Now that my semester is done, it’s time to start thinking about the next one. I like to spend the first day of class on a song that encompasses all the big themes and topics we’ll be covering. For this spring’s pop theory kids, I chose “Dancing in the Streets” by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas (1964).
I was reminded of this timeless banger by Andrew Hickey’s 500 Songs podcast episode on “Heatwave”, which gives much better background on the song and the people behind it than I could. The episode mentions that this song was unusual for its era because it sits on one chord for long stretches, well before James Brown or Parliament started using single-chord grooves. The song is musically interesting for many other reasons too. Here’s an annotated listening guide.
0:00
The track begins with a massive drum fill. The drummer is Marvin Gaye, who also co-wrote the song with Mickey Stevenson and Ivy Jo Hunter. Stevenson produced the recording.
0:01
The opening groove is in E Mixolydian mode, like E major but with D instead of D-sharp. The bass pedals E throughout. When Andrew Hickey describes this as a one-chord groove, that isn’t exactly true. The guitars and organ alternate D and E chords. Over the E pedal, the D chord functions as E9sus4. You could think of both chords as different voicings of E7 if you wanted to, making this an example of what Philip Tagg calls “one-chord changes.” Some instrument (I think the organ) hits the D chords on beat two in the measure, but then hits the E chords half a beat before beat four. That gives an asymmetrical edge to the otherwise steady pendulum swing of the chords.
I can’t neatly sum up why this groove is so exciting, but I can point you to one interesting feature of it: Marvin Gaye’s snare hits are consistently a little beat early. Here are the second and third measures:
Each of those snare hits is ever so slightly before the beat it’s supposed to fall on. This is not because Marvin Gaye is a bad drummer. He’s an excellent drummer! By playing a little ahead of the beat, he makes everyone else feel like they’re laying back.
0:08
Martha Reeves’ lead vocal enters. Her performance has a tart edge to it, because she had just delivered a perfect first take but the tape machine hadn’t been running. So for this take, the second, her energy is very, “You guys better be paying attention.” The melody stays in a narrow range around a central E: it goes up a third to G-sharp and down a third to C-sharp, and that’s its entire extent for this part. It does open up wider as the song goes on, though.
0:22
“They’re dancin’ in Chicago.” All the cities listed in the lyrics had large Black populations at the time. The song later became a Black Panther anthem, with “dancing” interpreted as a stand-in for other revolutionary actions one might perform in the street.
0:31
There is some disruption to the hypermeter. Up until this point, the measures have been grouped into neat units of four. The lyrics split across the hypermeasures like so:
- Calling out around the world, are you ready for a brand new beat?
- Summer’s here and the time is right for dancing in the street, they’re dancing in Chi-
- cago (dancing in the street), down in New Orleans (dancing in the street), in New York
- City (dancing in the street), All we need is…
And then the word “music” will be in the next hypermetrical unit. But wait! That last unit is only two measures long, not four. This has the same effect at the structural midlevel that an odd-length bar would have at the metrical level; you can feel your sense of orientation in the time being turned around.
0:35
The first real chord change in the song, to an A chord. (We have been considering the alternating D/E and E chords in the main groove to really be two different voicings of E7.) Some people say that the change to A is a significant enough structural event to call this a new song section, the prechorus. I think we’re still in verse one, but we have definitely turned a corner. The vocal melody is fascinating here. Martha Reeves sings the word “music” on F-sharp, the sixth of the chord. She sings “sweet music” walking down the E major scale from A to E, implying Amaj7, and ends that phrase on F-sharp too. It’s so cool! This is a mild example of melodic-harmonic divorce, where the melody and harmony are part of the same overall key, but specific melody notes are independent of the specific underlying chords.
0:40
Martha Reeves sings the first syllable of “everywhere” on a G-natural, changing the feel from Amaj7 to a bluesier A7.
0:43
Back to the main groove. Lovely backing vocal line from the Vandellas.
0:50
The bridge begins on a striking new chord, G#7. This chord’s third is B-sharp, and that is not part of the key of E. This outside note will make perfect sense in a few seconds; it’s the leading tone in the key of C# minor, and that’s where we’re about to be headed. And yes, B-sharp is a real note! You play it using the same piano key as C, but on continuous-pitch instruments, you don’t tune it the same way as C. I explain in more depth here. Martha Reeves is still singing the same collection of notes she was using on the verse, but they take on a dramatically different feeling over this new chord implying a new key.
0:54
The expected C#m chord, retroactively making sense of G#7.
0:58
An F#m chord. This sounds like it might be the iv chord in C# minor, but it turns out to be setting us up for a ii-V-I cadence back in the original key of E major.
1:02
B7sus4, resolving to B7, resolving back to E, but it won’t resolve to E, it will resolve to D/E as the main groove resumes.
1:04
What is that note! Music notation is not the right tool for the job here. I isolated the vocals with Moises and then used Melodyne to analyze the pitches. Here’s an annotated screencap:
The word “world” starts exactly halfway between F-sharp and G before bending most of the way up to G. The word “there’ll” by bends right back down to that halfway pitch. That is an excellent blue note.
1:05
A four bar break that transitions seamlessly into the second verse.
1:13
Second verse, essentially the same as the first.
1:55
Second bridge. Martha Reeves sings a new melody over it, with wider interval jumps.
1:57
Check out the line “It doesn’t matter what you wear.” On the word “wear”, Martha Reeves jumps up to the note C-sharp. She’s singing over the G#7 chord, which makes C-sharp the suspended fourth. It’s an ironclad convention of Western tonal theory that suspended fourths should resolve back to the third, but Reeves doesn’t. She isn’t really singing the notes in the chord, she’s singing C# minor pentatonic. In bluesy melodies like this, you really do not have to follow the changes at all.
2:06
This time through the line “everywhere around the world”, Martha Reeves doesn’t use any blue notes, but she does use a cool blues melodic shape. Check out the word “world.” The first half of the word is on C-sharp, the ninth of the B7 chord. The second half of the word is on G-sharp, the sixth of the B7 chord. The next two syllables, “they’re” and “dance” are both on G-sharp too. These seem like wild and jazzy note choices, but they aren’t. Reeves is still singing C# minor/E major pentatonic all the way across, and those notes just happen to make exciting colors against the more functionally tonal chords.
2:10
Back to the main groove, which continues through the fadeout. You could extend this groove out for a long time if you wanted. The Grateful Dead took advantage of the song’s open-ended structure and used it as one of their early launchpads for extended Mixolydian jams. They also brought the song back in the 1970s in a mildly awkward disco arrangement; the open-ended groove sections continued to be fun at least.
While we’re talking about covers, I feel obligated to talk about the breathtakingly dorky 80s version by Mick Jagger and David Bowie. I blame Jagger for its dorkiness, because David Bowie both looked and sounded perfectly reasonable in the 80s. Mick Jagger has settled into being charmingly weird in his old age, but middle age was rough for him.
Anyway, that’s the plan for the first day of music theory class. Now I need to figure out what to do for the first day of aural skills.
Excellent analysis. Thank you.