Brian Wilson (The Beach Boys)
Truly one of the best melodic songwriters in the pop world, Wilson has often
been overlooked because of much of the relatively lightweight music the Beach
Boys churned out. Wilson's writing style, however, is thoroughly distinctive,
and he routinely writes melodies that are both complex and catchy (an often
difficult task). The following classic Beach Boys tune, Warmth
of the Sun (click to hear song fragment via Real Audio)
is a perfect illustration of Wilson's melodic concept:
Warmth
of the Sun
Perhaps Wilson's most distinctive trait as a songwriter is his use of wide interval jumps in his melodies. The above example illustrates this clearly several times. The first word of the phrase, "the", starts on a low G, the fifth of the Cmaj chord, which immediately jumps all the way up to an E on "love", which is a leap of a major 6th. Most other songwriters would have started the melody on a C, the root of the chord, instead of the G, thus the big intervallic leap wouldn't have existed, and the melody wouldn't have the trademark Brian Wilson sound.
If you look at the third and fourth full bar of the example, you'll see a full octave leap between notes in the melody (low Bb to a high Bb on "she left"). It is very rare to find leaps in a melody like this in pop and rock music, although it is a trait that some of the "alternative" bands began to explore in the mid-90's. The result was a new direction in the music that had noticable Beach Boys influence - Weezer's Buddy Holly (click to hear song fragment via Real Audio) is a perfect example of this).
For a more in-depth analysis of Brian Wilson's music, read Greg Panfile's essays on the Web Page for Brian Wilson.
