Los Doggies

I just love title drops. See if this melody don’t make you want to get down on one knee and start Tebowing your fist into the Heavens. Click on the score to play/stop.

In the key of F#, the top melody moves down in triplets and then up on the “fire.” The bottom harmony remains on the D# and moves in contrary motion, down on the “fire,” creating a suspension over the V chord.

The verses of “St. Elmo’s” are in A Major and the choruses move down 3 steps to F# Major. However, the vocal register moves up, hitting the high C#5 on the “Saint” of the hook. The two keys, Amaj and F#maj are closely related with only one note difference.

The verses change key into the chorus via the Aeolian cadence: D Major to E Major, IV – V in Amaj, or vi – vii in F#maj. The choruses return to the verse using the D diminished 7th chord. Below is a simplified voicing of the chord. Drag over to listen.

The verses aren’t great, but the key change and the choruses make up for that. You can hear the hair in the guy’s voice and I’m pretty sure there’s a Rob Lowe saxophone blowing underneath the song somewhere.

The song is in the key of Db Major, but Ronnie Spector sings her old line over the relative minor (Bb). The Major Third interval from the F to the Db is reminiscent of the bellsong or doorbell.

Here’s how I imagine it all went down: At first, Money belted out the melody, but the producer found it came out a little too awesome, so Sony suggested they get the OG Ronnie to do it, no matter what the cost, and it would probably cost nothing because they owned her too. Perhaps there were copyright issues, so Ronnie had to be involved and she had to sing it wrong. We can’t know.

The original melody from “Be My Baby” is slightly different and in a higher key. Ronnie really sang in E Major, and the “baby” comes in on the offbeats. In “Take Me Home”, the ”baby” is sung evenly on the beat; the ’80s were a rough time. Just listen to the half-time bridge sax solo of the song below, it’s like nobody knew what to do or where to go—more ‘blowback’ from all the cocaine the CIA imported at the time. Or more likely, it’s because the melody serves a different purpose in each song. In “Be My Baby”, it provides counterpoint to the main thrust of the backup singers, so the off-beats work well, whereas in “Take Me Home”, the melody acts as the hook, so it makes sense to give it an on-the-beat feel.

Listen to the drums—that dull straight New Wave feel; the best part of the song is when the drums cut out. You can tell the drummer wants to go wild with all the fills he busts out at the end

Ariel sings a Lydian lullaby changing key every 4 bars, from G Major up to Bb Major and up again to Db Major. Up™. She presumably would’ve kept changing keys forever if Ursula didn’t cut her off. The harmony follows a VI – V chord progression. A similar progression and modulation can be found in the “Mushroom House” music from Super Mario Bros. 3.