At last the Geir Hongro Challenge!!

"White Car in Germany" by the Associates has a jaw-dropping melody. The opening root-5th-octave synth bass line leaves you wondering whether the song is in a major or a minor key. It settles seemingly into a major key when the lead synth enters with the chorus(although the ever-present opening synth dribble (not the bass line) occasionally hits a flat 2nd, adding a lot of strange tension), but the opening vocal begins with a minor figure, coinciding with a similar shift in the backing track. The first time I heard this, I found it very odd and disorienting; it was hard to grasp the melody at first, but when I did I was floored. Another cool thing is the way that MacKenzie begins the third line of the verse on a major 2nd.

Some might say the melody's shortcoming is its resemblance to a line that should be played on a synth -- rhythmically, this might be a fair judgment, since the chorus is pretty much all quarter notes, and the verses aren't that much more complex -- but this only illuminates its strengths more clearly. MacKenzie's vocal is so amazing, too, in terms of delaying lines ever so slightly, shading the stately melodic line with vibrato, etc., that you hardly even notice the melodic line's rhythmic simplicity. In fact, I only noticed it just now when I was trying to come up with something to say about it.

(For other good melodies, see also -- well, pretty much anything by Rankine/MacKenzie ever.)

2. Bad melody

The melody of Richard Marx's "Right Here Waiting For You" is incredibly dull and lifeless. The same criticism about the melodic line's too-simple rhythm could be leveled here; the difference is, Marx actually sounds like a synth -- scratch that, a $40 Radio Shack Casio if it had a "creamy-voiced tool" setting. He just goes from one note to the note closest to it on the scale -- no leaps to create interest/imply striving/falling/whatever. The first "I will be right here waiting for you" actually ends on a 5th after climbing stepwise down the scale! It's the limpest thing ever.

Not Level 42. Dunno too much about Kajagoogoo, but I have the impression they got more musically complex after Limahl went solo.

Meet the 80s....

Good melody - "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down"
so perfect that any change kills it for me (see
Joan Baez). Still, the arrangement and performance
are vital icing on the cake; any rendition by
pro-tooling sessionsists would sound awful.

Bad melody - 75% of all Jim Morrison vocal melodies. The
Doors still kick ass, of course, but for different
reasons.

Re: "Meet the 80s..." true, but it _was_ the decade of Firehose,
Talking Heads, and _Skylarking_, all of which had organic
production. It was a tough decade, though, and a lot of
great songwriters produced sonically shitty product.

awaiting return of mark s.....

Revive! Ain't nothing like the good old days...

I don't see the point in clubs for indie fans at all. At least clubs where you are supposed to dance. Indie fans don't dance.

― Geir Hongro, Wednesday, 10 December 2008 14:18 (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

he meant 'can't' - these language barriers...

Indie fans don't dance, they just pull up their pants and do the rockaway

No, it is just yet another evidence that (melodic) pop will always remain better than rock.
― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Saturday, 5 April 2003 19:41 (eighteen years ago)

Correct, but English melodies are about a hundred times inferior to the Arabesk pop of müslüm gürses. Listen to Tanri istemezse and you will realise that the entire corpus of white pop music is not nearly melodic enough. and that is just one song. Key changes mask a lack of talent.

12 tones are too mathematically limited. To have absolute melodic supremacy you need complete resolution, and 12 tones do not fully resolve.