Dm7- Fmaj

[Jake Jackson]

Above, I just added a link to a video of S. McClachlan singing and playing the song solo on piano, so you can hear and see her use of the IIm7 to IV (the Dm7 to F if she were playing it in C major). Well, I'll just add it again so people don't have to look for it:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=BDkcJ-62uuY

A strange thing about this song--I've seen many people write about it as an elegy. (People have it played at funerals.) But isn't it about needing heroin while on the road and staying in a dingy hotel--the angel is heroin as though it were a temporary, briefly worshiped, regretted, person found for a one-night stand?

(Not-a-Rock-Star: what's all that about squeezing things? In a kid's song?)

In any case, another way of seeing the progression, in C major, is as almost a secondary dominant to subdominant sequence: The Dm7 is the minor dominant of the dominant in C--the fifth of the fifth made minor. Not sure if knowing this in any way helps in writing a song, but it means that you could see the sequence of Dm7-F as a variation on the very basic sequence of G-F (V-IV). Partly because the Dm7 could be called a Gsus7 with a D in the bass, if you leave out the fifth (A), since it contains the fifth, raised third, and flatted 7th of the G major chord.

What are the other ways people are using the Dm7 in C?

[rockstar_not]

(Not-a-Rock-Star: what's all that about squeezing things? In a kid's song?)

Jake, it's about juice boxes, and not squeezing them while riding in a car - If you are a parent, you'll know what I'm talking about.

If you don't know what a juice box is in a kid's context.....

[Jake Jackson]

Sorry. Couldn't resist...