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Radio 3,2 mins

Are these the greatest key changes of all time?

The Listening Service

Available for over a year

Tom Service and music writer Dai Griffiths discuss the power of two iconic key changes in pop - Whitney Houston's phenomenally popular version of 'I Will Always Love You', and Michael Jackson's 1987 hit 'Man in the Mirror'. Dai is a professor at Oxford Brookes University, and he wrote to the Listening Service to suggest an investigation in to the world of modulation, as his students are fascinated with the way groups like Westlife rise from their chairs when the key change kicks in. Listen to The Listening Service in full to find out more about the magic of modulation, and hear how these sudden key changes can be found not just in songs by Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder, but also in the works of Franz Schubert, Anton Bruckner, Gustav Mahler, and Steve Reich.

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