Don't be afraid. The circle of fifths looks confusing but it's only ever here to help. And a basic understanding of what it's trying to tell you could lead you down a whole new creative superhighway.

Many of the biggest hits in pop music used to have something in common: a key change, like the one you hear in Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody." But key changes have become harder to ...

A data analyst listened to decades of Billboard's top tunes and discovered that a once-ubiquitous compositional tool, the key change, has all but disappeared from modern hits. The biggest hits in pop ...