Maybe I’m Amazed – Some Key Musical Features
Maybe I’m Amazed was released on McCartney’s eponymous debut album. Although much of the album was recorded at home on a Studer console, this track was cut in EMI’s Studio Two at Abbey Road. As well as providing vocals, McCartney plays guitars, bass, piano, organ and drums.
The song is regularly described as McCartney’s best post-Beatles song, and certainly one of the strongest tracks in his early solo career.
So what are the main musical features of Maybe I’m Amazed that makes it such a compelling track?
False Introduction
Firstly, the song begins with a false introduction. The listener is lead to expect the key of D major after a slow piano introduction which ends with a ii-V (Em7 to A major) in D major.
To make the dominant chord of A major even more obvious, McCartney adds an ascending and then descending arpeggio. On many live versions, this arpeggio ends with a cheeky mordent “tinkle” between the high notes of A6-B6 at the higher reaches of the piano’s range, heard here at 0:20:
But after expecting an opening chord of D major, McCartney fools the listener as the song begins on the chord of Bb major (heard above at 0:23). We are immediately plunged down into a decidedly darker world.
Quad-Plagal Cadences
But how can the chord of Bb major be reconciled with the key of D major? McCartney manages to use this incongruous chord as a part of a chain of plagal cadences – what the music writer Dominic Peddler calls a “quad-plagal cadence”. By doing so, McCartney reaches well outside the expected D major key signature.
Chromatic Run
Rather than repeat this eight-bar chord sequence verbatim, McCartney adds a bold chromatic piano-run: (heard in the 1970 version at 0:26).
After a further two “exotic” chords of Ab major and Eb major, McCartney finally gives the listener the key signature of D major at 0:44 in the 1970 version. He has kept us waiting a long time for the home key to finally arrive.
Extreme Vocal Range
During this section, McCartney reaches the absolute extreme of his vocal range, hitting the note of F5 at 1:00.
To give some context to how high this note is, think about the high tenor note of B4 in Giacomo Puccini’s Nessum Dorma from the opera Turandot. Well, McCartney’s F5 is a diminished fifth higher!
In fact, one of the highest notes ever recorded by the great Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti is the exact same pitch of F5, which can be heard here at 0:07:
In this short blog post I have identified four musical features of Maybe I’m Amazed:
- A false introduction
- Quad-plagal cadences
- A chromatic run
- An extreme vocal range
You can read much more about this song in Volume One of my book here (click below):
