key: D minor
mode: D minor — D E F G A Bb (B) C (C#) D
melody: l (li) t d r (ri) m f s si l’ t’
form: verse (AB) - chorus (AB)
meter: duple
English function names: tonic dominant
Tagg (modified): home counterpoise (away)
Riemann: t D or D7
Scale degrees: i V or V7
Chords: Dm A or A7 Dm A7
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A7 Dm
|////|////|////|////|Despite being from 1996, the style is very much 1920s early Swing, a style which enjoyed a alterna-pop revival in the late 1990s.
Tagg doesn’t talk about this progression specifically, but it is a common occurrence in two-chord songs, particularly with tonic-dominant pairs. The second phrase is the inverse of the first. Although each chord is heard for the same amount of time, the placement of the chords in the larger structure disqualifies it from being a shuttle. We might consider it to be a counterpoise sandwich, that is, a counterpoise filling between two slices of tonic, except the slices are different “thicknesses,” so to speak. But this phrase inversion is common enough that we might do well to consider it as its own category. We will see it again and repeatedly.
Working with children, as I so often do, this song usually gets an eyebrow raise from the kids themselves, as “hell” is a word they have learned is bad to say (less so with Czech and German kids, who seem to think the f-bomb is an everyday word you can drop at any time in any situation). And so this song gave me pause, too. But I decided there’s a difference between talking about hell as a place (especially one that you don’t want to go to) and using it as a swear (“What the hell?!”) or telling someone to go to hell. Since the lyrics fall squarely into the narrative of talking about hell as an undesirable place, I feel that this song is okay for 8+. You may certainly feel differently! In my experience, once kids realize what the song is about, they often like it.