Townes Van Zandt and the Loneliest C# Minor Chord in Texas
How a single shadowy chord reframes the meaning of a classic country ballad.
In Theory is a new semi-regular column in which Andy Cush takes a close look at the compositional underpinnings of songs new and old in search of a deeper understanding of how and why they move us.
Back in January, I published a piece I’d had on my mind for awhile about the Diana Ross disco anthem “Upside Down,” which involved a bit of analysis of the song’s unusual chords. “Upside Down” has always seemed to me a little stranger, spookier even, than its dancefloor-filling jubilance initially lets on, and I wanted to talk about why.
Andy Cush
I didn’t intend to make this sort of writing a regular thing, but the response to the Diana Ross piece was so enthusiastic that I decided to keep at it. For days after I published it, people were responding on Twitter to say they’ve always wanted to read this sort of criticism, in which concepts from music theory are presented in terms that non-musicians can understand, and used to raise questions and possible answers about how and why songs make us feel the way they do. Or else they were writing to quibble with aspects of my analysis, usually with well-reasoned arguments, but with a few insults to my musical intelligence thrown in. All of these responses seemed encouraging.
Next up in this newly inaugurated column, which I’m calling In Theory, is Townes Van Zandt’s “I’ll Be Here in the Morning,” prompted by the late Texas songwriting legend’s birthday last weekend. As with “Upside Down,” I’m interested in the way “I’ll Be Here in the Morning” uses its harmony to create emotional subtext that wouldn’t necessarily be apparent from the words on the page. I don’t know exactly what else I’ll get into as the column progresses, but I suspect this will be an ongoing theme: looking at how words and music interact to create effects more powerful and richly complex than either could convey on its own. And though, as with “Upside Down,” I’m using harmonic analysis to suggest a somewhat counterintuitive reading of the song, I truly believe a listener without a musical background might come to the same conclusions, just based on how the music feels. This is important: For me, this sort of analysis is only meaningful if it is descriptive rather than prescriptive—that is, if it helps to elucidate some aspect of the music that is already apparent from simply hearing it, rather than lording the theory over you as a way of telling you what to think.
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