Modulation / key changes have been used in music for ages but the style I’m talking about is the distinctive last verse (or chorus) sudden key change up to power through to the end. Seems to have come about sometime in the 60s/70s and was everywhere in the 80s onwards.
Examples:
Heaven is a place on earth - Belinda Carlisle
I will always love you - Whitney Houston
But who popularised it? What was the first big song to do it and set the style for the genre?
I don’t know but key changes should be illegal imo. Pick a key and stick to it.
👮♂️ 🚨 👮 uhh I’m gonna need to see some identification and your license sir
I know nothing about music history, but consider that you’re basically describing yodeling
not the singing of high notes but the music key. e.g. Whitney’s song starts out in one key but progresses up one later when she hits the chorus “AND IIIIII EEEIIIIII”
Like most others here, I don’t have an answer for you. I just wanted to share that I feel songs using this gimmick are lazy attempts to pad the length of the song. Nothing prompts me to change the channel or skip ahead faster.
You see it in classical music all the time, like minor to major changes leading to crescendos or other larger shifts leading to the end of a movement. Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Chopin. It’s nothing new.
Agree. But mine is a question about style as much as anything. It’s use in 80s ballads is distinctive. Same key throughout song then a singular upshift for the last verse / chorus. I’m not referring to music that modulates throughout the whole piece, or makes a change near the end having done it in several other places.
Yes that’s exactly the pattern I’m talking about. The upwards change is only used at the end where it’s used twice. “I just called” is from 1984 though. Through digging around the earliest I’ve found the style is in Penny Lane 1967. Am a bit on the fence about that though as the key shifts a lot through the song, but there’s a definite key change up for emphasis on the last chorus.
That style actually pre-dates the 80’s by at least a few decades. In more traditional music, particularly Christian hymns, that’s referred to as a “descant”.
It was popularized in church music in the early 20th century by Ralph Vaughn Williams.
Edit: See comment below.
That style actually pre-dates the 80’s by at least a few decades. In more traditional music, particularly Christian hymns, that’s referred to as a “descant”. It was popularized in church music in the early 20th century by Ralph Vaughn Williams.
Descant is a vocal harmony above the melody, whereas in hymnody most harmony is below the melody. They show up in final stanzas, most frequently.
What they’re talking about here is modulation, where the key shifts by a step or two (or maybe a half step). It’s sometimes seen as a bit cheesy nowadays, but I love a good modulation.
That makes sense and I just learned something new. Thanks for the correction!
