Friday, January 10, 2003

A Recommended Song (with brief explanation)


Borrowing a page from some of my esteemed fellow bloggers:

"Mr. Sandman," by the Chordettes.

Like all great pop, it sounds simple and effortless, but the fiendishly complex vocal arrangement is worthy of the Comedian Harmonists: listen to how, after the key change at 0:45, the resolution, at 1:30, modulates through keys in apparently wayward, where-the-hell-are-we-going fashion, before ending up back on the tonic—it's one of the great head-fakes of pop music. Add in an unusually clever lyric that mixes high and low culture at a stroke (rhyming Pagliacci with Liberace), just the right instrumental backing (dig those sudden Ellington-style saxophones on the middle eight), and a subtly propulsive rhythm, and it's as insistent as OCD.

Plus it was used to great effect in John Hughes's Uncle Buck, a film which has played an important role in the development of my own parenting style.

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