Oh Mandy!
One of the terribly formulaic features of bad pop songs is the way they all seem to end: By repeating the last chorus a semi-tone higher. Think Westlife, or the Spice Girls. This is what some musos call the truck driver’s gear change. “What’s wrong with that?”, I hear the less snobbish reader ask. Dominic Pedlar’s introduction explains better than I could:
The objection is that songs which “resort” to the semitone shift do so by merely repeating a previous harmonic idea (almost always the chorus) identically in the new destination, usually that half-step higher. No new interval relationship exists between the chords; therefore, to the extent that there is no other harmonic, melodic or rhythmic development, the trick is seen as a cheap, tacky way of generating artificial momentum.
If you spot an excruciating example of the truck driver’s gear change that isn’t on the site, you can email a suggestion to trucking_awful@gearchange.org
May 19th, 2004 at 18:21
Top link!
Would take issue with ‘Mull of Kintyre’ as it’s a slightly different change. But he’s missed the biggest gear change of all - ‘Mack the Knife’, which basically goes right through the gearbox until the engine jumps out…