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Deceptive love and denied endings: tropes in the music of Billy Joel
- Author(s):
- Sean Atkinson (see profile)
- Date:
- 2018
- Group(s):
- Society for Music Theory – Popular Music Interest Group
- Subject(s):
- Music theory, Popular music
- Item Type:
- Article
- Tag(s):
- Billy Joel, Topics, Deceptive Motion, Popular Music Studies
- Permanent URL:
- http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/dgx7-0w42
- Abstract:
- The music of Billy Joel is long overdue for prolonged attention from the scholarly field. As Walter Everett has acknowledged (2000), Joel’s music is often more in line with common-practice systems than with popular genres, and when combined with his intuitive understanding of numerous popular styles, makes for a rich trove of harmonic interest. One of the common-practice devices Joel utilises effectively is the evaded cadence (also called a deceptive motion). His use of this harmonic motion reveals two tropes in his music: Deceptive Love describes the complicated nature of love in ‘She’s Got a Way’ and ‘She’s Always a Woman’, while Denied Ending describes the unfinished and unresolved quality at the end of ‘Miami 2017’. Uncovering these tropes in Joel’s songs leads to a better understanding of the lyrics and the harmonic progressions that underlie them.
- Metadata:
- xml
- Published as:
- Journal article Show details
- Pub. DOI:
- 10.1017/S0261143018000405
- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Pub. Date:
- 2018-9-12
- Journal:
- Popular Music
- Volume:
- 37
- Issue:
- 3
- Page Range:
- 415 - 423
- ISSN:
- 0261-1430,1474-0095
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 4 years ago
- License:
- All Rights Reserved
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