3 more song examples for your presentations.

3 examples of song presentations you might
use as models for Monday presentations.

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7 Things
Go here. With lyrics, go here.

The song I'm presenting to you this afternoon is "7 Things," by Miley Cyrus. I like this song. It's a cute song with a lot of ideas in it, both musical and lyrical. The most distinctive aspect of the melody is the octave leap in the opening part, between the words, "shouldn't / say" ("probably shouldn't SAY this"; and, later, "it's awkward and SIlent"; "GREAT things").
Another distinction of the tune is the tempo change between the slow, almost deliberate verse and the chorus (refrain), sung very fast. Miley's Country intonation also helps the song, as she sings it with a slight Country twang. The melody itself, at least until the chorus, seems related more to Country than to Rock, as in the sequential phrases that set the words,"it was awesome, / but we lost it," etc. or "When you mean it, / I'll believe it, if you text it, / I'll delete it," etc.
But the lyrics are also interesting, including a cute reference to text messaging.
The assonantal rhymes in the lyrics (based on vowels, not words (mean it / believe it / delete it) add a kind of offbeat spice to the song, especially since they're all feminine rhymes (the rhyme is on the next to last syllable, not the last, as in the more common masculine rhyme: dad/mad).
Similar lyrics are, "your friends, they're jerks, / when you act like them, you know it hurts," including more rhymes on the vowel, not the word. Or: "your eyes / When we kiss I get hypnotized."
The dramatic build-up to the chorus that tells of the seven things the singer likes about her boyfriend adds a neat closure to the song, seeming to discard all the things she dislikes about him that's the main focus of the song.
As in the following songs, if art is the perfect blend of form and content (where form is the shape of the content), then these songs are surely art.

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THE ONE
Go here.

This song, by Shakira, on her Laundry Service album (to my mind her best album), is a power ballad with unsentimental lyrics and an impassioned vocal, a cry of certainty in a world of doubt. Intead of talking about love in the vague, sentimental way it's talked about in today's songs, Shakira refers to more everyday dreams:

"So I find a reason to shave my legs
Each single morning
So I count on someone on
Friday nights to take me dancing
And then to church on Sundays
To plant more dreams
And someday think of kids
Or maybe just to save a little money"

Other images are also unsentimental, more to do with enduring friendship than with ephemeral (passing) romance:

"In the world full of strangers
You're the one I know."

It's a relief to hear a singer sing of a stable relationship instead of singing about bleeding unrequited love1 And the melody perfectly welds to the lyrics. It begins in a kind of parlando (talking) but then develops into a slow ballad form, with long-held notes replacing the shorter musical phrases of the opening, as she sings the title words: "You're the one I need!" with conviction, followed by an especially moving turn in the melody to the words: "The way back home is always long / But if you're close to me I'm holding on," with a distinctive melodic leap between the words, "I'm / holding," which musically captures that sense of leaping for security in an insecure world that Shakira sings about.
The melody is also distinctive for its meandering shape: it's constantly changing in a tapeworm development of ideas one finds in Baroque music (for example, the music of Bach).
The brief guitar breaks are effective gritty contrasts to the ballad form of the song, adding relief from it.
Regarding the vocal, apart from Shakira's powerful delivery, I especially like her shift to falsetto in the later part of the song (as in, "NOTHING like your smile"). Incidentally, "smile of sun" is a great phrase; it might appear simple, even banal, but it's compactly phrased, especially with the alliteration (repeat of the letter "s").

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NEVER GIVE UP
Go here.

This song has one of the greatest contemporary vocals. Yolanda Adams is one of the most popular contemporary Gospel singers, but she turns this song into an Inspirational, rather than a specificially Christian, song, though she's a devoted Christian. The only hint of her Christian belief is in the words, "you've got to answer when you're called" (that is, by Jesus). Otherwise the lyrics of the bridge (middle part), "it's all inside of you, you have everything you need" place this song squarely in the genre of Inspirational songs, probably to reach a wider market (it's difficult to market Christian songs except to the Christian market). (A true Gospel song would replace "you have everything you need" with "Jesus has everything you need." The epigraph of the video, a quote from the biblical prophet Habakuk, is a compromise of sorts, a way of making an Inspirational song specifically Christian.)

The lyrics are fairly conventional, advising listeners to keep the dream alive and to never give up. The lyrics might sound cloying and sentimental, and in fact are; but it's Yolanda Adams' commanding vocal that rivets our attention. Her vocal transcends the lyrics, the way that Mozart transcends the ordinary, even silly, lyrics of his opera libretti.
Musically, the song is a crescendo-decrescendo, slowly building to a powerful climax with Adams' shattering vocal that never loses precise intonation: "keep the dream alive, don't let it die," etc. then fading into the quiet of the opening.
Once again the melody follows the content: the shy girl in the beginning getting stronger with the melody and vocal. Her words almost a whisper, a melismatic extension on the word "persevere" (and, later, "there") starts the journey into a more confident (stronger) vocal and also a more confident life.
Apart from the strenth of Adams' vocal, what one admires is her vocal control throughout, taking her voice into almost every register, from head voice, falsestto, to a full-bodied climax. Even on words such as "alive," "die," and "inside" her vocal quality changes to give impact to the rhymes.
Of course, for people (especially young people) who have lost confidence in their power to survive, this song offers strong encouragement.

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