Memories

Pachelbel’s Canon in D has one of the strangest afterlives in Western music – an unremarkable Baroque wedding-processional piece that became, three centuries later, the default sound of a first dance, played at more receptions than almost any other classical work in the repertoire. “Memories” borrows that exact chord progression and melodic shape, and then does something the Canon has essentially never been asked to do: mourn someone.

Adam Levine wrote the song as a eulogy for Jordan Feldstein, the band’s manager and a close friend, who died suddenly in December 2017; the album it opens, Jordi (2019), takes his name. Building a grief song on top of a progression this thoroughly associated with celebration is a genuine risk – a chord sequence a listener has heard at every wedding they’ve ever attended doesn’t automatically bend toward loss just because the lyric asks it to. Maroon 5’s arrangement mostly manages the turn by keeping everything else spare: a restrained vocal, minimal percussion, and a video built around toasts and photographs rather than a big pop-rock production, letting the Canon’s familiar warmth read as remembrance instead of celebration once the words above it change the frame.

It’s a smaller, more contemporary example than this run’s other four picks, and a useful reminder that “borrowed from the concert hall” doesn’t require a rare or obscure classical source – sometimes the most recognizable four chords in the world are exactly the ones flexible enough to carry a completely different feeling than the one everybody already associates with them.

Greatest of All Time. A wedding staple, repurposed for a funeral, and the progression carries the weight anyway.

Hero image: “Jordi” single artwork, 222/Interscope Records. Used under fair use for editorial commentary.