Modulation (music)

"Bon Jovi did it in "Livin' on a Prayer," Michael Jackson in "Man in the Mirror," and Celine Dion in "My Heart Will Go On." Taking a verse or a chorus up a notch by modulating the key was a way for pop stars to give their songs extra oomph for decades. We loved it because it made us feel things. And some of us are realizing just how much we miss the chills and thrills those modulations gave us."

"Over centuries of music, composers have used modulations and changes in the key of the music to express emotion, drama and excitement. In pop and rock music a shift up a semitone is always a memorable moment, as a song clicks into an upper gear."

"Many of the biggest hits in pop music used to have something in common: a key change, like the one you hear in Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody." But key changes have become harder to find in top hits."

"Someone killed the key change in pop music, and I’m going to do whatever it takes to find the perpetrator."

"Changing the key – or shifting the base scale of a song – is a tool used across musical genres to "inject energy" into a pop number."

"Musically, one of the most interesting things about [Sabrina Carpenter's] "Please Please Please" is the key change at the start of the second verse - not a songwriting trick that’s often pulled."

"One thing I always encourage everyone to do is just try modulating in any direction. Just try it. Use the things you have - it’s so easy to just try and modulate. Even if it sounds like shit; even if you just do it really quickly just to see if you can pull yourself somewhere."