On one level, it's a schmaltzy love ballad. But on closer inspection it's much more than that.
After The Love Has Gone by the soul/funk masters Earth, Wind & Fire is a masterful composition, full of melodic shifts, harmonic progressions and tonal modulations.
Earth, Wind & Fire's music had a depth and sophistication that made them unique. Their upbeat songs like September, Let's Groove and Boogie Wonderland became instant dance classics. As with many of their classic songs, the vocals are shared between the deep voice of band leader Maurice White and the falsetto of Philip Bailey.
And then there's the slower numbers, which have a sensuality that will have you swaying to and fro, lights aloft. Think That's The Way Of The World, Would You Mind or Fantasy.
After The Love Has Gone is the best of the bunch. A beautiful song by David Foster and Jay Graydon, and an inspired lyric of lost love by Bill Champlin. Its secret weapon occurs just before the chorus (at 47 secs) in the section that starts 'something happened along the way, what used to be happy is sad'.
Then wham, the song shifts up a whole tone - a modulation in musical terms - "Something happened along the way, and yesterday was all we had..."
It's a stroke of genius. They've given the song an instant boost, taking it from black and white to colour into the sublime chorus,
"After the love has gone, how could you lead me on?"
Not content with that, Philip Bailey sends the song off into the stratosphere in the second chorus (at 2:55) with a five semitone shift. It's all the more remarkable that this is happening against a rhythm track that is as gentle as it is subtly seductive; the classic EW&F slow groove (see also the Deniece Williams song Free, on which EW&F are the backing band).
I saw an interview with the guitarist Steve Lukather in which he was talking enthusiastically about the compositional and harmonic genius of records that were being made in the 1970s by the likes of David Foster and Jay Graydon, including the classic Al Jarreau records that Graydon produced. Luke talks about EW&F and mentions After The Love Has Gone in particular, saying of that modulation before the chorus, "nobody had ever heard that before".
There seems to be no room for such compositional sophistication in this generic, algorithmic world of music we are now saturated with.
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| My ticket from the show in '82 |
Earth Wind & Fire - Fantasy (live 1980s)
Questlove has produced a documentary about Earth, Wind &
Fire, called To Be Celestial vs. That's the Weight of the World. He talks about it with Track Star's Jack Coyne.
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