When I came across Britt Daniel’s cover of “Bring It On Home To Me”, I knew immediately that it had to be a cover… it just speaks of a forgotten era of soul music. The track was actually originally released in 1961, written and recorded by Sam Cooke with uncredited backing vocals by Lou Rawls.

The song features a basic I - V - vii - IV progression in Bb major. Daniel’s version of the song features a heavy delay on the guitar which serves to make the intrumentation thicker under his voice. He performs it “sans-band” and relies on his strong, raspy voice. Spoon, as a group, has always relied on a “less is more” dynamic in their music (albeit in the years after the Telephono and Soft Effects EP’s). It is these two flavors coming together that make for such a powerful vehicle for this song’s longing for an unfaithful spouse.

The song usually fades out after the 5th verse stanza, but I thought it incomplete to leave it off there (a common dilemma for musicians who perform studio recordings with fade-outs live). This being the case, I went ahead and composed a short outro for the song. I would like to think I correctly musically-emulated the era the song was birthed in by using a common tool of that 1950-60’s sound, the descending IV chord.

In this case, the IV chord would be an Eb (composed of Eb, Bb, and G), and it descends by flatting the Eb chord’s major 3rd note (G) to a minor 3rd (F#), forming a Ebm (Eb, Bb, and F#). I know, it’s not rocket science, but this change was made famous in countless 50’s and 60’s songs such as The Beatles’ “Nowhere Man”, “Across The Universe” and even in the “That Thing You Do” soundtrack, which was made for the film to sound like the era it portrayed.

Now that the descending chromatic line has gone from G –> F#, it is safe to assume that this note movement will be hitting an F next (as it is the next linear note). I have chosen to go with a sorrowful Gm7 (G, D, Bb, F) as a descending progression preceding it sounds somber as well. Normally, a Gm would not contain an F, and this is precisely the reason I chosen to make it a seventh chord.

Any guesses what the next note is? That’s right, an E. Now, E is not normally in the Bb major scale, but this is what makes chromatic theory interesting. As long as you proceed downward or upward one note at a time (usually a short 4 moves with a goal in mind such as the IV or V of a chord) you are going to add interest and dissonance to your progression, and by the time the listener hears it, the tension has resolved. I chose to go with a C major chord (containing C, E, and G). This chord is dissonant and kind of turns the song on its head, but the next note in the chromatic scale is Eb, and we are back in harmonious territory.

As the next chord is actually Eb as well, we have successfully “landed” the chromatic excursion. One of my favorite quick modifications of the descending IV change is using minor 6th chords. The G#m6 (G#, D, F# and B) descends to the Fm6 (F, B, Eb, and G#) and makes a nice place to lay a Bbmaj7, a jazzy alternative to a standard Bb chord. Classy.

Here is the my interpretation of the song, Enjoy!