Album Rating: 4.5
[deep breath]
in western music theory and notation, songs have keys which are essentially scales, made up of a set of notes that sound "good" together and which exclude those which sound "bad" when incorporated. almost no song doesn't incorporate at least a coupla those "bad" notes into their chords, but those lie outside the "key" technically. if a song is in the key of A major, as is "get back" by the beatles, it mostly follows the logic of the scale of A major: A, B, C#, D, E, F#, G# are the notes which "work well" and "sound good" with a song that has an A major chord as its "root" (which is a tough concept to understand but whatever). notes are said to repeat after those first 12 (A through G#)--they're "the same note" as the one 12 ago, just "one octave" higher.
sometimes songs switch keys: suddenly "love on top" is in the key of C# after being in the key of C for most of the song ("love on top", unusually, changes keys, upwards by one half-step [from one key on the piano to the very next key] every time, four times) and suddenly the notes that are said to "sound good" by western music notation standards within the context of the composition are no longer C, D, E, F, G, A, B but C#, D#, F, F#, G#, A#, C.
key changes are almost always "upward" and musically express some kind of breakthrough or climax or peak of emotional intensity. "penny lane" by the beatles changes keys between its verse and chorus, every time. usually a key change happens late in a song and is sustained until the end: "man in the mirror" by michael jackson, "love story" by taylor swift...very rarely is a key change downward: "hung up on a dream" by the zombies ("this will be our year" from the same album changes keys upward)
"lost it" changes keys IN THE MIDDLE OF A LYRIC, which renders it conceptually opposite to the general geist of a pop music key change, insofar as it emphasizes continuity instead of rupture. the lyric is "I think I lost it when I [CHANGE] LOST you" and it changes the key from B-flat major to C Major and gives it this weird melancholy but also celebratory feel
I think rina sawayama's "cyber stockholm syndrome" changes keys from A minor to A major (?) which is almost similar but def a bit different in effect
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