Many Beatles songs written by John Lennon contain mordents in the vocal melody: a note briefly ornamented by an adjacent scale degree before returning to the original note. He often places them near the ends of phrases where they're followed by a downward resolution to the tonic.

These ornaments are common in many styles of music, but they distinguish Lennon from his bandmates Paul McCartney and George Harrison, who use them much less often. Lennon himself uses them most in his R&B-inspired songs from the early '60s.

There are also conspicuous vocal mordents in "Do You Want To Know A Secret," which was sung by Harrison but written by Lennon.

References in later music

The Beach Boys

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Many hip hop and R&B songs from the '90s and late '80s feature percussion swung at the 16th-note level. In this context, when a rapper articulates 16th-note triplets, it creates a distinctive sound commonly associated with Das EFX.

It fell out of popular use by the latter half of the decade.

Many pop-rock songs from the '90s and early '00s create a lingering unresolved feeling by including the 4th scale degree in their final chord.

Sometimes it's the root of a IV chord, but it can also be the 5th of the bVII chord.

Paul Simon achieves a folky quality in his melodies by descending stepwise from 2 to 1, then leaping up to 3 and descending stepwise to 1 again: 2-1-3-2-1.

Often, but not always, this pattern is preceded by an additional 3: altogether, 3-2-1-3-2-1.

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Video Killed The Radio Star (1979)The Buggles

Video Killed The Radio Star (1997)Ben Folds Five

5̂-3̂-6̂ in original songs by Ben Folds

In the late '90s and early '00s, pop songs often used the leading tone in a minor key (i.e., the note one half-step below the tonic), along with the V7/vi dominant chord to which it belongs.

Ancestors

References in later music

Meghan Trainor

Eminem

Despite Eminem's outspoken disdain for the boy bands of the '90s, many of his early songs inherited the harmonic minor scale from those very bands.

2Pac often inserts a pair of 32nd notes into a line otherwise comprised mostly of 8th and 16th notes.

He did it on his earliest recorded verses as a member of Digital Underground and continued throughout his career.

Several other artists in the early '90s, including Digital Underground, used sixteenth-note triplets over swung beats to create a similar effect, but 2Pac is unusual in doing it consistently over straight percussion.

References in later music

Eminem

Eminem's rhythms sometimes contain a pair of 32nd notes, often to fit an unrhymed syllable into a multisyllabic rhyme scheme. In 2003's Soldier, the accompanying lyric suggests an intentional stylistic reference to 2Pac.

It was common in the 1970s and '80s to end a rap line with this rhythmic figure on the third beat of a measure:

It fell out of favor by the early '90s.

References in later music

The Pharcyde

The Pharcyde's 1992 song Return of the B-Boy, which opens with the lyric "yo, is '87 in the house," uses this rhythm to imitate the sound of the '80s.

Several Billy Joel songs from the mid-'70s contain a similar rhythmic pattern: he sings a dense sequence of sixteenth or eighth notes, with a note onset on all subdivisions but the first in each group of four.

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In the early '90s, Ghostface favored a sequence of three rhythms, always appearing together in the same bar:

1. 2-3 syncopated eighth notes
2. the last three sixteenth notes of the third beat
3. a single-syllable rhyme on the fourth beat

References in later music

Paul McCartney

It first appears in You Belong With Me (2008) and is a consistent feature of her writing since then.

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Taylor Swift often ends vocal phrases by singing 3̂, dropping to 7̂, then rising to 1̂.

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