It's something that's been niggling in my mind for a few years now.

You know the situation. The melody that's been playing on the radio for the last two or three minutes suddenly returns, in a different key to what it started off with - usually one tone higher. There's little escaping this phenomenon. Many of the pop songs I have heard on the radio have adopted this means of providing an emotional "tug" towards the end of a song.

Some uses of the Key Change are quite interesting, or even amusing. Bobby Darin's version of "Mack the Knife" is a good example of a song that will just keep on changing key relentlessly. Stevie Wonder's "I Just Called To Say I Love You" also did this a little bit. Some songs even change their key momentarily in the middle, only to return to the original key later.

What are your thoughts on the use and/or abuse of key changes in pop songs?

Well, given that most pop songs have rather simplistic chord progressions and harmonies to begin with, changing key hardly makes much of a difference. It's kind of cheesy, actually, considering that an "emotional effect" would be created far more easily by better use of cadences and more interesting, varied progressions.

However, if you have tied yourself into a certain "riff" (such as the aforementioned "Mack the Knife" and "I Just Called to Say I Love You") then a key change is just the item to make the song more interesting than keeping the same ole key ...

The Rolling Stones avoided this trap by writing a large amount of their tunes in a MINOR key ... (strange sounding enough as their tunes are)

Another song that uses the "Key Change" catch is:
Moonlight Feels Right ... Starbuck

Still others use a "Non-Cohesive Musical Interlude" to break up the song ... such as the tune Cheap Sunglasses ... ZZTop.

It's kind of cheesy, actually, considering that an "emotional effect" would be created far more easily by better use of cadences and more interesting, varied progressions.

You know, one example of this that sprang to my mind this weekend was "How Deep Is Your Love" by the Bee Gees (later Take That minus Robbie).

A bad, bad use of the sort of key change I described, of which I was also reminded this weekend, was in Westlife's not-too-distant cover of Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl" (which originally did not require the use of said key change). Interestingly, the Westlife version was sung in a whole tone below Billy Joel's original version, and to round things off reverted to the same tone as the original! (I have perfect pitch... or at least I used to.)

Mind you, a few of Westlife's other songs employed a different tonic key for the chorus only in comparison to the verse (I think "If I Let You Go" was one of them), only to resort to an even higher change of key as the song ended! (Not that the band owns shares in tight underpants or anything...)


[Note: to write this particular post it has been necessary to listen to such syrup-like ballads over the weekend over and over again. No brain cells were harmed in the making of this post. ]

Barry Manilow used it a lot, too.

Speaking of Barry Manilow, I could make some pithy remarks about this incident, but I shall postpone lest I be attacked by legions of his fans in the street. But then again, who "nose"? (sorry)