Some of the most harmonically sophisticated songs share this feature.
I love highly modulatory, harmonically rich songs. The pinnacle works of Gershwin, Rodgers, Ellington, Bernstein, and Stevie Wonder, among many others, have harmonies that surprise and delight as they take you to unexpected places.
Often times, the complex harmonic wandering is counterbalanced by a melody that serves as an anchor. Some melodies are strictly pentatonic or diatonic, even as songs quickly move through multiple keys. The melodies stabilize the songs and make them approachable.
A theorist might suspect it should be the other way around – harmonies that stabilize a complex, wandering melody – but these do not appeal to most listeners. But there seems to be no upper limit to the harmonic complexity that can be added to a song if the melody is enough of an anchor. Some examples of this type of song:
- “I Got Rhythm” (Gershwin/Gershwin)
- “Satin Doll” (Duke Ellington)
- “Can We Fix Our Nation’s Broken Heart” (Stevie Wonder)
- “Pick Yourself Up” (Kern/Fields)
Even “Giant Steps” (John Coltrane), while not all diatonic to one key, uses strong, simple intervals and melodic shapes to create a melodic anchor that those legendarily complex changes can work under.
Many songwriters choose to craft chords first, and then find a strong melody that fits them. What if you started by crafting a strong melody, and then finding the right harmonic framework to support and counterbalance it.
If you’re as interested in melody as I am, I can’t recommend highly enough the brilliant “The Anatomy of Melody” by Alice Parker.