The Stonetable

Looking for self-referential songs, where the lyrics describe the musical harmony. Here’s a few I’ve found so far:

1. Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen)

Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don’t really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Lines 5 and 6 here are matched by the chord changes described in the lyrics.

2. Do-re-mi (from The Sound of Music, Rodgers and Hammerstein)

Let’s start at the very beginning
A very good place to start
When you read you begin with A-B-C
When you sing you begin with do-re-mi

…and the song continues to use the sol-fa scale throughout.

3. Every time we say goodbye (Cole Porter)

There’s no love song finer
But how strange the change
From major to minor
Every time we say goodbye

The third line here is matched by a major to minor chord change.

4. These words (Natasha Bedingfield)

Threw some chords together
The combination D-E-F
Is who I am, is what I do
And I was gonna lay it down for you

This one’s a stretch: D-E-F matches the bass line, but the harmony sounds more like Dm, Em, F.

5. CAGE DEAD (Simon Jeffes, Penguin Cafe Orchestra)

Not quite a song, but this tribute to composer John Cage uses the melodic progression of the title: C-A-G-E-D-E-A-D.

6. One flight down (Norah Jones)

In this place
Where your arms unfold
Here at last you see your ancient face
Now you know
Now you know

The cadence rolls in broken
Plays it over and then goes

In musical terminology, a harmonic cadence is a progression of two or more chords used to conclude a phrase. There are different classifications of cadences: perfect, imperfect, plagal and interrupted. Another name for the interrupted cadence is a broken cadence, which is used to describe the V (fifth) chord moving to anything but the I (first) chord. But when you listen to the song, what you hear is actually an imperfect cadence at this point!