Style marker
Harmonic minor
In the '90s, harmonic-minor-based chord progressions suddenly increased in popularity. Musicologist Walter Everett names Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder among the forebears of this sound, which would become identified with Max Martin and The Backstreet Boys.
There is [...] a tradition of pure [i.e., "harmonic"] minor modality, blues aside, in the R&B music of Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson; this is the heritage of the Backstreet Boys.
— Walter Everett, "Pitch Down the Middle", from Expression in Pop-Rock Music (2008), p. 172
Related
Connection
Points of connection
- The verse of each song starts with a two-bar phrase, starting on the "and" of 1, ending on beat 3 of the second measure, and repeating twice
- The second measure in each phrase opens by traversing scale degrees 4̂-3̂-4̂-5̂ using eighth notes
- Both songs are in the same key (E mixolydian)
- Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran recounted in a 2021 interview that Michael Jackson called him in 1984 to propose a collaboration, but the band declined