Why Was I Born by Jerome Kern

Overview

Key: E♭ major · Chords used: 13 · Sections: 4

Form: A Section → B Section → A Section → C Section

Where these chords come from: a lead sheet of this public-domain song, contributed by a musician to the Wikifonia archive and preserved in the OpenEWLD lead-sheet collection (Simonetta et al., 2018). It describes the song as written, not any particular recording. This page shows that lead sheet as-is: the analysis below is generated directly from it by code, not written by AI. Consecutive repeats of a chord are shown once, and the piano voicings are our playable arrangement of each chord symbol, not a note-for-note transcription.

Section by section

A Section 1

• Emaj7 – F♯dim7 – Fm7 – B♭7 – E♭maj7 – B♭m7 – E♭7 – A♭maj7 – D♭7
  #Imaj7 – #ii°7 – ii7 – V7 – Imaj7 – v7 – I7 – IVmaj7 – bVII7

B Section

• E♭maj7 – Cm7 – Fm7 – B♭7 – B♭m7 – E♭7 – A♭maj7 – D♭7 – Gm7 – C7 – Fm7 – B♭7
  Imaj7 – vi7 – ii7 – V7 – v7 – I7 – IVmaj7 – bVII7 – iii7 – VI7 – ii7 – V7

A Section 2

• E♭maj7 – F♯dim7 – Fm7 – B♭7 – E♭maj7 – B♭m7 – E♭7 – A♭maj7 – D♭7
  Imaj7 – #ii°7 – ii7 – V7 – Imaj7 – v7 – I7 – IVmaj7 – bVII7

C Section

• E♭maj7 – Cm7 – F7 – D♭7 – E♭maj7 – F♯dim7 – Fm7 – B♭7 – E♭maj7
  Imaj7 – vi7 – II7 – bVII7 – Imaj7 – #ii°7 – ii7 – V7 – Imaj7

Chord vocabulary

Harmonic highlights

• B♭m7 (v7) is borrowed from the parallel key, E♭ minor.
• D♭7 (bVII7) is borrowed from the parallel key, E♭ minor.
• E♭7 acts as V/IV: it resolves to A♭maj7.
• C7 acts as V/ii: it resolves to Fm7.

Sources & accuracy

• Chords: the OpenEWLD lead-sheet collection (Simonetta et al., 2018). Community-contributed lead sheet (chord symbols over the melody) from the Wikifonia archive, MIT licence. Title and songwriter credit as written on the sheet.
• Section names: detected by code from repeated 8-, 12- and 16-bar phrases (letters such as A and B mark different phrases; a phrase that comes back keeps its letter). Lead sheets rarely print section names.
• Not verified: only one lead sheet of this song is available, so it hasn't been cross-checked.
• Rhythm and chord durations aren't shown; each step is one chord change.