The Truck Driver's Gear Change Hall Of Shame. (Thanks Brad.) A Truck Driver's Gear Change is when a song, usually a pop song, modulates up half a step or so near the end to repeat its chorus (or more!) into the fade-out. I'm sure the fade-out phenomenon, every songwriter's excuse to not write an ending and every album producer's opportunity to burn a chorus into its listeners' brand recognition circuits through repetition, is partly responsible. Without a real ending, the Truck Driver's Gear Change can "open up" a song near the end to simulate a big finale without actually ending. The site features MP3 clips of many examples, browsable by artist, title and year.

Musicology dives like this one make me wish computers were better at identifying pitches in music. We need to load all of the world's music into a giant database where we can perform advanced queries to identify musicological trends like this one. Not that the RIAA would let us do such a thing even if we possessed the technology (we could do lyric databases today, but we're not allowed), but it's fun to think about.

Here's such a dive I've been interested in for a while, somewhat related to the fade-out and the TDGC: How many pop songs use and end with repeated phrases that don't end on the tonic? "Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You" and "You Are the Sunshine of My Life" come to mind-- and never leave.