10 Steps Song
Leanna Perr
The British group Steps have recorded songs for seven studio albums (including a Christmas album), two greatest hits and a tribute album. The band formed in 1997 after responding to an advert in the magazine The Stage, which asked for people to audition for a place in a pop band. Out of the thousands who applied, Lee Latchford-Evans, Lisa Scott-Lee, Faye Tozer, Claire Richards, and Ian "H" Watkins were successful in securing a place.[1] The techno-pop song "5,6,7,8" was released as their debut single in 1997 and was followed by their debut album Step One the following year.[2] "5,6,7,8" has been noted for being distinctly different from their subsequent releases due to its novelty line-dancing style and male lead vocals, whereas their songs thereafter are mostly sung by Richards.[2]
Their songs and musical style have often been compared to ABBA, with tracks such as "After the Love Has Gone" and "One for Sorrow" being so likened.[3][4][5] The band members have occasionally co-written some of their songs, with all of them receiving songwriting credits for "Only in My Dreams" from their first greatest hits album, Gold: Greatest Hits (2001), while a large number of songs were written by Karl Twigg, Mark Topham, Andrew Frampton, and Pete Waterman.[6] The group achieved thirteen consecutive top-five singles in the United Kingdom, including "Better Best Forgotten", "Say You'll Be Mine", "Deeper Shade of Blue", "It's the Way You Make Me Feel", and one of their two number-ones, "Stomp".[7]
The group have covered a variety of well-known songs throughout their career, including their first number-one song "Tragedy" by the Bee Gees,[2] "Chain Reaction" by Diana Ross, "Too Busy Thinking About My Baby" by The Temptations, and "Better the Devil You Know" by Kylie Minogue. In 1999, Steps recorded their own versions of "I Know Him So Well" and "Lay All Your Love on Me", as well as a medley entitled "Thank ABBA for the Music" for the ABBA tribute album; they also recorded "Dancing Queen" for their second greatest hits album, The Ultimate Collection (2011), and "Story of a Heart" for their fifth studio album, Tears on the Dancefloor (2017). Steps covered a selection of Christmas classics for their fourth studio album, Light Up the World (2012).
"At the top of the stairs there's darkness," the Formations tell us in a nice song that deserves honourable mention. As a child I was less unnerved by that darkness than by vivid imaginings of what might lie within it, a propensity I blame on addiction to The London Mystery Magazine, a compendium of ghost, horror and mystery stories not entirely emotionally healthy fare for a pre-pubescent.
The next staging post in my distrust of stairs and steps was occasioned by a colleague. She had sold very quickly the first house that she bought (an ordinary postwar semi-detached on an urban street) having encountered on her stairs a spectral old man she was adamant represented: "pure evil". This was a well-grounded lady, a physics teacher, an empiricist, without, as far as I was ever able to tell from several years acquaintanceship, a fanciful bone in her body.
And then there are the Doom paintings sometimes found in the medieval churches I'll always explore given opportunity. These are day of judgement representations, often including ladders of salvation, from which 'sinners' fall in profusion into the fires of you-know-what.
And finally, when I reflect upon my inclination to see stairs as sites of chaos, mayhem, and murder, there are the movies. In my mind's eye now are: the Odessa Steps scene from 'Battleship Potemkin'; the slaying of Arbogast in 'Psycho'; Nosferatu's ascent of the staircase as malevolent shadow; Perry Smith's climb to the gallows in 'In Cold Blood'; the three staircases leading to Dr Caligari in is his asylum; even the dramatic irony in 'Rebecca' of the second Mrs de Winter happily descending the stairs in Manderley for the fancy dress ball unaware of her betrayal by the deranged Mrs Danvers. Stairs offer so much artistic flexibility doubling as: stages; cat-walks; conduits; no-go areas (though often not recognised as such); and inflection points, where opportunity for fresh thought and revision of direction of travel is to be found.
So the music I have chosen for the A-list may, if only in some small measure: disquiet; disturb; unnerve; disgust; or generates unwelcome imaginings and images. Though that is not the whole story, as I didn't want to leave us mired in gloom and foreboding, and so there is a (I hope) generous helping of optimism and transcendence also readily associated in culture with steps and stairways to round things off.
In Crystal Stilts' Precarious Stair, there are hints of nightmare and a pessimistic view of personal destiny: "But our song is stifled by the viscous air, we cling to precarious stairs, descend deep into nefarious lairs".
Glenn Miller's Little Man Who Wasn't There, would charm with its initial jaunty scepticism were it not for the fact that none of us would welcome particularly any kind of unexpected visitor of ethereal provenance.
The Lady Rachel of Kevin Ayers' song only has a candle and the bed clothes to protect her, but the devil is in the detail: "Now she's safe from the darkness, she's safe from its clutch, now nothing can harm her, at least not very much.". aving built his eerie atmosphere Kevin delivers the coup de grace: "What/Who will you dream of tonight"?. Questions best not reflected upon too much.
In The Rolling Stones' Stray Cat Blues we hear the self serving rationalisation of a narcissistic sexual predator. But the libertine is far from certain of his prey: "There'll be a feast if you just come upstairs". So here, there is a hope for an eleventh hour conversion of the naive, if not innocent; a hope that I'm happy to cleave to.
Billie Holiday's Love For Sale crushes the spirit with its tragic ingenuousness: " Love that's fresh and still unspoiled. Love that's only slightly soiled. Love for sale." Dual entry to the stairs marks the point of carnal contract about which there is, of course, inevitability.
Miles Davis's Gnrique (from Ascenseur pour l'chafaud / Elevator To The Gallows) demanded inclusion for the juxtaposition of nouns and its sheer mournfulness. From a movie of the same name, too convoluted to precis, it's probably enough to say that the undisclosed outcome for the protagonists was very probably a judicial scaffold.
The insouciance of a beautiful woman suggested by: "well she's coming down the stairs, combing back her yellow hair", appears to be the tipping point for a much maligned husband from then intent on murder in The Grateful Dead's, 'Cold Rain And Snow'.
In Dirt In The Ground, Tom Waits conjures the theatre of the street in the way a condemned man mounts the stairs to the gallows with courageous indifference. I guess some knowledge of the tyranny of The Bloody Codes might have featured in my preamble too. One can envisage many types of walk up the gallows' steps during that epoch particularly given the draconian harshness of those laws, and the youth of many of the condemned.
Protomartyr's Up The Tower has a revolution with its attendant chaos and destruction launched from a stairway, the music carrying the requisite amount of energy and nihilistic threat.
While Bruce Springstein's Jacob's Ladder is, I guess, some kind of apotheosis, the elect confirming their salvation by clambering up celestial rungs. A nice rousing sing song and, let us choose to believe, an inclusive kind of doctrine and I'm certainly happy to end with a moment of exultation.
These playlists were inspired by readers' song nominations from last week's topic: Going up? Songs about stairs, ladders, steps, elevators or escalators. The next topic will launch on Thursday at 1pm UK time.
Fancy a turn behind the pumps at The Song Bar? Care to choose a playlist from songs nominated and write something about it? Then feel free to contact The Song Bar here, or try the usual email address.
Stop once you feel that the scale has come to "rest". This feeling of "rest" occurs when you've found the tonic. Some songs may be in minor keys or various modes and that's fine, this method will simply help you identify the tonic of the major key for that minor scale or modes.
Hum or sing your reference song while the song is playing. If you're singing "Mary Had A Little Lamb", when you sing the word "had", that note represents the tonic of your key. Let's say "had" is a Bb, then you're in Bb major. The same can be done for "Happy Birthday". In the phrase "Happy birthday to...", the word "to" represents the tonic of the key.
The bass line is crucial to giving us chord information once we've established the key. The key helps to narrow down the immense list of chords that are possible. The bass line is not necessarily the tonic of a chord though, but it is the tonic most of the time.
How do we discover the bass line? Your ear needs to be developed enough in order to do this. I've had students that cannot hear the bass line to save their lives because their ears naturally hear higher pitched sounds. Here are a couple tips to teaching yourself how to hear it, but I admit, this process takes a lot of work if you can't naturally hear it:
You've found the key, which reduces the amount of chords you can choose, the bass line, which pretty much solidifies the tonic of the chord, so that's about it. However, there are cases where the bass note is either not the tonic or not even a part of the chord.
Let's say you're in the key of C major and your bass note is an E. The chord could be Em (which is the iii chord of the key), but C/E (an inversion of the I chord) is much more common, especially if it leads to the IV chord (F major) next. In this example, the bass note you heard was the 3rd of the chord. The bass note can also be the 5th of the chord (more rare) and it can even be the 7th of a chord (also more rare).