As long as everyone else is doing it…
Quick-n-dirty mockup of fragment of mystery song. The MIDI horn-like instrument represents the vocal, the piano all the instrumental accompaniment. Tempo is just about right.
CLUES:
a) It’s not “Betty Davis Eyes” by Kim Carnes. But if you hear “Betty Davis Eyes” when you listen to the fragment you are not far off, it’s structurally similar, not just in the chords, but in the architecture whereby there’s sort of a question-and-answer dialog going between the vocals and an instrumental frag, the latter of which is very short and very repetitive.
b) Another song with very similar architecture that it ALSO is not is Phil Collins “Dance Into the Light”, and again for the same reasons: instrumental goes doooo doodeedoodee doooo then Phil sings “dance into the light” then the instrument goes doo doo deee. Song I’m looking for does that too.
c) This mystery song has a male singer; he is singing midway towards the bottom of his vocal range; as you can (hopefully) tell from my cobbled-together clip, it’s in a fast repetitive 4 unlike “Dance Into the LIght” which is in a fast repetitive 3.
d) Stylistically, I could imagine Soul Asylum doing it, or Steve Winwood, perhaps Kenny Loggins, although I have zero reason to think it’s by any of them.
e) I can’t conjure up so much as a single word of the damn vocals, but I get the vague notion that one of those short little sung phrases pertains to “I am going through this” or “I have to do this” or “this is the situation I am in”, in much the same sense as Annie Lenox singing about how she’s waking on broken glass, or …hmm this has got to be one of the least useful comments I’ve offered up so far…
f) Other songs that it is not but you can be forgiven for hearing similarities: Come to my Window (Melissa Etheridge), Vox (Sarah McLachlan).