The brightest song on the record, and the one that sings its leading tone out loud. Hey is a straight D major I V IV vi, and the vocal drapes a C# over the chords, the major seventh, the exact note the modal songs kept hiding. Grounded in the transcribed arrangement MIDI (guitar, bass, vocal) and the Racy chord chart.
Hey · Hooray For Earth
D major · intro, bars 1-4 · one sustained G chord under a bare bass
The song opens on G (IV), held whole-bar under a single low G in the bass.
Four bars of nothing but the IV chord, no vocal, no lead, the plagal side sitting bare.
That IV opens the album's brightest song by pointing at the tonic without ever playing it.
The G stays through bar 4, and only later at bar 14 does the verse enter with vocal and chord changes.
favorite momentFour bars of held G with no I anywhere, the song's opening move is a plagal setup.
Intro staves from hey-arrangement.mid, bars 1-4. Rhythm guitar and bass on G, vocals and lead tacet.
D major · chorus · the vocal drapes a C# over the chords, the open major seventh
Reading the numbers over each vocal note: 1 root, 3 major third, 5 fifth, 7 major seventh, 9 ninth, 11 the fourth sung as a color tone, 13 thirteenth (the sixth), b7 / b3 the lowered seventh and third, #11 / b9 the raised fourth and lowered ninth. Every label is the interval that sung note makes against the chord sounding beneath it in the staff directly below.
The chorus is a bright D major loop, D (I), A (V), G (IV), Bm (vi) in the chart.
The sung phrase enters over the G (IV), and the vocal opens on D, C#, then a held A.
That C# is the major seventh over G, a Gmaj7 shimmer coming from the voice, not the chord.
C# is the leading tone of D, and Hey sings it out in the open, the note the modal songs kept hiding.
The line then walks B, C#, A down to F#, landing on the third of the home key.
Every note the singer picks sits inside the chords, so the brightness reads as pure major, no borrowed shade.
The one minor color is the vi, Bm, the single soft chord in an otherwise sunlit loop.
favorite momentThe C# over the IV chord, the major seventh sung on top of a plain G, the leading tone out in daylight.
Chorus staves are transcribed from the arrangement MIDI (bars 14-17): vocal with the engraved lyric, guitar and bass with rendered standard-tuning tab (bass 4-string EADG). Chart chorus loop is I V IV vi (D A G Bm).
D major · chorus, bars 28-30 · the vocal descent lands the C# major seventh
The full chorus enters at bar 28 with the same G to A to F# to D chord frame.
The vocal walks D, C#, B, A down the scale, then B repeated with a C# lift, then A to F# on the F# chord change.
Once again the C# lands over G (IV), that same major-seventh drape from the opening.
Under the vocal, the rhythm guitar hits G in whole bars while the bass sustains the roots.
The A chord in bar 29 is only half a bar, and F# to D in bar 30 completes the I V IV vi (in D reading) or a modal-mixture read.
Bar 31 rests over a held G and pulls the phrase back around.
favorite momentThe B-B-C# offbeat lift in bar 29, three back-to-back approaches to the leading tone with no chord change to justify them.
Chorus staves from hey-arrangement.mid, bars 28-30. Rhythm guitar plays sustained chords, bass anchors roots, vocals carry the descent.
D major · verse coda · the plagal turn, IV back to I
The verse coda is just G (IV) and D (I).
IV to I is the plagal cadence, the amen turn, soft and settled.
There is no dominant here, so the resolution arrives without any pull or tension.
It is the calmest corner of the song, two chords rocking home.
After the bright chorus loop, the coda just breathes on the tonic.
The plagal move keeps the whole song inside plain D major to the end.
favorite momentThe bare plagal rock, G to D, the amen turn with no dominant to push it.
The verse coda is instrumental (G to D), so the vocal staff rests, marked tacet. Guitar and bass carry rendered tab staves. Chords from the Racy chord chart.