Sorry for the spamming guys
I was checking out the acclaimed band Pavement. It was okay, a bit silly, but afterwards Dinosaur Jr came on with the album "Where you been". I've always known about this band, and tried to appreciate them with insignificant results, but something about it kind of clicked now. It's like a mix of grunge, garage rock and pop punk. Has some of the appeal of The Offspring, really. I don't know how cheeky that comparison is.
But now after 1 album + of songs, they seem to play way too much in major key. It becomes one big drawl after a while. Minor is the depth of music. We can diagnose the past century of western society by the bias toward major key sounds. I think we have learned as minor key seems to have gained in popular music, of course influenced by EDM which makes it so obvious that minor key is almost a prerequisite for sounding triumphant, exciting, enchanting, romantic, melancholic, existential and so forth. With notable exceptions of course.
On tracks like "Out there", "On the way" and "Hide" this band plays a lot in minor key and it really brings some necessary depth in an almost simplistic way. I guess simply bringing the music to minor territory has sometimes been avoided in some circles because it's so effective as to almost appear formulaic.
Imagine a psytrance track in major. The major third almost exclusively happens as a funky bluesy oddity. Because you can't seriously get mesmerized by major sounds. Again with exceptions.
This is the most major key psytrance track i can think of
Still opens with a strong phrygian accent (discounting pitch warbled foreshadowing of the main theme). Soon comes an acid line with a major sixth which already brings a stylistically somewhat unusual goofiness. When the main theme introduces a major third, it immediately sounds very odd and is rather quickly displaced with a VI chord, bringing back the minor third and also minor sixth relative to the tonal center. We get the mario cadence, which is modal mixture and not diatonically major. There is also a bluesy line with both minor and major thirds, which again is a bit more stylistically common. This example shows how far major key can be taken in a genre that prioritizes musical immersion rather than things like storytelling, rhetorics, evoking certain social emotions. A very well realized track imo, but also very experimental and odd.
Apparently when Del Shannon made the eternal banger "Runaway" the minor key verse was considered strange. Because people were hooked on silly superficial ditties that shy away from even fairytale level emotional challenge. Just like they were hooked on other industrial novelties.
