Originally posted March 3rd, 2023.
No one should ever write about music. Including me. Especially me. But I am going to write about music many times, probably this one time because I think I have uncovered an industry-wide conspiracy.
Allow me to provide some background info in a manner that will both anger those with formal training and confuse those without it. Equality!
So, for the purposes of this article, there are 24 (that you need to worry about) diatonic scales in western music, 12 major and 12 minor. If you are a visual learner, you may note (lol) that a piano has 12 distinct keys, each producing a different tone. Each of those is the tonic note of one 7-note major scale, and one 7-note minor scale. These two scales are referred to as parallels, (C minor is the parallel minor of C major, example. You get it.) even though they only have 4 of 7 notes in common.
However, each major scale also has a relative minor scale comprised of the exact same 7 notes. For example, E major and C# minor both utilize the notes E, F#, G#, A, B, C#, and D#. Whether a piece is in the key of E major or C# minor just depends on which is the tonic note. And some pieces modulate nigh-imperceptibly between them; there are tons of songs with minor key verses that modulate to the relative major for the chorus.
(…I’m realizing that if you have formal training you can actually probably skip the explanation and avoid getting angry, but if you don’t have formal training, you’re confused no matter what. I’m so sorry. Next time I will strive for equity.)
When selecting a key signature for a composition, one might consider technical factors such as a performer’s vocal range, or the tuning of their instrument(s), but otherwise it’s just a matter of personal preference. Frédéric Chopin, for example, was partial to B major, because he found it easiest to play on the piano. No key is better or worse than others (except D major, which sucks). Outside the context of music theory, key signatures do not mean anything; they are just key signatures. Except I have decided that some of them mean things.
I don’t know why — maybe it’s something synesthesia-adjacent. But for whatever reason, I associate certain keys with certain moods. Vibes, even. F major, for example, is intrinsically somber, while its parallel minor is the life of the party. (And its relative minor is of course the saddest of all keys.) B major is inherently gay, which is why Chopin liked it. Or so I like to torment my classically-trained family members by saying.
But really, it’s a chicken and egg thing. Do I find F major sad because it houses a lot of sad songs, or am I predisposed to finding songs sadder if they are in F major? For that matter, do other people share my perception and purposely compose sad songs in F major to give them an edge? Is “MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)” in A♭ minor (the relative minor of B major) because Lil Nas X and Chopin and I are all on this same wavelength? I mean, it would be cool, but I kind of doubt it. Remember, there are (for the purposes of this exercise) only 24 of these things. Thematic overlap is inevitable, but likely coincidental.
However.
On April 5th, 1988, singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman released “Fast Car”, the lead single from her self-titled debut album. The song’s narrator fantasizes about escaping her dead-end town with a partner, the owner of the titular car, only for the fantasy to fall apart when she imagines life beyond the initial escape and realizes how unreliable this person is, and how miserable they’d be. Still she longs for what can never come to pass, ending the song on a reprisal of the verse about how she and her partner have to “make a decision: leave tonight or live and die this way.” And in just 4 minutes and 57 seconds, Chapman cemented A major as the patron key of yearning.
Yearning is a favorite hobby of seemingly the entire LGBT community, (of which Chapman is allegedly a member) most Tumblr users, and Kramer. What are we yearning for? I don’t know. Does it matter, as long as there’s a song that feels applicable? Which there usually is? And for whatever reason, it’s usually in the key of A major?
A major songs were already quite yearny prior to “Fast Car”, but more optimistically so. Chapman’s magnum opus cast a gigantic, melancholy shadow over the key, where it continues to languish. At the end of 1989, alt-rock band Gin Blossoms released their largely unsuccessful first album Dusted, featuring a breakup song written by lead guitarist Doug Hopkins. The band rerecorded it for their major label debut in 1992, and “Hey Jealousy” became a smash hit that, if I have anything to say about it, will go down in history as the saddest song ever written. Yes, even sadder than “Fast Car”. Chapman’s narrator is clearly despondent, but she sings about it with a quiet dignity that signifies disappointment, not surprise. She has the resolve to get over it someday, and make the best of her circumstances in the meantime. The narrator of “Hey Jealousy” seems indefinitely plagued by desperation and misery. I don’t know what Hopkins laced the song with, but it’s devastating and potent. Unlike “Fast Car”, the song is musically upbeat, clashing with the lyrics to create an uncomfortable dissonance as the narrator tries desperately to convince his uninterested ex to rekindle their relationship.
(But wait! If “Hey Jealousy” really is the saddest song ever written, shouldn’t it be in F major, not A? I don’t know, man. I’m making all this up, remember? I couldn’t find any such rendition, so I took this to my piano — I play very badly, but it stops me from destroying things — and it simply didn’t hit the same. I think it’s because that dissonance is gone. You know. F major is sad. The lyrics are sad. Where’s the tension?)
So from Tracy Chapman and Gin Blossoms right up until the very present day, A major and its relative minor, F# have been for yearning. Longing. Pining as well, although that word has romantic connotations that I don’t always find applicable, whereas you can yearn for anything. Like safety and stability in the face of terrifying, overnight fame. Or understanding and validation you’ve lacked for as long as you can remember. Or REVOLUTION.
But sometimes! Sometimes these post-“Fast Car” A major songs’ narrators actually get what they’re yearning for! And accompanying their happiness is a unique feeling of triumph that I don’t think a non-yearning key signature could necessarily provide, especially if the lyrics make no allusion to prior longing for what they’ve achieved. It’s like the “Hey Jealousy” dissonance, but in a positive direction.
I make a lot of silly little key-based playlists to appease my pattern-seeking brain, and I don’t usually treat this endeavor as though I’m exposing great music industry secrets, but the prevalence of these A major yearning songs really makes me wonder. Like, did Lucy Dacus cover “Dancing in the Dark” in A major because it suited her range, or because she knows? Are the shockwaves from “Fast Car” and “Hey Jealousy” still subconsciously influencing songwriters, or does A major itself just possess an intangible yearning quality? Am I onto something, or just on something? Do other people have these same associations? Do you?
