I needed a song with lots of secondary dominants in it for aural skills class, and I realized that Norah Jones’ adult-contemporary smash “Don’t Know Why” has a bunch of them. The song came out in 2002, though it could have been recorded at any time in the 50 years previous.
“Don’t Know Why” was written and first recorded by Jesse Harris. (He plays guitar on Norah Jones’ recording too.)
I like this jazzier version that Norah Jones played at home in 2020.
Also, enjoy the Sesame Street version.
Let’s talk through the chords and melody, they are quite interesting. There are a million transcriptions out there; this one is pretty good.
There are two chord progressions in the song, which I’ll call the verse and the bridge. First, here’s the verse.
| Bbmaj7 Bb7 | Ebmaj7 D7 | Gm7 C7 | F7 Bb |
Before we get into the functions of all these chords, let’s enjoy the beautiful descending chromatic voice leading:
- A in the Bbmaj7 chord
- A-flat in the B7 chord
- G in the Ebmaj7 chord
- F-sharp in the D7 chord
- F in the Gm7 chord
- E in the C7 chord
- E-flat in the F7 chord
- D in the Bb chord
The harmonic rhythm is nice too; the second chord in each bar is on the “and” of two, half a beat before you’re expecting it.
So, what are these chords doing from a functional perspective?
- We start on Bbmaj7, the I chord in Bb major.
- Bb7 is not just another flavor of Bb. It’s actually a departure from the key of Bb major, because it includes A-flat, which isn’t part of the Bb major scale. Instead, Bb7 is the V7 chord in the key of Eb major.
- Ebmaj7 is the I chord in Eb major, and also the IV chord in the global key of Bb major.
- D7 is another departure from the key. It’s the V7 chord in G minor, and it includes F-sharp, the leading tone that sets you up to hear G as the new temporary tonic. This suggests retroactively that Ebmaj7 was actually the bVI chord in D minor.
- Gm7 is the i chord in G minor, and also the vi chord in the global key of Bb major.
- C7 is yet another chord from outside the key. It’s the V7 chord in F major, and it includes E-natural, that key’s leading tone.
- We’re expecting an F here, but instead we get F7, the V7 chord back in the home key of Bb major.
This is a nice progression! The first chord in each bar is from within the key of Bb major, while the second chord in each bar (except the last one) is a secondary dominant, the V7 chord in a different but closely related key. The tonic chord of each “outside” key is one of the chords native to the key of Bb major: Eb, Gm, and F. Also, notice how most of the root movement goes counterclockwise around the circle of fifths: from B-flat to E-flat, then from D to G to C to F to B-flat. That’s functional harmony at work.
The vocal melody doesn’t engage with these chords much at all. It’s all from Bb major pentatonic, except for that one A-natural at the beginning of the phrase. That note is a fascinating one. It’s the leading tone in Bb major, and it conventionally would resolve up to the tonic B-flat. But no, the melody falls from A down to F, and keeps descending through Bb major pentatonic from there. That first A never resolves at all! It’s very unusual for a Norah Jones song to have this kind of unresolved harmonic tension in it. That weird first note is the only edge the song has. It’s the salt in the chocolate chip cookie recipe, the thing that keeps it from being too cloyingly sweet.
Anyway, the bridge progression is simpler, but still pretty interesting:
| Gm7 C7 | F7 | Gm7 C7 | F7 |
You could hear these chords as vi in Bb major, V7 in F major, and V7 in Bb major. Or you could hear the Gm7 and C7 as ii-V in F major; it works well either way.
Delightful though the melody and harmony are, I am not so enthralled by the lyrics. It seems like Jesse Harris had this beautiful tune and then just inserted rhyming phrases into it that fit the rhythm and that had a vaguely romantic vibe to them, and that he didn’t worry too much whether it meant anything. So, “the house of fun.” That’s okay, how much do lyrics matter anyway?
The reason I brought this song into class was to have the students identify the secondary dominants, the chords that include notes from outside the key of Bb. This turned out to be difficult! They didn’t have trouble identifying the chord roots and qualities, but they definitely do not hear a major key as a coherent entity. In fact, most of them heard that leading tone in Bbmaj7 as “outside the key” because it sounds “wrong”, whereas they thought Bb7 sounded more “inside the key” because it sounds “right.” Technically, this is incorrect, but there’s a larger sense in which the kids have a point. Tonic chords with flat sevenths have been extremely common in Anglo-American pop ever since the emergence of the blues. Meanwhile, you don’t hear a lot of prominent leading tones out there.
When I went through the NYU theory and aural skills sequence as a grad student, it exclusively covered the Western European canon, and it presumed a lot of familiarity with that canon. I had a terrible time in those classes. I understood the material fine from an intellectual perspective, but my instincts constantly wrong-footed me, because so much of the music I like is “wrong” from a classical perspective, and “correct” harmony and voice leading from the canon sounds stiff and awkward to me. My students in the new NYU pop sequence are even less familiar with the European canon than I was. Beyond general familiarity with recent top 40 pop, there really is no universally shared set of musical experiences and assumptions in the room. It would be easier to teach if there was! But there isn’t.
I have spent my teaching life actively working to de-center the European canon, but I have my own instinct to canonize my preferred musics. I tend to presume familiarity with the Beatles and other classic rock icons. All of my students are at least dimly aware of the Beatles and some of them know their music quite well, but that isn’t all of them. All of them know a lot about some kinds of music, but there is no single kind of music that all of them know well. Some of them know jazz, some of them know nothing about jazz. Some of them know hip-hop, some of them know nothing about hip-hop. And there are a few classical folks who only know classical. This pluralism is a positive thing, it’s what makes America great, but it does make it challenging to create a music theory and aural skills class that serves everybody.