Most well-known songs based around a major seven chord?

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Matthew, knowing your tastes, I think your instinct is probably correct.

yes, "Sugar Hiccup" is Major 7th heaven!

Love - Forever Changes is loaded with them too, very prominent in "Andmoreagain", "The Red Telephone", etc. Bryan MacLean was bigtime into 7ths & 9ths, Major & minor.

this is always what I think of when asked to explain what a maj-maj-7th chord is

Yes, "Close to You" is prob. a textbook example.

major triad + a major 7th added (eg, C-E-G-B)

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the thing about major sevenths is that they're sweet chords; dominant sevenths are brassier, harder. plus, and correct me if i'm wrong, but a major seventh does refer to the major/minor tonality, because in C, a minor seventh can only contain the two flat notes that are in the minor scale, right? minor sevenths are very warm chords, and one of the things about the Beatles around the time of "Hard Day's Night" and "For Sale" is the fact that they were using them; "What You're Doing" is a good example, I think.

Re sweet chords: I've always thought of them as bittersweet, specifically, because they encapsulate both a major triad (C-E-G) and a minor triad (E-G-B).

c-eflat-g-b isn't a minor seventh
right

plus, and correct me if i'm wrong, but a major seventh does refer to the major/minor tonality, because in C, a minor seventh can only contain the two flat notes that are in the minor scale, right?

it doesn't, because when notated on a chart, you'll either see:
C7 : refers to a major chord with a flatted 7th
C-7 : refers to a minor chord with a flatted 7th
Cmaj7 : refers to a maj chord with a maj 7th
C-(maj7) : refers to a minor chord with a maj 7th
C+7 : refers to an aug chord with a flatted 7th
C+(maj7) : refers to an aug chord with a maj 7th, tho at this point, you could also notate as E+(maj7) or G#+(maj7) - or E/C for that matter, if you wanted the scale to be E based instead of C based

also note, for minor scales, you should never take for granted that they are referring to any one particular kind. in jazz, usually you're talking about melodic minors (especially in be-bop and beyond charts - though it really depends on the notes of the melody, all cues about what's "correct" come from there)

Dom, I always thought the default minor scale in jazz is Dorian.

well, dorian is actually not technically "minor" scale - it's a mode, which just happens to share the note intervals of the "natural minor" scale. I wouldn't say it was the default one though - Miles Davis used modes on a lot of his late 50s and early 60s records, but for the most part jazz players were using minor scales that contained major 6ths and 7ths (which the natural [and dorian mode] does not)

and keep in mind, one of the most common things jazz improvisers will do is to add notes that aren't technically in the scale when they improvise - hence you get a lot of "chromatic" figures, or figures that that when taken on their own (apart from the context of the entire solo), seem out of the key entirely. see john coltrane especially

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Hurting is OTM. What's Goin' On is the best example I've seen so far of a song that centers around a maj7 (Mercy Mercy Me as well). Reminiscin' by the Little River Band is based around Gmaj7, Steely Dan's music is littered with them. It's an open "jazzy" chord, underused in my opinion.

As for the maj/maj7/dominant progression, to "Kiss Me" and "Show me the way" I would add "It Ain't Over Til its Over" by Lenny Kravitz

The melodic minor scale has a major 6th and 7th.

From a jazz perspective, prior to the advent of modal jazz at least, most tunes also started and finished on a major chord (the tonic) that would naturally take a major rather than minor 7: the main exception would have been certain straightforward blues tunes. Jazz improvisors tend not to distinguish too much between tonic chords where the implied harmony is a major scale: the tonic chord might be played as a major triad, or a major 6 or major 7 chord, or a major 9 or whatever - jazz musicians tend to regard these as more or less interchangeable. The reason being that any note within the major scale can be added to the chord without changing its harmonic function within the tune(whereas adding a minor 7th to form a dominant 7 chord *would* imply a different harmonic function, in fact a change of key, although, as I said earlier, the rules for blues tunes are different).

But the use of dominant 7th chords has become so pervasive that the formerly more mundane major 7 now sounds a bit exotic to some ears, even when used as the tonic. To earlier generations it's the use of the dominant 7 as the home chord that would have sounded exotic, even jarring.

Going back to the original question my problem is with the words "based around". Most pre-rock popular music comes home to a major chord that would quite naturally take a major 7, but that probably doesn't mean the music is "based on" that chord. Some jazzy soft-rock does seem to wallow in that maj7 sound, often by alternating between a IMaj7/IVmaj7 (eg Emaj7/Amaj 7) Examples that spring to mind are "My Love" (Macca), "I Want to Make It With You" (Bread), "Your Love Is King" (Sade), "Wild Children" (Van Morrison). Marvin Gaye uses the sound a lot, as others have pointed out. You get (usually somewhat more harmonically interesting) examples of it in modal jazz - the reason why Miles was attracted to "On Green Dolphin Street" would have been that major 7 sound, very familiar to soft rock fans - he normally reharmonised the tune so that it had even more maj7 chords than the written version.

also the5th song on loveless starts on the maj7 (the note not the chord) and in general that album has a lot of those chords! a heavily distoreted maj7 can sound shudderingly beautiful, or shitty

i am listening to 'fun house' and i dont think there is a single maj7 chord here

This is a very interesting thread....