Here's a new thing I'm trying. I'm not about to claim it'll happen every week because I know such a bold declaration would just blow up in my face, but it will definitely show up... semi-regularly.
This Tuesday's top ten consists of my favorite contemporary/pop songs that employ the harpsichord.* I've long found it to be a fascinating and unique instrument; as often as it can sound awkward and abrasive, it's also amazingly effective when used right, and its distinct timbre provides immediate baroque flair to modern compositions. This list was built from memory, Google, and my personal music library, meaning it's far from comprehensive. Further suggestions along similar lines are welcome!
*I am not a harpsichord expert and, therefore, cannot guarantee that all of these songs contain real, live harpsichord rather than samples or keyboard settings (though I think most of them do). However, real or not, they all have a suitably harpsichord-esque sound for the purposes of this list.
10. Kate Bush - Oh England My Lionheart
The harpsichord has been incorporated into twentieth and twenty-first century pop songwriting in two ways: first, to craft a soundscape that hearkens back to a more opulent time; second, to re-imagine classical instrumentation from a fresh perspective. This song falls more in line with the former, which makes sense thematically: given voice by Bush's quivering soprano, the song's narrator, amidst the horrors of war-torn England, pines nostalgically for the country's romantic past: "The soldiers soften, the war is over/The air-raid shelters are blooming clover." The gentle, reverent lilt of the harpsichord provides a tastefully muted accompaniment, revealing the instrument's softer side.
9. The Zombies - Care of Cell 44
Again, this song doesn't do anything terribly inventive with the harpsichord, which it essentially treats like a piano, but it does mark the beginning of the trend toward introducing it into pop music. The harpsichord here is bright, jaunty, and insistent - at times, nearly clanging like a bell. It immediately grabs the listener's attention (though the infectious melodies and impeccable harmonies stand up pretty well on their own). For an instrument that's been around several hundred years longer than the psychedelic movement, it actually fits the swirling, candy-colored atmosphere like a glove.
8. Susanne Sundfør - Kamikaze
This track is a dense electronic labyrinth of synthesizers and drum machines, which means it's probably the last place you'd expect to find the lingering vestiges of an instrument first popularized during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Yet there's a certain complexity of polyphonic textures that, presided over by Sundfør's near-operatic wail, is perhaps not so far removed from the Baroque period after all. For that reason, it should come as no surprise that the melodies translate just as well at the end into a crystalline harpsichord solo as they do into the previous four minutes of digital bombast.
7. Owen Pallett (f/k/a Final Fantasy) - This Lamb Sells Condos
Usually, the inclusion of an instrument as singular as the harpsichord means placing it front and center, but this song takes the opposite approach, proving the instrument's unexpected versatility by using it as a subtle complement to piano and violin. These instruments playfully interweave in circus-like melodies, which run counter to the darkly humorous lyrics about gentrification and materialism. The song culminates in an argument between a prominent real estate agent, played by Pallett ("I feed you every morning and ask so little/But you belittle all the work that I do"), and his wife, eerily embodied in a children's choir ("Hedi Slimane and Agnes B/I'm not content, I'm not content").
6. The Decemberists - The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid
The harpsichord goes prog-rock on the Decemberists' ambitious concept album, The Hazards of Love, where it is played with precision and confidence by the band's resident keyboardist/accordionist, Jenny Conlee. Throughout the verses, the slightly jarring and atonal quality of the instrument is a perfect match to Colin Meloy's affectedly nasal delivery. But both are soon overtaken by a fully-electric crescendo and the intimidatingly larger-than-life presence of guest vocalist, Shara Worden. Here, the harpsichord dutifully serves its purpose of dividing the song into two thematic halves that represent the conflict between Meloy and Worden's characters.
The harpsichord goes prog-rock on the Decemberists' ambitious concept album, The Hazards of Love, where it is played with precision and confidence by the band's resident keyboardist/accordionist, Jenny Conlee. Throughout the verses, the slightly jarring and atonal quality of the instrument is a perfect match to Colin Meloy's affectedly nasal delivery. But both are soon overtaken by a fully-electric crescendo and the intimidatingly larger-than-life presence of guest vocalist, Shara Worden. Here, the harpsichord dutifully serves its purpose of dividing the song into two thematic halves that represent the conflict between Meloy and Worden's characters.
5. Cocteau Twins - Blue Bell Knoll
The spooky, spine-tingling harpsichord motif that underpins the entirety of this song serves as the perfect introduction to an album as ominously beautiful as Blue Bell Knoll. Over top, Elizabeth Fraser's unearthly vocals call to mind nothing less than an angel being dragged mercilessly into the darkly glittering depths of the underworld. So far, the instrument has been stately, playful, and dramatic, but Cocteau Twins manage to transform it into something truly sinister, more evocative of forests so dense that no sunlight penetrates the treetops than Parisian drawing rooms crowded with men in powdered wigs.
4. Parenthetical Girls - Young Eucharists
In brief, Entanglements is a half-hour monologue delivered by a hipster version of Humbert Humbert, overladen with intricate orchestral arrangements, wildly poetic lyrics, and sugary melodies that borrow as much from baroque as from '60s girl group pop. There has, perhaps, never been a setting more harpsichord-appropriate. The instrument arrives in theatrical flourishes, emphasizing the increasingly unsettling obsessiveness injected by singer and lyricist Zac Pennington into the narrator's frantic (and creepy) discourse on the pleasures of young flesh. Seriously, this is straight Nabokov in musical form, equal parts lovely and horrifying.
3. Tori Amos - Professional Widow
Amos is probably the popular artist most commonly associated with the harpsichord. In the mid-1990s, she returned it to real prominence in pop music for the first time since the '60s then became one of the few musicians to actually tour with the notoriously temperamental instrument. For example, here she is absolutely killing "Blood Roses" in 1997. "Professional Widow" is even more compelling because it is utterly terrifying, essentially the harpsichord equivalent of heavy metal. I mean, where else are you going to find a lyric like "Give me peace, love, and a hard cock" rubbing elbows with an instrument predominantly restricted to the classical realm? Absolutely nowhere.
2. Julia Holter - Feel You
Of all the songs on this list, I think this one most organically and seamlessly incorporates the harpsichord into a twenty-first century musical context. It's certainly noticeable, but it doesn't stand out as archaic or old-fashioned, and the song structure seems less dictated by the harpsichord's idiosyncrasies. Instead, Holter expects the instrument to keep up with the effervescent breeziness of her composition - and it does, supplementing instead of overwhelming her feathery voice. Here and elsewhere on her latest album, Have You in My Wilderness, Holter proves that the harpsichord can be just as relevant to contemporary songwriting as any other instrument. Also of note, the video features an adorable dog.
Of all the songs on this list, I think this one most organically and seamlessly incorporates the harpsichord into a twenty-first century musical context. It's certainly noticeable, but it doesn't stand out as archaic or old-fashioned, and the song structure seems less dictated by the harpsichord's idiosyncrasies. Instead, Holter expects the instrument to keep up with the effervescent breeziness of her composition - and it does, supplementing instead of overwhelming her feathery voice. Here and elsewhere on her latest album, Have You in My Wilderness, Holter proves that the harpsichord can be just as relevant to contemporary songwriting as any other instrument. Also of note, the video features an adorable dog.
1. Joanna Newsom - Peach, Plum, Pear
Listen, if you consider yourself a Joanna Newsom fan in any capacity and this post doesn't immediately speak to you, you should probably go reevaluate your fandom. This song goes hard: that charmingly clumsy harpsichord bashing, those endearingly squeaky vocals, that eardrum-shattering chorus of caterwauling Joannas, the utterly nonsensical yet strangely resonant lyrics ("I have read the right book/To interpret your look/You were knocking me down/With the palm of your eye"). Even if you hate it, you still kind of love it for being so unabashedly bonkers. It may not be the most refined approach, but it's become my go-to reference for the harpsichord just because it's so damn bold.