The 13 greatest pop songs ...

 ... from a classical music perspective

Britney Spears sings 'Toxic'. Picture: Getty

By Maddy Shaw Roberts

1K

From augmented chords to a random incredible theremin part, these pop songs all give a very pleasing nod to the classical world.

These are undoubtedly the best pop songs of all time (if you’re a classical musician).

1. Toxic – Britney

   Aside from Britney’s iconic vocals, what makes ‘Toxic’ so great is that jarring tritone in the refrain. It’s an unexpected moment of dissonance, and it’s all the more awesome coming from Britney.

2. Good Vibrations – The Beach Boys

   It’s impossible to count the number of tempo changes, key changes and bizarre instruments The Beach Boys used to create their biggest pop hit. From a chorus with one of the greatest modulations in music history to an unexpected appearance from a theremin, ‘Good Vibrations’ is the model of an incredible pop song.

3. I Want You Back – The Jackson 5

   Weirdly, the bassline of ‘I Want You Back’ is nearly as important as its melody. It starts with a thrilling glissando on keys, followed by a battle between the bassline and rhythm guitar line. Then, a third, completely independent line – the main melody – is added over the top, creating ACTUAL THREE-PART COUNTERPOINT. It gets better and better the more you listen to it.

4. Eleanor Rigby – The Beatles

   A killer pop song with… a killer cello part. How often can you say that? ‘Eleanor Rigby’ is just one example of McCartney’s creative genius. Both the lyrics and harmony of ‘Eleanor Rigby’ are eerily melancholic – and that’s largely down to those eerie marcato strings.
   Read more: ‘Eleanor Rigby’ proves that Paul McCartney would’ve been a genius Lieder composer

5. Lovefool – The Cardigans

   Tonally, ‘Lovefool’ never quite makes up its mind. It starts in A minor and occasionally switches into the major, before properly landing in A major for the chorus. But then, the chorus repeats and just when it seems like it’s going to finish in a major key, we’re back to A minor and into the next verse. It’s a tonal tug-of-war, and it’s just brilliant.

6. Scenes from an Italian Restaurant – Billy Joel

   A bottle of white, a bottle of red… the intro of ‘Scenes from an Italian restaurant’ is constantly undercut with those beautiful descending piano phrases. But then, we’re hit with a dramatic tempo change (at 3.36): the octave-jumping semiquavers come in, leading into one of the catchiest solo jazz piano sections in the pop-rock history. It’s the best.

7. Bad Romance – Lady Gaga

   Gaga outed herself as a true music geek when she opened the music video to her 2009 hit with Johann Sebastian Bach’s Fugue in B minor from The Well Tempered Clavier. We always knew she seemed like someone who’d enjoy a bit of Baroque counterpoint action.

8. Breakfast in America – Supertramp

   From a squealing soprano saxophone to a parpy, rhythmic trombone-tuba duet undercutting Roger Hodgson’s vocals, Supertramp are big fans of the brass section. They also use a pleasing harpsichord-esque setting on their keyboard in the opening two bars. We like.

9. Life in a Northern Town – Dream Academy

   ‘Life in a Northern Town’, most famous for its chorus, is a song brimming with nostalgia, something that's mainly achieved, somewhat unexpectedly, with the wistful sound of an oboe. The instrumentation is dominated by acoustic guitar and various keyboards, but the oboe cuts through beautifully.

10. She’s Like a Rainbow – Rolling Stones

    The instrumental passages in ‘She’s like a Rainbow’ might now have been used in about fifteen various car and perfume adverts, but they are still brilliantly original. The opening keyboard refrain, along with the descending strings, sound just like a tinkling music box.

11. Just the Way You Are – Billy Joel

    Otherwise known as the ‘demo’ setting on everyone’s childhood keyboard, ‘Just the Way You Are’ opens with a beautifully soothing electric piano solo – but it’s the saxophone solo, expertly performed by Phil Woods, that really takes the biscuit. Have a listen from 3:00.

12. Without You – Harry Nilsson / Mariah Carey

    Paul McCartney called it “the killer song of all time” – and its power comes from a bunch of really simple, but really emotive piano chords. The way Nilsson uses the opening chords to build up to the climax of the chorus, only to bring us straight back down again, is just agonising.

13. Single Ladies – Beyoncé

    It might not be one of Beyoncé’s more melodic creations, but there are some really interesting bits of music theory going on here. The ‘E’ which runs throughout the song acts as a drone under Bey’s main pentatonic melodies, giving the song a modal feel. But then, she throws in some unexpected chords in the form of siren noises over the top. Why? Because she’s Beyoncé and she can.

Why are pop songs 3 minutes long?

Classical music can vary in length from under a minute to 15 hours (looking at you, Wagner). So why are all pop songs roughly three minutes?

By Victoria Longdon

It turns out the reason most pop songs have wound up at just over three minutes in length is a) really interesting, and b) reveals some important facts about the history of recorded music.

How did this 3 minute length come about?

Around the 1920s shellac records replaced the phonograph cylinder as the technology of choice for recorded music. These 10 inch ‘singles’ stored just over three minutes of music. It wasn’t rocket science – exactly how much music they could store depended on how closely you spaced the grooves on the record. Closer together and you could store more music, but too close together and the sound quality would begin to suffer.

If you were an artist in the 60s or 70s and you wanted your song played on the radio or a jukebox, that song had to be on a single. It was that simple. If it couldn’t fit, it wouldn’t be played, and you’d lose out on your chance for it to become a hit.

But there were a few exceptions

But some crafty producers managed to cheat the system. The legendary hitmaker Phil Spector catapulted the The Righteous Bros’ 1964 hit ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin Feeling’ to stardom by stamping 03:05 on the cover of the single - even though the real running time was 03:45! Many radio presenters played it by accident, and it became the most played song on American radio and television in the 20th century.

New Tech, New Times?

The 80s saw the introduction of the CD, with a vastly improved storage size of 74 minutes (find out why Beethoven is the driving force behind the length of the CD here). You’d think that with all this extra legroom artists could spread out and write what they really wanted to write. Right?

Interestingly, this didn’t happen. What had originally started out as an engineering limitation had now become a commercial advantage. Radio stations were happy to prioritise three minute songs because they meant they could play more advertisements per hour.

Similarly, record producers were equally supportive of the concept of multiple royalties from shorter songs, since most stations paid the artists after three minutes of aired track time.

The artists and the fans didn’t necessarily agree with this, so they started releasing both album length tracks and ‘Radio Edits’ which conformed to the expected length for the airwaves.

The average length of a ‘pop’ song has stayed set at between three and four minutes for the last fifty years or so, but could it all be about to change?

So what now?

Historically three minutes was the minimum amount of time a song played before they paid an artist. Now we’re moving into the streaming age, the average platform will pay artists at around thirty seconds. We can only speculate the effect that this commercial change will have on the pop music of the future, but the era of the three-minute pop song might be spinning to a close.

Definitively the Best Classical Covers of Pop Songs

By Daniel Ross, ClassicFM London

One of the great things about classical musicians is that they’re always up for a cover version. Here are the best classical covers of pop songs on the internet, from Taylor Swift to Michael Jackson.

image: http://assets5.classicfm.com/2016/41/classical-covers-of-pop-songs-1476272346-article-0.jpg

Taylor Swift - Blank Space (Brooklyn Duo)

The cloying eagerness to settle down balanced by the whimsy of living your youth with abandon… Argh, it just feels so real! And even without the lyrics, Brooklyn Duo get it across beautifully.

Mark Ronson - Uptown Funk (Electric Colour Orchestra)

A monster hit that requires its performers to convey as much charisma as Bruno Mars. Do these guys manage it? (YES.)

Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody (Nicholas Hersh)

One of the all-time greats in the pop rep, Bohemian Rhapsody has been reimagined in countless different and inventive ways. But here, turning it into a kind of viola concerto, it sounds like it’s never sounded before.

Adele - Skyfall (Ji Liu)

Classy, solemn, exciting - and that’s just the Adele version. When pianist Ji Liu gets hold of it, though, Skyfall becomes that little bit more heightened.

Play

Ji Liu plays Skyfall

When James Bond meets Rachmaninov

04:03

image: http://cf.c.ooyala.com/N2M29udzoV_6c7V-T_WDNNLiIJkjne2N/rQqFhpGihXXoLKSn4xMDoxOjA4MTsiGN

Nicki Minaj - Anaconda (Lara St. John)

One of the most bonkers pop songs in recent years is given a performance art twist in this invigorating chamber performance.

Michael Jackson - Smooth Criminal (2CELLOS)

The King of Pop is ripe for classical reinterpretation, and many have tried - especially with Smooth Criminal. But the boys from 2CELLOS had it nailed when they stripped the whole song back and let the intensity come to the fore.

Let It Go - Idina Menzel (The Piano Guys)

This list wouldn’t be complete without the Piano Guys, who arguably kickstarted this whole movement for classical covers of pop songs in the YouTube generation. Their delicate mash-ups (on this occasion they’ve paired the Disney classic with some Vivaldi) are as ingenious as they are infectious, and this might just be their best one.

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