18 More Eurochoruses

Semi-Final 2. Here’s how the refrains worked out, in terms of tonic chords and otherwise.

Serbia - Nije ljubav stvar

Not in verse-chorus form, which makes a nice change. But the tonic chord happens at the start of the refrain.

Macedonia - Crno i belo

Tonic chorus.

Netherlands - You and Me

Tonic chorus.

Malta - This Is the Night

Tonic on the refrain. I had a brief ethical dilemma with this one – after all, the verses are minor, but the chorus hits the tonic major. So how come major key Malta gets a pass, but Switzerland’s major verse/minor chorus qualified as a key change, with a non-tonic chord at the top?

I reason thus: Switzerland used an interrupted cadence, and the start of the chorus felt like a break, like a fresh idea. Malta have used a perfect cadence, and the chorus feels like coming home, as though the song was really in a major key all along.

Belarus - We Are the Heroes

Tonic chorus.

Portugal - Vida minha

It’s nearly the tonic chord at the top of the chorus, but it takes a bar to resolve.

Ukraine - Be My Guest

Another song with the same chord progression throughout (I-bIII-bVII-IV). Tonic right at the top.

Bulgaria - Love Unlimited

Tonic chorus.

Slovenia - Verjamem

Tonic chorus.

Croatia - Nebo

Damn, but all these songs sound the same tonight. Non-tonic chorus, however.

Sweden - Euphoria

Tricky, this one. It feels like the tonic minor when the chorus starts, but then the chorus itself moves to, and stays on, the relative major (at the “uh-uh-uh-uh” bit). It finishes in the major too, so I have to call this a non-tonic chorus.

Georgia - I’m a Joker

Another song that isn’t in verse-chorus form. Tonic on the refrain. If it were up to me, this sort of thing would win a lot more often than it does. Which is pretty much never.

Turkey - Love Me Back

Such a tease on the dominant the first time, before the chorus happens! Tonic chord when it does.

Estonia - Kuula

Ah, my old friend! Can’t Smile Without You, Last Christmas, Cuts Both Ways, Why God Why?, how I have missed you. Tonic on the first chord of the refrain. Nice extension of the form after that, but tonic on the refrain.

Slovakia - Don’t Close Your Eyes

Tonic on the refrain.

Norway - Stay

Depends what you call the chorus. It probably has to be the “I don’t know what I’m doing tonight” section, which would qualify as a non-tonic chorus. More songs with flattened ninths, please.

Bosnia and Herzegovina - Korake ti znam

Tonic chord on the refrain. Pretty extensions on the tonic chord the first time, but still the tonic chord.

Lithuania - Love Is Blind

Tonic refrain.

Of the ten qualifying songs, eight tonic chord refrains. And two non-tonic refrains, obviously.

Of the eight non-qualifying songs, two non-tonic refrains – there were only four non-tonic refrains in the entire night.

But this means that the twenty songs in the final (so far – The Big Five and host country are yet to be heard) will feature four non-tonic refrains, from a possible ten, and sixteen tonic refrains, from a possible twenty-six.

40% chance of qualifying for a non-tonic chorus, 61.5% for tonic. If the favourites, Sweden, win (and they may have already done so, but faithful Australians won’t watch the final until Sunday night, our time), they’ll have the first non-tonic winning refrain since the hat-trick of Latvia’s “I Wanna” in 2002, Turkey’s “Everyway That I Can” in 2003, and Ukraine’s “Wild Dances” in 2004.

Eurokeys, Eurochords and the Eurochorus

For those who’ve not heard me bang on about this in the past, a little preamble.

I contend (and I’ve crunched the numbers) that a Eurovision entry has a better chance of winning if the song’s chord progression hits the tonic chord at the top of the refrain. There was a time when I thought the song had to be in a major key, too, but several recent minor key winners have shaken my faith there.

No doubts about the tonic chord at the top of the refrain, though. For non-musicians, the tonic chord is the home chord of a song’s key. If the song is in the key of D major, D major is the tonic chord. If the song is in F minor, F minor is the tonic chord. The refrain is usually the chorus, but even in songs that aren’t in verse-chorus form, the refrain is the part that’s heard the most.

The tonic chord makes a progression sound as though it’s arrived somewhere, like it’s come home. Here’s an example, for a song in D major:

Verse: |D        |E         |A   G    |A        |

|D        |E         |A   G    |A        |

|Bm     |Bm     |Bm       |E7      |

|A         |A7      |

Chorus:  |D        |D         |G          |G          |

|A         |A         |D          |A         |

That’s the progression for ABBA’s Waterloo. Think about how that chorus lands right at its beginning (“always repeating itseeeeeeeeeelf … Waterloo”). Boom. That’s how you win Eurovision.

I’m not saying there aren’t magnificent songs with refrains that start on something other than the tonic chord. All The Things You Are famously holds off on the tonic chord until its very end, and it’s gorgeous. Kylie Minogue’s I Should Be So Lucky, to pick a pop song example, saves the tonic chord until the final bar of the chorus, and it sold a truckload of singles. But a chorus that sounds restless, or that sounds forward-moving is, I think, not a Eurochorus. The Eurochorus feels like this:

This. Here. This is the chorus. Now.

Last night, for Aussie viewers, was Eurovision’s first Semi-Final. Here’s how the entries, in tonic refrain terms, played out:

Montenegro – Euro Neuro

Like a lot of – ahem – rap, this song has a one-chord funk groove for the verses. The chorus shifts to a different chord, effectively functioning as a movement away from the tonic. Plus it’s dreadful.

Iceland – Never Forget

Minor key verse, which resolves to the tonic. Pre-chorus, or climb, that works itself up to a big fat dominant chord (that’s the fifth chord of the scale, and it longs to resolve to the tonic). Then, sure enough, tonic minor chord, right at the top of the chorus. The third chorus has the vocals-only-breakdown-at-the-key-change trick. Worthy of Broadway. Not good Broadway, but still.

Greece – Aphrodisiac

Minor key verse, which works up to the dominant. Minor key chorus, starting on the tonic. Vocals-only breakdown on the third chorus, but without the key change.

Latvia – Beautiful Song

Minor key verse, which resolves to the tonic. Chorus finishes on the tonic, but doesn’t start there. Oh, and a vocals-only breakdown for the third chorus.

Albania – Suus

Minor key verses, the second of which resolves to the tonic. The chorus (quite pretty, these chords) starts away from the tonic, and gets back there by the end. Someone did a jazzy, trained-musician chord progression like this last year, and they didn’t win either.

Romania – Zaleilah

Major key verse (in fact, it’s the classic I-V-vi-IV four-chord progression). Tonic chord at the top of the chorus.

Switzerland – Unbreakable

Major key verse, working up to the dominant. Then an interrupted cadence! Relative minor chord at the top of the chorus! This becomes the new tonic, and the songs resolves in the minor key. Emo madness!

Belgium - Would You

Major key verse, which works up to the dominant. Chorus starts on the tonic.

Finland – Nar Jag Blundar

Nice chord progression, this one. You can’t tell if the song’s major or minor, until it hits the chorus. Turns out it’s minor, but the chorus doesn’t start on the tonic.

Israel – Time

Major key verse, working its way to the dominant. A major key chorus, with the tonic firmly at the top.

San Marino – The Social Network Song

Minor key verse, ends on the dominant. Minor key chorus, with the tonic at the start. Also dreadful.

Cyprus – La La Love

Minor key verse, which resolves to the tonic. Pre-chorus resolves to the tonic too. Chorus starts away from the tonic. Vocals-only breakdown on the third chorus!

Denmark – Should’ve Known Better

One of those songs with the same chord progression throughout, and it’s one that starts on the tonic minor: i – III – bVII – IV, a faithful standby heard most often in the verses to Wonderwall, by Oasis.

Russia – Party For Everybody

Tonic minor for the verse? Wait, it wasn’t a verse. OK, that’s the verse, with a tonic minor. Pre-chorus works its way to the dominant, then boom – tonic minor on the chorus.

Hungary – Sound of Our Hearts

Minor key verse, resolving on the tonic. Then the chorus starts on the tonic too, which is a bit of a snooze, harmonically. Later, the second verse introduces a little pre-chorus, ending on the bVII. Tonic at the top of the chorus.

Austria – Woki Mit Deim Popo

Minor key verse, with “rapped” vocals, ending on the bVII. Minor key chorus, with the tonic at the top. Horrendous.

Moldova – Lautar

Minor key verse, dominant at the end, and tonic minor at the top of the chorus. Key change for the final choruses. Easily my favourite song of the night, which is never a guarantee of success.

Ireland – Waterline

Major key verse, pre-chorus takes it up to the dominant. Then the chorus is in a new key! But it starts on that new key’s tonic major chord. Reminds me, structurally, of Westlife’s When You’re Looking Like That. Vocals-only breakdown on the third chorus. Naturally.

Iceland, Greece, Albania, Romania, Cyprus, Denmark, Russia, Hungary, Moldova and Ireland made it into the final. Of these ten songs,  eight began their choruses on the tonic.

Montenegro, Latvia, Switzerland, Belgium, Finland, Israel, San Marino and Austria were eliminated. Of these eight songs, four began their choruses on a chord other than the tonic.

We’ll see how it all pans out in the final, of course.

On Writing a Marilyn Musical – A Different Take

Fifty Cent Soul

Lights up on a man, riding a woman. She is on all fours, dressed in lingerie. He is wearing a shirt and tie, and apparently nothing else. The man is Chicago mob boss SAM GIANCANA, and the woman is MARILYN MONROE.

“Bobby, you’re next!” sings SAM, while he slaps playfully at MARILYN with a riding crop. BOBBY KENNEDY, smoking pensively in the corner, says nothing.

“As unresponsive as a fossil!” sings MARILYN, in a surprisingly full soprano. This is an actual quotation, and that’s all she’ll sing, all night: fragments of things she really said.

BOBBY pushes SAM off MARILYN, and tries to kiss her.

“Lipstick and mascara and precocious curves,” sings MARILYN, running away from him, “as unresponsive as a fossil!”

BOBBY slaps her, and returns angrily to his corner. Another blonde woman enters, and comforts MARILYN. This is JEAN HARLOW.

“Machinery is going to take the place of every profession,” sings JEAN.

“As unresponsive as a fossil,” sings MARILYN.

SAM tries to grope both women. Then JANE RUSSELL enters, and shoots BOBBY KENNEDY dead.

All three women face the audience, get down on all fours, and press their palms into wet cement squares at the edge of the stage. “Jane/Jean/Norma Jean,” they chant while SAM rides them, one after the other.

Pros: This freewheeling, grab-bag approach to the culture surrounding Monroe allows a writer tremendous scope, and can avoid all those straightjacketing bio-fiction cliches.

Cons: An indulgent and shallow approach like this can be clever, but usually that’s all it can be. Me, personally?  I’d thoroughly enjoy this night. But in terms of writing the show that appears in Smash – a big, glossy, mainstream Broadway show – this is cheating. It would never get enough backers.

On Writing a Marilyn Musical – An Opening Number, Take Two

A second suggestion for a Marilyn Monroe opening number, and the kind of show it promises:

Marilyn: I Am the Blonde

Lights up on a funeral scene. Three men stand before a casket, their backs to the audience. We never really knew her, they sing. We tried to save her, they sing.

The first man, JOE DIMAGGIO, turns to tell the audience about the nice girl ruined by fame. A MARILYN appears and sings with him – they argue about USO shows and skirt-blowing in public.

The second man, ARTHUR MILLER, turns to tell the audience of the intellectually curious but troubled actress he knew. ANOTHER MARILYN appears with him, and together they sing, arguing about infidelity and drugs.

The third man tells JOE and ARTHUR how wrong they are. Who is he? they ask. He is JAMES DOUGHERTY, Marilyn’s first husband, and he was the love of her life, he says. A third Marilyn (a pretty brunette named NORMA JEAN) appears, and she and JAMES argue about modelling. All the Marilyns and all the men sing and dance together. It was thrilling, it was fun, they sing. It was maddening, it was wild, they sing. But none of us really knew her, sing the men. And none of us could save her. Everyone leaves the stage, except for NORMA JEAN, who has decided to dye her hair.

Pros: Tries to make a virtue of Monroe’s many contradictory natures. This is what the evening will be about.

Cons: Slightly less obvious than the first effort, but still pretty damn by-the-numbers.

On Writing a Marilyn Musical – An Opening Number

Writers much more accomplished than I have pointed it out: the opening number is vital to a musical’s success or failure. It tells the audience what the evening is to be about, and it has to tell the truth. If it’s satirical, the show, overall, needs to be satirical too. If it’s earnest, then a more or less earnest evening has been promised to the audience. Break that promise at your peril.

Some suggestions, then, for a Marilyn Monroe opening number, and the kind of show it promises:

Marilyn! The Musical

Lights up on the set of Some Like it Hot. Everyone is waiting for MARILYN to arrive. She is late. JACK LEMMON and TONY CURTIS sing about how she drives them crazy, but boy, she sure can deliver. BILLY WILDER sings about how talented she is, but only he can really see it. MARILYN arrives, all flustered and vulnerable, apologises, and everyone forgives her. She nails her scenes in one take. Everyone applauds and sings about how beautiful she is. ARTHUR MILLER arrives to take MARILYN to a late lunch, and she sings about she wants to get away for a break, just the two of them. A FAN stops MARILYN for an autograph, and asks her for some career advice. Flashback to her childhood.

Pros: Exactly what everyone is expecting from a Marilyn Monroe musical.

Cons: Exactly what everyone is expecting from a Marilyn Monroe musical.

On Writing a Marilyn Musical

I’ve been watching Smash, because it’s trashy and fun. And, like many viewers, I’ve been saying “Wait. They’re auditioning without a script?” and “Hang on, who’s writing the book for this thing?”

Fair enough, Smash is a fantasy, and watching writers at work on a script is incredibly tedious. But the show has glossed over the near-impossibility of writing a decent musical about Marilyn Monroe. The characters of Julia and Tom, Broadway’s hottest songwriting couple, know that Monroe has been the subject of past flops, but they talked themselves out of that problem in the first episode with a hastily staged baseball number (also, incidentally, a feature of more flops than hits), and since then it’s been all systems go.

I’m going to take the task seriously, and really try to write an outline (as in place the scenes and songs) for a Marilyn musical.

First, Some Objections

1. Her story doesn’t sing.

Image via Wikipedia

I don’t mean it isn’t easy to place songs – it’s too easy, thanks to Monroe’s musical comedies, and her serenading of JFK in that breathless, highly imitable voice (go on, imagine listening to it all night). No, her story doesn’t sing, in that her life doesn’t have a single dramatic focus. Like many film actresses, she went from one project to another. Some films did well, others not. Husbands appeared. Husbands left. Her story is not like that in Evita: girl is born in poverty, sleeps her way upwards, gets married, grows powerful, becomes a paradox, dies of cancer. The only way to give Marilyn Monroe’s life a single dramatic focus is to, well, give her a single dramatic focus. We’re familiar with all the possibilities that offers, and that leads to the next objection.

2. We know too much. Way too much.

The strength of Evita is that she’s not a figure in popular culture. And if she is, it’s because of the musical. Monroe, on the other hand, is exhausted, and exhausting. We know about foster homes, abuse, early divorce, pin-ups, hair dye, the walk, the voice, bras in bed, more divorce, Strasbergs, barbiturates, lateness, Tony Curtis, Hitler, Kennedys, Sinatra, gangsters, death. We know it all, and it’s all been arranged in order to make sense so many times that even the ways of telling it are overly familiar: Marilyn Wanted to be Taken Seriously. Marilyn Just Wanted True Love. Marilyn Was a Proto-Feminist Victim of the System. Marilyn Was Trying to Please Daddy. All of which lead me to the biggest objection of all.

3. PEOPLE WHO GET EVERYTHING THEY WANT ARE SUPPOSED TO BE HAPPY.

This is, for me, why most stories of artists and showbiz types don’t work as bio-fiction. We spend the first hour watching them trying to get famous. They do pretty much whatever it takes. Why can’t the world see what they got? Then the world sees it! They’re famous! They’re beloved! But still not happy. The last hour is spent listening to them whine about how fame wasn’t what they expected. And I think: shut up, you brat. Get a real problem. If you hate it so much, retire. Take photographs of dogs. Care for the elderly. Become a swimming teacher. Because all non-showbiz lives are just as valid as yours, you pampered little wuss.

With those objections in mind, I’m still going to take a crack at it.

12 Uplifting Facts About Popular Music

Yes, I’ve not posted in ages. Let’s just not talk about it again, shall we?

In response to this, I submit the following:

1. Elvis was, at first, promoted as a singing hillbilly. And old farts complained that he sold more records than Bing Crosby. Time has seen them both deservedly in the pantheon.

2. “Yesterday” has had more covers and more airplay than anything by anyone else ever.

3. In 1966, people bought more singles than they do today; in fact, more than they have in any year since. That’s total, not per capita. If you had a Number One in 1966, it was a bigger achievement than any Number One since. Also, today there are more charts, and different ways of calculating sales. Additionally, charts favour quick, recent sellers (like Rihanna) over steady, older sellers (like Hendrix, Marley, Cash). Oh, and record companies routinely lie. All of which means that worrying over “recent X has had more Number Ones than classic Y” is meaningless.

4. This is Stacey Q. She had two major hits in 1986, which were both rubbish, and 25 years later they are almost never heard.

5. The Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling” is damn catchy, and may have sold more copies than any Elvis or Simon & Garfunkel song, but that’s not the same as being more popular. “Bridge Over Troubled Water” lives in a special place inside me, where The Black Eyed Peas have never been.

6.For the first half of the last century, no women became multi-millionaires through their efforts as music performers or writers. The music business is still laughably sexist, but there are now dozens of successful, rich and powerful female artists.

7. Same with black men.

8. This is Bros. See the earlier bit about Stacey Q.

9. I happen to think Barbra Streisand, at her best, was better than Pearl Jam. Maybe better than Tom Petty too.

10. I first heard Joanna Newsom on a free podcast, and bought her triple album in minutes online. Very little of that previous sentence made sense 10 years ago.

11. My kids like ELO, Bob Marley, Split Enz, Katy Perry, Mel Torme, Lady Gaga, Avril Lavigne, AC/DC and Adele. They like them all in the same way, blissfully unconcerned with genre or decade.

12. This young woman exists. She sings well, plays instruments, writes her own songs, is very popular, and doesn’t dress like a child prostitute.

An Open Letter to Howard Sherman, Executive Director of the American Theatre Wing

First, congratulations on a terrific Tonys telecast. It was fast, bright and funny.

Second, please put the award for Best Original Score back in the middle of the evening, where it belongs.

I believe I know the main arguments against reinstating this award, and I think they’re all inadequate. Here they are:

1. Nobody cares about original showtunes any more. Audiences want songs they already know.

In the last five years, four of the Tonys for Best Musical have gone to the show that also won the Tony for Best Original Score. Four times in five years, and in all those years there were a healthy four nominees for Best Original Score. Do you know how far back you have to go to see that again, four out of five, all in years with four nominees?

1964-1968.

Yes, you have to go back to the end of the musical’s so-called Golden Age, to the seasons that began with Fiddler on the Roof and ended with the arrival of Hair. Granted, there’s been some help from the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League themselves, nominating Enron and Fences last year for Best Original Score, but you can’t argue that the jukebox musical is the dominant force on Broadway today. I know it’s hard to believe, but we are in the middle of a minor Golden Era for original scores on Broadway, and the Tonys don’t seem to know it.

The success of these doubly-awarded shows indicates that audiences do care about original showtunes, that they want songs they don’t already know, and they want them in award-winning hit musicals. The American Theatre Wing should be trumpeting this news every year, and instead everyone is behaving as if original showtunes are endangered, and too thin on the ground to celebrate.

2. It’s the performances that rate well on Award night. The writers aren’t good TV.

Except that this year, some of the finest moments of the telecast were courtesy of writers of showtunes. An original opening number, by Tony Award-nominated songwriters? A closing number, edited to suit the evening’s events, by a Tony Award-winning songwriter? No other Awards show can make use of this kind of talent, but the talent goes un-named. Here’s what should happen:

Two men approach the podium.

Man 1: Hi. We’re David Javerbaum and Adam Schlesinger.
Man 2: And we wrote that opening number for tonight’s show.

Applause.

Man 1 (David): The nominees for Best Original Score are …

3. There isn’t time.

Yes there is, if songwriters matter to musicals. If there is time to repeat a number from a show that already won last year, and if there is time for a number from a high-profile production that has yet to open, then there is time to award songwriters who have a) not already been awarded and b) wrote shows that have actually opened.

4. The telecast is primarily about attracting tourists, and only secondarily about rewarding talent.

If this cynical view is an accurate one, it is even more important to reinstate the writers – all the writers, whether they write revues, jukebox shows, special events, book, music or lyrics. If they are not celebrated they will move elsewhere, and without their new shows what will the tourists come and see?

5. But there were several songwriters featured in the telecast!

There were, and here’s who they were:

Paul Schaffer
Bono and The Edge
Trey Parker, Matt Stone and Robert Lopez

The message to would-be theatre songwriters is clear: be already famous. Be rock stars or be television-famous. Or be the winners – two of whom are already television-famous.

Here’s a sobering thought: if Cole Porter and Frank Loesser were still alive, they would not have been seen last night, even though their work was featured. Can I be sure of this? Yes, because John Kander, who is still alive, was named but not shown in any way. On a night when the (almost certainly) last Broadway Kander and Ebb score was nominated, John Kander was not shown, but non-nominees Bono and The Edge were.

5. Every award can be seen on the web.

Indeed, and soon a telecast and a webcast will be the same thing. I reckon you’ve got five years – ten, if all the TV networks really drag their feet. Once the two join together into one live-tweeted/blogged/webcasted/TV event, anything that’s not included in the main portion of the evening will be sought out only by completists and buffs willing to search archived videos. In other words, the songwriters will become even more obscure than they already are, and we’ll still only see the winners, rather than all the nominees.

6. So if the whole thing’s going online, who cares where the awards are placed?

It matters because the placement emphasises the award’s importance. The award for Best Musical is right at the end of the night. Clearly, musicals matter to the evening, commercially and artistically. And note that, while they are called musicals, we do not see who writes the scores  unless they win something else later. We see actors, directors and producers. We see presenters with a tenuous connection to the production. But we don’t see most of those who make musicals, well, musical.

The opportunity is here, and it is now. Put the writers back in the centre of the action, a place their efforts have earned. Do it before the whole business moves online. Do it while musical theatre still has the internet’s attention. Don’t demonstrate that the musical theatre is a thriving form that apparently writes itself; instead, demonstrate that the form is thriving, and celebrate the writers who are making it thrive.

7. I suppose you’d also like to see a reinstatement of Best Choreography?

Yes, I would. But first things first.

Regards,

Peter J. Casey
A writer of showtunes

Some Tweets I Didn’t Want to Lose

Most of my time on twitter is spent avoiding songwriting and music duties, so there’s not been much about tweeting in this blog.

But yesterday I procrastinated at work by playing a game with myself called #snaredrum80s. Not much to it: describe, as precisely as you can, the sound of a snare drum in an ’80s recording. Here are the results:

Violent Femmes, "Blister in the Sun": a champagne flute inside a paper bag being stomped #snaredrum80s—
Peter J Casey (@peterjcaseytwit) June 08, 2011

New Order, "Blue Monday": a punch landing on a goon's jaw in a 1970s Hong Kong martial arts film #snaredrum80s—
Peter J Casey (@peterjcaseytwit) June 08, 2011

Bruce Springsteen, "Born in the USA": a large handgun going off in a tiled shower stall #snaredrum80s—
Peter J Casey (@peterjcaseytwit) June 08, 2011

Tom Petty, "Don't Come Around Here No More": a pumpkin landing in a foil-lined bucket #snaredrum80s—
Peter J Casey (@peterjcaseytwit) June 08, 2011

A-Ha, "Take On Me": a small, stuffed packing case being hit with a cricket bat #snaredrum80s—
Peter J Casey (@peterjcaseytwit) June 08, 2011

Ultravox, "Vienna": the sudden, smothered sneeze of a repressed woman #snaredrum80s—
Peter J Casey (@peterjcaseytwit) June 08, 2011

Def Leppard, "Pour Some Sugar On Me": An 8 ft helium balloon popping inside a church. #snaredrum80s—
Peter J Casey (@peterjcaseytwit) June 08, 2011

Fine Young Cannibals, "She Drives Me Crazy": Two light bulbs smacking into each other #snaredrum80s—
Peter J Casey (@peterjcaseytwit) June 08, 2011

Michael Jackson, "Bad": A wet buttock slapped in an underground carpark #snaredrum80s—
Peter J Casey (@peterjcaseytwit) June 08, 2011

Now I think I’ll drop a pumpkin in a foil-lined bucket and record the results.

Incidentally, tweeting about martial arts got me five new followers, all martial arts bots. We will have so much to talk about!

Eurotheory, Part Three – The Final Countdown

So here they are, the top ten countries in Eurovision 2011:

Azerbaijan
Italy
Sweden
Ukraine
Denmark
Bosnia & Herzegovina
Greece
Ireland
Georgia
Germany

Here’s how they look as choruses in a major/minor key, starting on the tonic chord (key change in parentheses):

major, tonic (no)
minor, tonic (no)
minor, tonic (hell, yes)
minor, tonic (no)
major, tonic (no)
minor, non-tonic (yes)
minor, tonic (yes)
minor, tonic (no)
minor, tonic (no)
minor, tonic (no)

Commiserations to the songwriters who tried starting their choruses on something other than the tonic. May they console themselves with dark mutterings about voting blocs and former Soviet economies.