For me, the following is the greatest recording with not only key changes beyond Bobby Darin’s "Mack The Knife", but a "tempo accelerando" that even Rossini would admire:
I guess we’re not counting a lot of jazz tunes with key changes and time signature changes? Pretty much half of the music I have put out over the last five years has one or the other. Or certain kinds of internalized chromatic movement that switch the keys around. So it may be more common than you think.
It would be interesting to know how key changes have fared in music outside of Billboard. I got exposed to a lot of key changes during lowest ebbs in the 2000s because I didn't care about what was on those charts in high school. At that point I could just use iTunes to find other music and with that whatever was on the Billboard pop charts just wasn't as intriguing.
This is fascinating Chris. Is that a key change in Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “Alone Again (Naturally)” bridge? Usually the bridge is an opportunity for key or time changes, right? Cheers, pal, and congrats on all the career love. Cool to see and well-deserved!
Quite a few questions here; first off, eyeballing chart one, "Where Have All the Key Changes Gone?", then the average (of a three year rolling average) number of number ones, in the discrete chart ranking, with key changes from 1960 to about 1997 is roughly 25% or thereabouts.
Which means that 75% or so don't have them. So, those songs are outnumbered 3-1, a small chunk of the total population. Is this a problem of small numbers? The population is only the number ones, we don't know about top tens, twenties, or the other 99 songs on the chart in each week.
However, there seem (eyeballing) to be three distinct periods, each roughly ten years in length, '65 to '75, average about 30%, pretty stable, '75 to '85, 20% - again stable, then '85 to '95, 25% - but more volatile than the other two.
What's going on there? If the rapid adoption of DAWs, sequencers, is a major driver post-'95, then are there similar changes in production techniques or technology in the previous periods? Seems likely, but do these periods match (lagging?) US recessions? That'd give consumer expectations shifting behaviour.
Something else? There's something akin to a dead cat bounce around 2000/02, then the downward trend to flatlining until when? 2016? Funny old year that.
I think something else has been going on - that song complexity is correlated to buyer expectations of the political and economic environment. Chart two already shows something of a recovery, and I'll bet that continues and accelerates. I'd peg the level back at 20% by 2028. I have no idea whether a new genre would emerge, but I would predict that lyrical content, producer messaging, will shift. A specific example would be a British band, UB40.
I expect that the usage of common time will change as well. I'd have to guess as to whether that might reflect a new genre or not. Not a musician, so I don't have a scooby.
Additionally; over the whole period, has consumer behaviour become more legible to producers, such that they are more capable of optimizing output to the observed behaviour? Streaming would present far more feedback to producers - if my predictions are correct, the shift could be very dramatic indeed - well within the three year window on your rolling average.
Hi Chris,
For me, the following is the greatest recording with not only key changes beyond Bobby Darin’s "Mack The Knife", but a "tempo accelerando" that even Rossini would admire:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRWyxzmNdJc
Andrew - Homzy.ca
I guess we’re not counting a lot of jazz tunes with key changes and time signature changes? Pretty much half of the music I have put out over the last five years has one or the other. Or certain kinds of internalized chromatic movement that switch the keys around. So it may be more common than you think.
Just looking at the pop charts here
It would be interesting to know how key changes have fared in music outside of Billboard. I got exposed to a lot of key changes during lowest ebbs in the 2000s because I didn't care about what was on those charts in high school. At that point I could just use iTunes to find other music and with that whatever was on the Billboard pop charts just wasn't as intriguing.
This is fascinating Chris. Is that a key change in Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “Alone Again (Naturally)” bridge? Usually the bridge is an opportunity for key or time changes, right? Cheers, pal, and congrats on all the career love. Cool to see and well-deserved!
My first thought was the popularization of sample-based music, such as hip-hop as you alluded to.
Quite a few questions here; first off, eyeballing chart one, "Where Have All the Key Changes Gone?", then the average (of a three year rolling average) number of number ones, in the discrete chart ranking, with key changes from 1960 to about 1997 is roughly 25% or thereabouts.
Which means that 75% or so don't have them. So, those songs are outnumbered 3-1, a small chunk of the total population. Is this a problem of small numbers? The population is only the number ones, we don't know about top tens, twenties, or the other 99 songs on the chart in each week.
However, there seem (eyeballing) to be three distinct periods, each roughly ten years in length, '65 to '75, average about 30%, pretty stable, '75 to '85, 20% - again stable, then '85 to '95, 25% - but more volatile than the other two.
What's going on there? If the rapid adoption of DAWs, sequencers, is a major driver post-'95, then are there similar changes in production techniques or technology in the previous periods? Seems likely, but do these periods match (lagging?) US recessions? That'd give consumer expectations shifting behaviour.
Something else? There's something akin to a dead cat bounce around 2000/02, then the downward trend to flatlining until when? 2016? Funny old year that.
I think something else has been going on - that song complexity is correlated to buyer expectations of the political and economic environment. Chart two already shows something of a recovery, and I'll bet that continues and accelerates. I'd peg the level back at 20% by 2028. I have no idea whether a new genre would emerge, but I would predict that lyrical content, producer messaging, will shift. A specific example would be a British band, UB40.
I expect that the usage of common time will change as well. I'd have to guess as to whether that might reflect a new genre or not. Not a musician, so I don't have a scooby.
Additionally; over the whole period, has consumer behaviour become more legible to producers, such that they are more capable of optimizing output to the observed behaviour? Streaming would present far more feedback to producers - if my predictions are correct, the shift could be very dramatic indeed - well within the three year window on your rolling average.
I love writing songs with key changes and chords that are out of key, funky modulations…the entire 9 yards. It brings a sense of tension to the song.