And extra-cruel to stick in a 3/4 bar before it hits. If you’ve ever been several pints deep and slightly overconfident by the time you get to that final chorus, you know exactly what we mean.
It’s the nemesis of karaoke singers everywhere. It’s a brazen but extremely effective technique. Not only does the key shift into a far brighter territory at the arrival of the chorus, it only waits for one iteration before it knocks it up another semitone. This is a harmonically complex song anyway, so perhaps it’s no surprise that the key changes are simply one element of it, used as an occasional weapon alongside those crunchy brass chords and stub-your-toe-on-it bassline. When ‘Perfect Illusion’ dropped for the first time, the buzz wasn’t about her raw new image or the subtle tweaks to her sound - it was the honking great key change at the two-thirds mark. Gaga is responsible for a resurgence of interest in the humble key change. But in ‘Love On Top’, because Beyoncé is Beyoncé and naysayers shall be ignored, she bungs in four key changes in under 90 seconds. The chutzpahīeyoncé grew up in the golden age of the key change (80s into 90s, in case you’re wondering) and so it’s no surprise she’s keen on incorporating the odd example into her own work. Not even to pre-empt the chorus, just slap-bang in the middle of it. ‘Can’t Smile Without You’ is one of Manilow’s most inoffensive melodies, right until the moment he throws in a genuinely unexpected semitone rise halfway through the chorus. Absolutely beautifully set up by the preceding instrumental section, the genius of this Motown classic’s key change is how expertly choreographed it is - you see it coming, you feel it coming, and then it actually sounds better than you thought it could.ĭrippy songwriting genius Barry Manilow’s finest key change - finer even than ‘Mandy’ - acts as a shocking gear-shift.