The Augmented Chords - Pop Music's Loch Ness Monster

If diminished chords are rare in pop music, augmented chords are doubly so. The augmented chord is a triad with the fifth step raised. (hence the name - it becomes visually bigger) It has a very open sound, and has a certain urgency to resolve somewhere, while also feeling very "floaty."

Much more common in jazz, augmented chords typically serve one of two purposes: as a moving line to lead to a 6 chord, demonstrated here in It Never Entered My Mind:

and as an enhanced V7 chord, shown here in Blue Bossa:

I was unable to think of many well-known pop tunes that contain augmented chords, but the first to pop in my head was the second chord of the Stevie Wonder version of For Once in my Life:

This serves the first purpose mentioned above, as a moving 5 part in the harmony. The Ben Folds Five does the exact same thing in their song Underground (starting at :38):

The use of an augmented V chord is so blasé to jazz musicians that it doesn't really stick out too much when it shows up in a pop tune. Two that come to mind are the opening arpeggio in Billy Joel's Zanzibar, (although that song is half jazz and not well-known) and the opening chord of The Beatles' Oh! Darling:

I recently played a full show of Mariah Carey songs, and I really enjoyed some of the augmented chords in Vision of Love. There is an augmented III chord in the verse that inexplicably goes back to the I chord (:32) and then to a borrowed bIII chord (:47), one in the turnaround between verses (:57), and similarly for the ending at 3:08:

If I ever do a blog post on that song, I will probably spend it all talking about how great the bass is.

Last, my favorite augmented chord in a pop song might be the intro to Billy Joel's 1986 ballad Temptation:

It does everything that I love in a chord; that is, nothing it's supposed to do. We go from the I chord to an augmented bVI chord (or whatever the heck you want to call it) then back to I, and later to the IV chord to start the verses. That last move actually makes some sense, as it is basically an inverted V/VI chord. It is the bass movement that makes it somewhat jarring, but also unique.

If I think of other examples I will update this post, but for now I think Billy Joel wins the Augmented Chord Award, if there were such thing. For now, the best I can do is this:

I hope he likes it.