A couple of recent posts got me thinking about those wonderful, unexpected musical moments that transform a nice song into something memorable, and haunting, elevating, or just surprising. There are many of these in every field of music, and I am sure that they’re more often than not the reason I like a song, or even a songwriter.
Jazz critic Whitney Balliett titled one of his collections of jazz criticism The Sound of Surprise, referring to all of the unexpected, wonderful moments the great jazz performers and composers hit us with. And jazz certainly has some of my favorite transforming musical moments: the opening passages of Mingus’s “Goodbye, Pork-Pie Hat,” always so jarringly beautiful, like the first trumpet/sax phrase of Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman.” The propulsive and rhythmic chorus of Don Byron’s “Leopold…Leopold” coming out of the frantically chaotic verse. Cannonball Adderley’s turns on the haunting melody of Gordon Jenkins’s “Goodbye.”
Brian Wilson
There are great moments like these in pop music, too. The arching six-note phrase of the verse of “More Than This” by Roxy Music is among the first that come to mind. (And this is a rare case of the musical surprise being in the verse, and not in the chorus, which in this song is prosaic). A similar stimulating leap is in the first phrase of the chorus of “Brick” by Ben Folds Five. Neil Young, for an addle-pated folkie-rocker, has quite a few of these unexpected chords that are like catnip to me, in “The Bridge,” “Philadelphia,” “A Man Needs a Maid,” “Expecting to Fly,” “Powderfinger”–the list goes on. Brian Wilson managed to get some into the most poppy hit songs with the most mundane lyrics: “When I Grow Up,” “I Get Around,” “The Warmth of the Sun,” “Caroline, No,” and many more. Not to mention the non-hits, like “Wonderful,” “Don’t Talk,” “There’s So Many” (from his first solo album).
Duke Ellington & Billy Strayhorn
Other masters of the sound of surprise include Randy Newman (especially in his string arrangements, which provide the perfect counterpoint to his drawling vocals and rolling piano–and increase the tingly effect); Billy Strayhorn, with his melodramatic chord changes; his cohort Duke Ellington (the “hook” to “In a Sentimental Mood,” the central passage in his obscure “Mystery Song”); and, most of all, Kurt Weill.
Weill, best known for “Mac the Knife”–but for the Vegas-y Bobby Darin version of the dark German cabaret number, inserted these unexpected tinglers into many of his songs for theatre: the bridge of “Speak Low,” the main theme from Johnny Johnson, the chord pattern of “Lonely House,” the chorus of “Le Train du ceil.”
There are a few of these moments in country and folk music and in soul and R&B, but not many. These types of music generally have other elements that surprise and delight: lyrics, rhythms, the beat. Their three or four chords don’t allow too much in the way of nuance or surprise.
Give me the thick, careening chords of Strayhorn and Weill, the harmonies of Brian Wilson, the tension of the string arrangements of Randy Newman.
Some other moments to mention:
“Everybody is a Star” (Sly Stone)–the vocal tag
“Parachute Woman” (Jagger-Richards)–the discordant guitar/harmonica rides
“Is That All There Is?” (Lieber-Stoller)–it’s Randy Newman’s string arrangement behind the third verse–listen to it again!
“Shake ’em on Down” (Bukka White)–his inimitable note-bending on the first lines of every verse
“Yesterdays” (Jerome Kern)–the ascending line
“What I Am” (Edie Brickell)–the verses, sung in a different key from the instruments–but it works
“What’s Goin’ On?” (Marvin Gaye)–the key change for the sax solo
Running/Breathing 