen, tensions develop and are (usually) resolved. But the main thing is that the melody stay in motion, that it doesn’t feel finished until it is finished.

Like a shark, it has to move or die.

In any dramatic form – film, theater – you don’t resolve your story until the end. Because the resolution is the end. A melody is pretty similar (songs are also a performance art).

And the easiest (but certainly not the only) way to make a melody feel finished is to land strongly on a note that’s also the root note of the chord under it.

An example is, while your melody’s moving along, holding a big C note over a C chord (especially in the key of C!). If I do that, that melody will feel done, that story feels finished. Try it yourself.

But if that melody lands on any other note, we could still be at the end, but it will not feel as resolved. Try, over the C chord, an ‘E’ or a ‘G’ , a ‘B’ or ‘Bb’. Then the melody’s still potentially in motion, the story could go further. That tension, however slight, is what you want if you wish to keep the listener’s interest.

The mistake of the premature root in the melody, or of using too many chord roots in the melody, is something less experienced songwriters are prone to. It can, all by itself, make you sound like a less experienced songwriter!

(And I don’t mean to imply that all melodies resolve to the root, or should resolve to the root. Or that there should never be a root note in the melody except for at its end – that’s certainly not the case. The chord’s root note is just the most obvious and unmistakable ‘ending’. Many – most? – great melodies don’t end in a completely resolved way.)

Most of the time good melodies are about building and sustaining tension, and postponing resolution, in an interesting way. Telling a story.

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When writing I often find myself with an apt lyric… but it just doesn’t fit the melody. What I used to do was keep chiseling away at the lyric until I got to the best solution I could find, leaving the melody alone. Often that’s still what I do.

But sometimes now, if I like the line of lyric, I think, ‘Rather than carving up the lyric to fit the melody, what if I change the melody instead?’.

Why? Because a lyric that ‘doesn’t fit’ can sometimes take my melody to a place I wouldn’t get to otherwise, to a melody that’s out of my comfort zone… if I’m willing to let the words change the melody, not vice versa.

The lyric line in question will probably have more or less words, syllables, or sounds than originally planned; it’ll make the melody longer, or shorter, with more or less notes. Maybe it’ll create more variety and contrast with the preceding and following melodic phrases. And its scan will dictate a different, perhaps pleasantly unexpected, rhythmic flow and emphasis.

This strategy doesn’t solve the problem of fitting the words to the melody. It just kicks that can down the road. If I change the melody, I usually still have to make the words of the other Verses fit the new melody.

But, when ‘change the melody to fit the lyric’ works, what it often does is move my melody writing in a less predictable direction. And that’s a good thing.

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Think about these leaps up:

* Empire State Of Mind (jumps up a 5th – ‘inspire you” – in the Chorus)

* Alfie (up a 6th on the repeat of ‘What’s it all about’)

* Somewhere (from West Side Story) memorably jumps up a flatted 7th in its first line (There’s A place for us’)

* Of course the immortal Somewhere Over The Rainbow (a leap of a full octave)

Our hearts rise with those melody jumps.

What about leaps down?  Less common, with a different effect, but think about:

* Roxanne (down a 4th).

* Brian Wilson’s melodies are full of extreme leaps up and down – check out God Only Knows or Surf’s Up – an amazing melodist.

At the end of the verse in Frank Ocean’s Thinking About You he drops down a major 6th… only to, with the help of his falsetto, jump up an octave and a 6th from there!

Don’t limit your melodies to scales, repeated notes, bluesy 3rds… every once in a while, Take A Leap. Try it!

Credits:  Empire State Of Mind (Hunte, Keys, Shuckburgh, Sewell-Ulepic, Carter Robinson), Alfie (Bacharach/David), Somewhere (Bernstein/Sondheim),  Somewhere Over The Rainbow (Arlen/Harburg), Roxanne (Sumner),  God Only Knows (Wilson/Asher), Surf’s Up (Wilson/Parks), Thinking About You (Ocean, Cobey)

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Any kind of writing is a tricky blend of the subjective and the objective. One way to think about it is that when I’m freely creating (subjective) I wear the ‘writers’ hat’ and when I’m analyzing, judging, evaluating (objective… somewhat), I replace it with the ‘editors’ hat’ .

When the first burst of a song’s melody comes, it often feels like it arrives fully formed and inevitable. That impression can be deceiving,

Before I get locked in to a melody, it serves me well to take the time to listen to it with some objectivity.  In Songwriting, as with so many things, it’s easy to form habits, inhabit comfort zones, etc. 

There’s nothing wrong with tilling a fertile field for as long as it yields. But it’s SO easy to keep writing the same things over and over again; the same words, the same story, the same chords… the same melodies. It can take a conscious effort to move out of that comfort zone.

If I sing or play a melody by itself – no thrashing guitar chords to cover weak spots – I more easily hear its flaws and I often find that my melody isn’t as interesting, memorable, or catchy as it could be. 

But, at first, that ‘revised’ melody usually doesn’t sing as naturally for me.

Sometimes this can mean I’m getting too fussy – simple and obvious can be good. However, it can also mean that I just need to get used to singing the new, ‘improved’ melody. I need to sing it a bunch of times and see if it starts to feel natural. If it does, maybe I have something. If not… I can always go back to version 1 (or 8).

My voice (and the melody-maker in my mind) usually wants to go down its familiar pathways.  But just because a melody doesn’t feel ‘natural’ right away doesn’t mean that it won’t end up sounding inevitable – like it always had to be that way. I have to sing and play it for a while; give it a chance.

With a little work – and taking the time to get used to a new melody direction – I often see that that first draft of the melody was just that – a start, not a finished product.

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You want something that captures the mood, the feeling of the song in some way but also promises more, makes the listener lean in with curiosity to hear what will happen next.

There are many ways to do this and there’s no formula. But here’s a way to think about it when you’re searching.

In my experience, most intros come later, after you’ve worked on the song for a while and the grooves and parts are pretty well defined. When listening to the arrangement and its various components, some of them tend to stand out… as being able to stand alone. They just grab attention.

It could be a basic guitar or piano riff that’s central to the song; that’s in fact its single most defining musical part. Examples include the guitar riffs of Lose Yourself (Eminem) and Cinnamon Girl (Neil Young), the piano in Clocks and strings in Viva La Vida (Coldplay), even the brief acoustic guitar setup on Rolling In The Deep (Adele).

Or it could be an instance where a memorable bass line is stripped out and separated from the body of the song, such as on White Rabbit (Jefferson Airplane), I Want You Back (Jackson 5), Seven Nation Army (The White Stripes), and even the vocal bass line that starts Uptown Funk (Mark Ronson w. Bruno Mars).

Sometimes the drums/percussion are enough: Royals (Lorde). Sometimes the drums are memorable… but then the bass line and chordal riff are added to make it irresistible: Billie Jean (Michael Jackson). Sometimes the whole rhythm section is catchy enough to invite you to the party, pre-vocal: Sex On Fire (Kings Of Leon; listen below).

Then there’s having a catchy melody that’s not the vocal melody of the song, the way they did it on Born To Run (Springsteen) and with the saxophone on Baker Street (Gerry Rafferty). Or the choral section of the song that starts Paperback Writer (The Beatles).

When I’m looking for an Intro, I listen carefully to the arrangement, once its basics are in place, and think about what element or elements would make a compelling start. I take things out and listen to the parts in various combinations. Usually the answer is already there, waiting to be found.

It can be as obvious (in hindsight anyway) as the guitar riffs of Cinnamon Girl or Lose Yourself. It can be something you might easily take as just an element – crucial, but an element nonetheless – in a good arrangement, until it’s plucked out for an Intro – White Rabbit, I Want You Back.

You might have a counter-melody that can be pulled out and featured at the beginning – Born To Run, Baker Street. Or a groove that just sounds and feels so good that no more need be said – Billie Jean, Sex On Fire.

With most of these, if not all, I’d guess the intro wasn’t created separately from the rest of the song. It was taken from what was already there.

And then there are…

Intros that are anomalies, that do the job of a great Intro but have little directly to do with the song parts. They just sound the alarm; let you know you’re in for something special: A Hard Day’s Night, I Feel Fine, Eight Days A Week. Of course The Beatles were great at this. They were The Beatles.

Got any others? Let me know (below)!

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It’s a good song. Soulful, Musically, what always struck me about it is its clever but natural-sounding use of modulations (changing keys).

Was I surprised when I took a closer look and found that there were no real modulations…. only harmonic moves that sounded like modulations. That’s the clever part.

Here are the chords for the Verse, Pre-Chorus, and Chorus:

|| D | D | G | G | D | D | G | F#sus4 F# |
|| Bminor | A/B | G | F#minor F# |
|| Bminor | F# minor | G | F#minor F# | G | F#minor ||

Whenever there’s an F# chord something surprising happens. Two out of three times they go out of the key for that one chord or one bar, leading the ear to expect that they’re about to modulate… but they never do.

Each section ends with a different F# variation, keeping the chord progression constantly refreshed.

The first one is | F#sus4 F# |. Definitely not in the key of ‘D’ (which has an F#minor chord). But all the F# does is take us back to Bminor (which is still in the key of ‘D’).

The end of the next section is | F#minor F# |. Since we hear the in-key F#minor first, the F# again leads our ears to expect ‘new key’. And, as in the previous transition, we’re back at Bminor.

The surprise at the end of the Chorus is that there’s no surprise – it’s a simple in-key F#minor, which leads us back to – you guessed it – Bminor again (for the repeated Intro riff of | Bminor A/B | A/B |).

Play and sing it through; it’s a simple chord progression. But with the crafty use of a ‘fake’ V chord – the F# major – instead of the IIIminor chord (F#minor), the writers keep our ears on their toes (sorry) and renew the tonality of the progression every few bars.

It’s clever, but what counts is that the chords connect with and advance the emotion of the song, the melody and lyric.

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Truth is in the right context you can move almost any chord over any bass note. If you play an ‘E’ chord and then move it up to an ‘F’ chord, while maintaining the ‘E’ note in the bass… instant (very crude) suggestion of flamenco music!

I’m going to focus on more common uses. The bedrock idea is that you can use any note that’s in your chord (and some that aren’t) as a bass note – often called a ‘bass substitution’ – and it will sound OK. Or better.

For example if you have an ‘A’ chord (consisting of notes ‘A’. ‘C#’, ‘E’), try playing it over an ‘A’ bass (obviously). Then try your ‘A’ chord with an ‘E’ in the bass; then with a ‘C#’ (you’re using all 3 notes of the ‘A’ triad as bass notes; not just the ‘A’.). You can try this anytime with any chord.

It becomes a ‘pedal’ when you keep the bass note the same. Say I was starting on that ‘E’ chord I mentioned above, then going to a ‘B’ (V) chord. Check out what it sounds like if you keep the bass note, the ‘E’, the same, under the ‘B’ chord.

It’s an interesting sound, especially if you’re not used to it. Now keep the ‘E’ bass the same while you go to an ‘A’ chord (‘A’ and ‘B’ being the IV and V chord of the key of ‘E’ – low-hanging fruit):

|| E | B/E | A/E | E ||

(The note to the right of the ‘/‘ is the bass note, when it’s not the same as the chord name.)

Or something like this:

|| E/A A | E/A A | A Bminor/A | A Bminor/A ||

Very Carole King. And note that when you play an ‘E’ chord with an ‘A’ in the bass, the ‘A’ is not in the ‘E’ chord, but it sounds fine when you resolve it to an ‘A’ chord, as it is here.

This sound – pedaling the bass while moving chords – is a sound that became ubiquitous in gospel music and then spread everywhere – Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Roy Orbison, Laura Nyro, Holland/Dozier/Holland (with James Jamerson – below), Jagger/Richards, Pete Townshend, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar… you name it.

It’s a great way to add drama and tension by suspending resolution. If you haven’t tried it yet, fool around with it. Let me know what you think.

Check out me and my band playing a song of mine that has many chords moving over one lonely bass note for the whole song: Here.

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I have a relatively new song called ‘Please Wait’. I’ve performed it with my band a few times and it’s gone over very well. Here’s one of the things in it that I struggled with (honestly… I”m still struggling with it!).

The lyrics of the second half of the Chorus – a pretty long one – are:

Wait
I’m not gonna disappear
I’ll come running when you’re near
Don’t you feel (fear) what is our fate
It’s not too late
Please Wait

The fourth line – feel or fear? – is the dilemma.

At first I liked fear. It had the rhyme with near and disappear, and its placement in the melody worked with the rhyme. Arguably it sang a little better, and fear seemed like a stronger idea than feel.

However, as I sang it, something else became clear. In a song where you’re pleading with someone to wait for you because of your devotion to them, “Don’t you fear what is our fate’ started to feel, as I continued to sing it, uncomfortably like an instruction or a command. Not a request. And the song is one of supplication, of asking.

So I went back to ‘feel’. “Don’t you feel what is our fate”. Still very much to the point… and harder to misunderstand. In the midst of what I think is a strong Chorus, it doesn’t benefit me or the song to confuse the listener.

I wouldn’t have discovered this if I hadn’t, in preparation for performing, rehearsed the song many times. This has become an essential ‘final stage’ of my writing – singing the song over and over, trying to make the words and melody sing and feel as natural as possible, along with conveying its meaning.

Sometimes there are trade-offs. This is one that came up recently… I have a pre-chorus lyric for my song ‘Here In America’:

It’s a pan to fry your brain in
Some things defy explainin’
Everything is entertainment
Here In America

Originally the third line was “Everything is entertainin’” (not ‘entertainment’). It rhymed better (perfectly, actually) with explainin’ and brain in, and even sang better.

But… what I wanted to say was “Everything is entertainment here in America”, NOT “Everything is entertainin’ here in America” (which isn’t a bad line; just not what I was going for). So this time I sacrificed the perfect, more singable rhyme for a more distant rhyme that said exactly what I wanted it to say.

I don’t care about a perfect rhyme as an end in itself, but I don’t like to sacrifice singability, I’m always trying to get the song as right as I can. I mean feeling right, not technically perfect, whatever that is. But sometime trade-offs come up and a choice has to be made.

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Elizabeth Cotten, who died in 1987 at age 94, was a unique blues singer/songwriter/guitarist. After performing in her youth, she didn’t play and sing for many years until she was rediscovered late in life by Pete Seeger and his family. But that’s another story…

I praise her today because her most famous song, the blues standard ‘Freight Train’, on the surface fairly straightforward, illustrates a few principles, basic but always worth remembering, that you’ll find in most good melodies of any genre. (Listen below.)

One is how it handles being an 8 bar melody, consisting of four phrases of 2 bars each.

8 bar sections split into 4 phrases are probably the most common format in all of traditional popular song. Though you don’t hear this kind of 8 bar melody as much in new songs these days, there’s a reason it was (and still is, to lesser extent) so popular – when done well, it’s very satisfying.

(This song is in the ‘AAA’ form. So the chords and melody stay more or less the same throughout, though the words change.)

In classic style, the first phrase of ‘Freight Train’ states a theme. The second phrase repeats the theme with a slight variation.

In this kind of melody the third phrase is usually where the biggest change/expansion happens, and so it is here. Then the 4th phrase resolves the musical thought, brings it home.

This goes hand in hand with another principle – even though it’s a “simple blues melody”, it has enough melodic motion to keep it moving, while still sitting comfortably in its genre. It doesn’t just bounce around between 3 or 4 notes. It’s a nice combination of scalar motion and repeated notes, plus a few jumps to keep things lively.

Though it looks like she’s playing it in the key of ‘C’, with the guitar tuned down (it’s hard for me to tell because she plays upside-down!), for simplicity’s sake I’m rendering it here in ‘A’. The chords:

||: A | E | E | A | C#7 | D | A/E E | A :||

(The ‘E’ chord in bar 7 comes on beat 4.)

I don’t have musical notation here, so I’ll give you the melody notes as they roughly correspond to the bars:

|| E C# B A | G# /\ E D |

| E D C# B | A /\ E C# |

| C# C# C# B | A F# A A B |

| C# A F# | A B A ||

( /\ stands for a jump up.)

Simple and elegant, making for a memorable melody, and a memorable song. And don’t sleep on her amazing finger-picking!

(Here are some more thoughts on 8 bar melody sections.)

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Steven Lipson, long one of my favorite producers, helped Finneas, a great producer himself, with the production and Hans Zimmer did the strings. So they had expert support in the arrangement/production area, though it still sounds more like Finneas than anyone. But Billie and Finneas wrote the song.

Focusing on the songwriting, what they did was ingenious. The original Bond theme, written by Monty Norman and played billions of times, has several signature riffs and melodies; none more characteristic than the moody and mysterious chord progression that simply plays the notes B to C to C# to C over a bass pedal on E.

Anyone can play this on guitar, it’s so simple. Yet it immediately screams, “Bond!” The notes moving over the E in the bass translate to these chords: ||: Eminor C | A7/C# C :||

The vocal melody of ‘No Time To Die’ is in Billie Eilish’s style; it’s not spectacular but it maintains mood and motion effectively throughout. What’s brilliant is the way she and Finneas called back to the original ‘Bond’ chords.

Strategic borrowing is almost always at the heart of songwriting. And everything suggests something else. In this case that was their job – to do something of their own that also suggested something else; to find the commonalities between their style and the music of Bond.

The song (listen below) starts with an Intro, played lightly on a ‘verby piano (with a Bond-like melody over it):

||: Eminor | C | A | B :|| The ‘Bond’ chords with a V chord added (the B).

In the Verse, the A chords shift subtly between Amajor and Aminor. This ambiguity is the only unusual harmonic touch in their song:

|| Eminor C | A Aminor | Eminor C | A | Eminor C | A Aminor | C | B ||

The Pre-Chorus stays with the now familiar chords:

|| C | Eminor | C | B ||

(The second time through they skip the Pre-Chorus. This is uncommon… and usually indicates to me that the Pre-Chorus is unnecessary, and can and probably should be cut. Here, though, the Chorus seems to work equally well both ways.)

The Chorus has the same 3 chords we’ve been discussing, but now commits entirely to Aminor:

|| Eminor C | Aminor | Eminor C | Aminor | Eminor C | Aminor | Eminor C | Aminor ||

Then, as Billie sings the Title, we’re back to the Intro, but this time played strong, with the powerful ‘Bond’ riff over it:

|| Eminor | C | A | B ||

And ending with a twangy Eminor 6/9 chord on the guitar is a classic finishing touch.

Harmonically, they mostly stay in Bond-world – Eminor, C, and A. They added a few twists with the Aminor and the B; they avoided the C# under the A chord. They ended up with something very much in their style while also keeping the Bond flavor, and (I’m not a Bond scholar) did it more effectively than anyone I can remember. Well played.

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As with all generalizations, there are notable exceptions. Let’s think about some examples. Jobim’s ‘One Note Samba’ comes to mind (of course). And Tom Petty’s ‘Refugee’. Also, I recently heard Eurythmics’ ‘Here Comes The Rain Again’ (video below).

The melodies of the main section of all these songs have a lot of repeated notes, usually not a good sign. Yet they all work.

‘One Note Samba’ is a musical fantasia in which the music and the lyric explore the joys of monotony, to delightful effect.

‘Refugee’ is a harsh lyric in which the singer’s accusatory words and tone are well served by a driving melody’s use of repeated notes.

‘Here Come The Rain Again’ uses Rain as a metaphor for pain, tragedy, depression… the melody suits the flat state of mind of the narrator.

But – and this is key – these melodies are not too monotonous. They don’t just have one note over and over (even ‘One Note Samba’ goes up a 4th). They don’t cross the line into stasis. There’s still a ‘story’.

Notably, they all have bridges or ‘B’ sections where the melodies really move, creating a contrast to the darkness of the other, simpler section. Just when the lack of movement is about to stall out the song, you get a break.

Finally, with the exception of ‘Rain’ (for reasons stated above), the main melodies all have rhythmic unpredictability; surprises that keep the listener on their toes even if the notes don’t vary much.

Lack of melodic motion is a common songwriting problem, much more common than too much motion. But in certain cases, and I’ve cited some here in a variety of genres, holding the movement back can be very effective.

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Due to the new doc about The Beatles, there’s a lot of talk about them lately (there usually is anyway) and I found myself thinking about McCartney’s melodies, and superficially buying into the narrative that he was ‘the great melody writer’ of the two.

Soon after, though, I started thinking about John’s song ‘Across The Universe’ (below)… singing it to myself, stunned, marveling at the its sinuous beauty – an amazing melody. And thinking, ‘John’s as good at writing melodies as anyone ever’ (arguable but, at his best, true). And thinking – I’m ashamed to admit – that ‘as great as Paul is, he never wrote a melody that good’.

Well, guess what? A day or two later I heard Dave Grohl sing McCartney’s ‘Blackbird’ (below). Paul definitely did write melodies that good! How could I have forgotten? I immediately realized how dumb it was for me to think that John was better than Paul at writing melodies. Or vice versa.

By some miracle, two guys in the same band were equally great.

It’s stupid to compare. Leave that to the critics and the pundits. I’m just grateful John and Paul wrote songs, together and apart, and that each one had the other to push his talents to the limit and beyond.

(Read more on this topic here.)

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