Key changes in Beatles songs | Page 2 | Fab Forum

Joe said
I was playing Penny Lane to Ted the other day (got to start 'em young) and Ellie said: "Ooh, truck-driver's gear change!" And it has got one, though The Beatles didn't often rely on those sorts of cliches (was it even a cliche in 1967?).

I don't know if there's a thread about key changes in Beatles songs, but they didn't often feature them. The only other ones I can think of are Sgt Pepper (Reprise) and the guitar solo in And I Love Her. Are there any others?  

Also, later in the thread, BBer "GniknuS" wrote:

Technically, the verses of Penny Lane are in B and the chorus is in A, and Paul just keeps the last chorus in B, so I'm not sure if that would qualify as a truck drivers key change, but certainly the other choruses are, even though they are brilliantly done.

That "truck-driver's key change" Joe mentions was referred to by a classical music teacher I took in college as "modulatory rape" (he didn't take too kindly to it).  Country music tends to do it a lot.

While I agree that Penny Lane has a key change at the end, it's an ingenious one because as GniknuS points out, it's not really a change, it's a reversion to the logic of the main verses being in B. The real key change is when every chorus dips down to A from B.  Thus Paul is achieving the powerful sense of a key change at the end, but only by making the chorus (the second, repeated time) follow the key logic of the main verses and go back to the B it would have gone back to had he had another set of verses to sing.

I hope that's clear as mud.

Or to put what I said the other way: Every time Paul goes into the chorus, it sounds like the song is going up or "advancing" when actually it's going down a whole step in key, from B down to A. Then when the chorus segues back to the main part, it sounds like a step down, but it's actually going up from A back to B.  Only at the end does he achieve the effect of the actual elevation from A to B sounding as clear as a bell like an "upward and onward" movement.