Summer Deep Dive: “Time After Time”
A Series Finale, Musical Nostalgia, Dotted Notes, and Miles Davis
Musical Nostalgia and the “Summer Deep Dive” Series
The essays in this series have been some of my most popular. I thank you, dear readers, for your attention and your kind words.
The series began in midsummer with Hall and Oates’ “She’s Gone,” followed by “Lowdown” by Boz Scaggs, Mumford and Sons’ “I Will Wait,” Sheryl Crow’s “Run Baby Run,” Frank Zappa’s “Willie The Pimp,” Taylor Swift’s “I Bet You Think About Me,” Peter Gabriel’s “Don’t Give Up,” Khruangbin’s “A Love International,” Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville” and “Come Monday,” and Emily Zeck’s “Trailer Park Tiki Bar.”
The most read were the Jimmy Buffett and Hall and Oates features, each song about a half century old. This is explained, at least in part, by the deep emotional power of musical nostalgia.
Music lights up our brains like little else. Mark Joseph Stern explains this well in a 2014 essay:
To understand why we grow attached to certain songs, it helps to start with the brain’s relationship with music in general. When we first hear a song, it stimulates our auditory cortex and we convert the rhythms, melodies, and harmonies into a coherent whole.
From there, our reaction to music depends on how we interact with it. Sing along to a song in your head, and you’ll activate your premotor cortex, which helps plan and coordinate movements. Dance along, and your neurons will synchronize with the beat of the music.
Pay close attention to the lyrics and instrumentation, and you’ll activate your parietal cortex, which helps you shift and maintain attention to different stimuli. Listen to a song that triggers personal memories, and your prefrontal cortex, which maintains information relevant to your personal life and relationships, will spring into action.
Music takes the best parts of our lives and literally weaves them into us.
Time After Time
The final installment of this series features a forty year old pop hit and its unlikely cover version by a jazz legend.
Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” is itself a nostalgic tale of lost love, about “a suitcase of memories.” It was released in 1983 on Lauper’s debut album, “She So Unusual” which sold 16 million copies and generated 6 singles (“Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” being the biggest hit).
The song has a very simple melody. The primary musical phrase contains only three notes (C, D, and E); its secret is a rhythmic phrasing that skillfully manipulates tension, release, and silence. Let’s examine this phrase, in notation below (you don’t need to read music to follow. I promise).
There are four beats in each measure; a dot on a note adds half of the time value to the note. Each of the first three measures ends on a half-beat (dotted quarter note = 1½ beats) which creates a tension in need of release. That release comes in the fourth measure in the form of a rest (silence).
Put another way, the rhythm of the song’s primary (four measure) musical phrase creates a pattern of anticipation (first measure), anticipation (second measure), anticipation (third measure), and resolution into silence.
The song’s musical structure thus manipulates tension and release amidst lyrics drenched in nostalgia and lost love.
Miles Davis
Miles Davis was sufficiently taken with “Time After Time” that he recorded it on his 1985 jazz-funk classic “You’re Under Arrest.” I have discussed how jazz musicians transform pop music in this space but here I need go no further than Lauper herself. In her memoir she said:
The most honored I ever felt was when Miles Davis covered [Time After Time]. I never wanted him to meet me either because I thought, if he didn’t like me (like most of the old-timers), he wouldn’t play my song anymore, and the way he played it was pure magic.”
Note how Davis expands the melody while distilling the rhythmic pattern to a short, stabbing phrase. Tension and release remain, augmented by Miles’ uncanny ability to manipulate his horn’s tone and volume.
Cindy Lauper is right. It is pure magic.
I hope you had a great summer and I hope “Summer Deep Dives” played some small part.
I look forward to making more memories with you here at Media Room.