The Regular Friday Post
Rando Lyric: There is no meaning For this to happen
Last week’s rando lyrics: The lyric, “Maybe we're lying, then you better not stay” is from the song "Heroes”, performed by David Bowie. Written by David Bowie and Brian Eno in 1977, and recorded as Track 3 on Side 1 of the album, “Heroes” in 1977. “Heroes” was produced by David Bowie and Tony Visconti.
Credit: Wikipedia Link: Heroes (song) Heroes (album)
See also excerpts from a Songfacts article after the YouTube video in the “Some Stuff” section.
Welcome to The Regular Friday post!
I hope you enjoyed the “links” post from last Saturday! (Link here if you missed it: Michael Acoustic Links)
I think I will make that a feature, though only as links kind of pile up to the extent that they are useful but not particularly time driven. I’ll still share some links each week, but I’ll limit them to timely, current articles (see below).
Today’s “A Song To Play” is David Bowie’s “Heroes”
Some Stuff:
Some Links (Ed. - limited to timely links this week from Music Business Worldwide - more general but less time sensitive links in a Saturday post in a week or two as they pile up) :
Drake vs Universal Drama Continues - Everyone is suing everyone….
The Fortunate (and unfortunate) 50% on Streaming Services - Who gets clicks? The clicks and click-nots…
Sony Music Cancels Grammy Week Activities - Good for them
UK Copyright Issues - Things are concerning to music rights holders whose work could be used to train AI bots - will the bots respect copyright law? Rights holders want an opt-in or -out option. Rightly so, I think.
A Song To Play: “Heroes”
From Songfacts®:
This song tells the story of a German couple who are so determined to be together that they meet every day under a gun turret on The Berlin Wall. Bowie, who was living in Berlin at the time, was inspired by an affair between his producer Tony Visconti and backup singer Antonia Maass, who would kiss "by the wall" in front of Bowie as he looked out of the Hansa Studio window. Bowie didn't mention Visconti's role in inspiring this song until 2003, when he told Performing Songwriter magazine: "I'm allowed to talk about it now. I wasn't at the time. I always said it was a couple of lovers by the Berlin Wall that prompted the idea. Actually, it was Tony Visconti and his girlfriend. Tony was married at the time. And I could never say who it was (laughs). But I can now say that the lovers were Tony and a German girl that he'd met whilst we were in Berlin. I did ask his permission if I could say that. I think possibly the marriage was in the last few months, and it was very touching because I could see that Tony was very much in love with this girl, and it was that relationship which sort of motivated the song."
Bowie moved to Berlin after burning out from touring and fame. He rented a cheap apartment above an auto-repair shop, which is where he wrote this album.
Robert Fripp, formerly of King Crimson, played guitar on this track. His band, King Crimson, performed the song at the Admiralspalast in Berlin on September 11, 2016 in celebration of Bowie. This version was released on an EP called Heroes in 2017.
Brian Eno, formerly of Roxy Music, helped Bowie write and produce this. Eno moved to Berlin with Bowie and worked on his albums Low, Heroes, and Lodger. These albums were much more experimental and less commercial than Bowie's previous work, but they still sold well in England.
Co-writer Eno said of this in the April 2007 Q Magazine: "It's a beautiful song. But incredibly melancholy at the same time. We can be heroes, but actually we know that something's missing, something's lost."
Credit: Songfacts Link: "Heroes"
Pretty interesting songwriting and continues a fabulous tradition of ignoring music theory…maybe. A question that arises is: “Is ‘Heroes’ in the Key of DMajor or GMajor…?” (not joking - there are videos on YouTube that explore this…).
Chordify hears it as DMajor (note the two sharp symbols - ## in the Key signature below), but there’s an actual controversy in the music world if it’s in DMaj or GMaj. I personally think neither is correct, the key that fits the best is actually the relative minor of G, which is Eminor.
A paragraph in the Wikipedia article linked above sort of twists itself into knots with the claim:
"'Heroes'" utilizes a D–G chord progression[14] and contains five verses, some longer than others, and an outro.[2][4] Primarily in D major, the verses move from D to G major, along with C major on "nothing will keep us together" and a foray into A minor and E minor on "beat them" and "forever". The song is mainly in the D mixolydian mode, wherein the A major dominant chord is replaced with A minor, swapping from the parallel minor D minor back to the tonic D major.[4] “
Yeah, sure….not…
Aaaaand- we’re off on today’s rant!!
Ed. ibid - far be it from me to dispute the “learned experts” that the Wikipedia article quotes, but I think it’s just the Key of Eminor. The song has 5 chords CMaj, DMaj, GMaj, Am, Em - can you find each of those chords in this graphic of the piano chords in the Key of Eminor? Yes, yes you can is the correct answer…..
Read this chart L-R across the top line, then the second line, and finally the last chord, DMaj at the bottom. The chords used in the song would be the i-, III, iv-, VI and VII of the Key of Eminor. The chords in Eminor are: the i- chord is an E minor, the 2(dim) chord is an F# Diminished, the III chord is a G Major, the iv- chord is an A minor, the v chord is a B minor, the VI chord is a C Major, and the VII chord is a D Major.
Note - the chord names when written are Roman numerals - capitalized for Major chords, lower case for minor or diminished. The really smart professor I took music theory from would include a dash (minus sign) after the lower case minor chords. Not everyone does that, but he was a jazz guy, so…. just “so”, I guess. Actually, it would help distinguish between a minor chord and a diminished chord, but nobody plays diminished chords. Actually, maybe piano players do - might not be an arthritis inducing stretch for them. Guitar players mostly just play a diminished chord as a minor. You can do whatever you want. The point here is we don’t actually speak in Roman numerals, so if you’re playing with others and need to herd the jazz cats in a certain direction you can just say “go to the one”, or “the six” - so long as everyone remembers what key you’re in. You may have to say “the Eminor” or “the C” if they don’t. Hahaha - jazz guys…
Written in order a minor key looks like this: i-, ii(dim), III, iv-, v-, VI, VII. [For reference, a Major key looks like this: I, ii-, iii-, IV, V, vi-, vii(dim)]
So, the deal with minor keys is they start off on the six chord of the relative Major Key; the six chord of GMaj is Eminor:, and you know when we’re this deep in theory, we’ll need to visit our old friend for a reference:
For this you start at the top with C Major. One to the right is G Major. Note the Em (E minor) key in the inner circle that correlates to the G note. One way to read a Circle of Fifths (and there are many other ways…) is to try to figure out if you’re dealing with a Major Key (outer circle of notes with C at the top and G to the right), or a minor key (inner circle of Keys that are relative to the Keys that start with the notes in the outer circle). Notes can be Naturals - meaning neither sharped nor flatted; or flat [b] or sharp [#] (those are called “accidentals”) and most, but not all, are both. Keys are Major or minor (there are some variants - but we’ve endured enough for today). Thus the outer circle can be notes from which chords in the Major keys are built, the inner circle are chords with a flattened 3rd, from which minor keys are built. Hang on, it gets weirder….
The outer circle are the root (or “Tonic”) notes of the scales, which become keys when we transform scale notes into chords. Root and tonic are just names for the first note in a scale, and the first chord in a key. In the case of “Heroes” there are enough chords that just don’t “fit” in either the key of D Major or the key of G Major, that a minor key may be the actual key the songwriters were working in. The inner circle are the minor chords that the minor key is built from. It helps to know that the chords are the same between Major and minor keys, they just start in different places.
Kind of begs the question, “Why do we call them Major or minor if they use the same chords?" The answer is kind of a human trait - we like to start at the beginning. We just change the starting point, from the I chord to the vi- (read “6 minor”) and start fresh. When we agree to this scheme and the new name, we start with what’s now the i- (read 1 “minor”) and follow the same rules - we resolve now from the iv- and v- to the i-, instead of the IV and V to the I. If “Heroes” is in DMajor as Chordify hears it, the V chord is an AMaj, but that chord doesn’t appear in the song (Key of D is: D-Em-F#m-G-A-Bm-C#dim), if it’s in GMaj [Key of GMaj is: G-Am-Bm-C-D-Em-F#(dim)] the song begins on the V chord and resolves to the V. Not impossible, and the other chords sorta fit, more or less, but also not elegantly. Why are there Major and minor keys then, if they use the same chords? Again, it’s a human thing. In minor chords, the 3rd interval above the root is a semitone “flatter” - and then we call it a minor 3rd - and that makes a chord, minor. We hear minor chords as a bit more “sad”. In Major chords the 3rd interval is a “Major 3rd” and we hear it as “not sad”. Are they really “sad” and “not sad”? No, we’ve culturally accepted them to be that way in Western music, so that’s how we hear them.
The business of “it starts here, then goes here and then something, something” seems a bit tortured to me, especially when there’s an entire key (Eminor) where everything does fits elegantly. FWIW….
See:
Guitar Chords in the Key of E minor
E minor - F♯ diminished (F♯°) - G Major - A minor - B minor - C Major - D Major
Source: Guitarsource.com
Thus endeth the rant….
[Verse 1]
I, I will be king
And you, you will be queen
[Chorus]
Though nothing will drive them away
We can beat them, just for one day
We can be heroes, just for one day
[Verse 2]
And you, you can be mean
And I, I'll drink all the time
'Cause we're lovers, and that is a fact
Yes, we're lovers, and that is that
[Chorus]
Though nothing will keep us together
We could steal time, just for one day
We can be heroes, forever and ever
What d'ya say?
[Verse 3]
I, I wish you could swim
Like the dolphins, like dolphins can swim
[Chorus]
Though nothing, nothing will keep us together
We can beat them forever and ever
Oh, we can be heroes, just for one day
[Verse 1]
I, I will be king
And you, you will be queen
(Ed. - this looks odd, but it’s just a repeat of Verse 1, so they just called it Verse 1, instead of “Repeat Verse 1” or something….
[Chorus]
Though nothing will drive them away
We can be heroes, just for one day
We can be us, just for one day
[Verse 4]
I, I can remember (I remember)
Standing by the wall (By the wall)
And the guns shot above our heads (Over our heads)
And we kissed as though nothing could fall (Nothing could fall)
[Chorus]
And the shame was on the other side
Oh, we can beat them forever and ever
Then we can be heroes, just for one day
[Bridge]
We can be heroes
We can be heroes
We can be heroes, just for one day
We can be heroes
[Chorus]
We are nothing, and nothing will help us
Maybe we're lying, then you better not stay
But we could be safer, just for one day
[Outro]
Oh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh-oh
Just for one day
The “ME!” Section…..
What I’m Listening2: Daves
Shameless Self Promotion Section:
My song is out! Link: “>Long Road Back<”click on this link for streaming options, then scroll down for links (or just click on these links) to Amazon, Apple, Pandora, iTunes and even Spotify
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Disclaimer Section
This Substack is free, I receive no compensation of any kind from companies or products I mention (except when you click on one of the links above for my song - then I might make 0.003 cents - yes 3/1000ths of a cent… just sayin…). Some linked or quoted material may be copyrighted by others, and I credit them. I rely on the “Fair Use” doctrine for educational purposes (Link: Fair Use). *I do not use AI for any of the text that’s found here, things I link to (such as some images) might…
-Michael Acoustic
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Mika: “Stop breathing, human. I’m snoozin’ here…“
Cheers and keep playing!!
Michael Acoustic
“It’s never really final - you just run out of things you can bear to change…”
David Bowie was one of my faves all through his career.
lol those Jazz guys just do whatever they want.
I love David Bowie, though this is one of my least favorites of his big ones. I do like the chords. Something very hopeful sounding about them in the chorus when it shifts from the sadder line to the hero’s line.