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Section 14—

A Gallery of Songs

ABBREVIATIONSRoman numerals I VII

indicate chordrelationships within a key.

m maj minormajor

Song sectionsbr bridge :

c ch codachorus

hk i introhook

pch v versepre-chorus

Most of the chord-sequence examplesare standardized for comparison

intoFamous songs referred to in C or A minor. C major

orthe key of the original recordings A minor are not necessarily in.

To deepen your knowledge of songwriting, you should listen to well-written songs – here are some to consider. This
chronological list is not the "greatest" of anything, but each of these 20 songs has an important lesson to teach the
songwriter who's willing to learn. These brief discussions take us to the very edge of what can described as
songwriting craft. At this edge we pass from the measurable nuts and bolts of songwriting to the mysterious domain
of musical meaning - of why it is that one song which uses the same chords as thousands of others is far greater in
terms of what it communicates. This is the domain which criticism tries to discuss, of course, but to pursue that road
any further would take us outside the remit of a book on songwriting craft. Dave Marsh's The Heart Of Rock And
Soul and Ian MacDonald's Revolution In The Head are essential reading if you want to understand the deeper
meaning of songs.

1—
Gene Pitney:
'Twenty Four Hours from Tulsa' (1963)
This is a fine example of a narrative lyric presented as a letter, as well as a song where ambiguous key relationships
express an emotional conflict. The production has many classic early 1960s touches: high female voices; chopped,
high guitar chords; light percussion; low-note guitar with tremolo; and the thrice-played brass motif, taken up twice
by the strings for a five-bar intro. In the verse, each lyric phrase goes I-IImaj to V, establishing V as the key, only for
the next line to take it back to the original key. Chord I represents the emotions he has for "home" (his wife), heard
first as Pitney sings "dearest darling". The chorus introduces a I VI IV V progression in a stretched form in C and
stops on the dominant, which is the key of the verse.
The coda settles on a C chord, the key of the past rather than the future. So, although he appears to be saying that he
loves this new woman, the music insists on his regret that he cannot go home. Notice the dom9 chord at the end of
the repeated "never", which cancels out the lover's key of G because it makes it harmonically subservient to the
wife's key of C.

2—
Roy Orbison:
'It's Over' (1964)
Orbison brought a new drama to pop with his song arrangements, and 'It's Over' is typical of his mini-epics, with its
advanced (for the time) approach to arrangement and romantic lyrics. This is another song where the emotional
distress of the speaker is mirrored by the presence of two keys.
A free-time intro announces the subject of the lyric ("Your baby doesn't love