Style marker
Harmonic minor
In the late '90s and early '00s, pop songs often used the leading tone in a minor key (i.e., the note one half-step below the tonic), along with the V7/vi dominant chord to which it belongs.
6
5
4
3
2
1
7
Ancestors
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
References in later music
Meghan Trainor
Time Magazine: Were there any artists you were thinking about as reference points while creating [the 2016 song No]?
Meghan Trainor: Obviously we wanted that '90s feel that everybody loves and recognizes and misses.
— Time Magazine, 2016
