It’s not unusual for songs to start in a minor key and then change key (“modulate”) to a major key. When you think of how songwriting has changed over the decades, that one aspect — the minor-to-major key change — has remained relatively common.
The change from minor to major has a brightening affect, as you hear in Taylor Swift’s “Style“, just as one example, which starts in the key of B minor, switching to D major (the relative major key) for the chorus, and that brightening effect is why it’s so popular.
In “Style”, you hear the shift from minor to major in a very common way, which is that the chords you hear as you approach the chorus belong to the minor key, but could also be seen as being borrowed from the relative major (Em F#m G).
Those chords help to smooth the transition from one mode to the next, and “prepares” the listener for the coming major key.
But there’s something to be said for making that minor to major shift in a more abrupt way. There’s a great song from the 1970s by Canadian singer-songwriter Valdy. You likely won’t know this song, because I think Valdy’s fame was more within Canada than elsewhere, but it’s fantastic: “Simple Life.”
The chorus of “Simple Life” is in D minor. What makes the Dm chord sound strongly like the tonic chord is when we hear an A major chord just before it. And Valdy does this in the middle of the verse, just as he’s preparing for another go-through of the verse melody.
And when he gets to the end of the verse, ready to present the chorus which is in F major, you’d think he’d make some sort of transition, so that perhaps he might end the verse on a C chord, which moves easily into F.
But he doesn’t do that. Instead, he ends the verse with Asus-A. That gives us strong evidence that he plans on continuing in D minor. But it’s at that point that he abruptly jumps into F major. So the prep chords we get for that “transition” are:
Asus – A – F
It’s a wonderful moment, because in a song that’s otherwise quite simply constructed and quiet, he throws in a harmonic surprise that really works well. The chorus melodies contrast with the verse melodies by virtue of the fact that while the verse consists of many upward-moving phrases, the chorus consists of downward-moving ones.
Those melodic ideas that move downward (“Give me the simple life/ I need the simple life…) make for a very melancholic mood, and works really well with the major key.
“Simple Life” is a lovely study of contrasts, and that surprisingly abrupt switch from minor to major is a great way to add the element of what you might call “pleasant surprise” to give a simply designed song a layer of creativity.
Written by Gary Ewer. Follow Gary on Twitter.
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He uses a mix of borrowed chords to emphasise words and phrases which is interesting. Interchanging the iv and v to major chords of D minor.
The initial introduction to the chorus, acts a wake up we’re in the chorus, and the staccato(ish) use of secondary dominants at the end of the chorus – ‘then I will: be – happ – y -y ee.’ Changing the iv to a major emphasises the words used. The arrangement of the song softens the harshness perhaps. Thanks.