Noodling on piano last week, I started learning to play Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain”.

The verse is mostly the A minor chord, but the chorus is mostly C major.

Music folks are welcome to correct me, but…see, that’s a little weird.

The A minor scale uses all the same notes as the C major scale, but it starts on a different note and feels different throughout. When the melody starts, it may take a few notes to figure out if the song is in C major or A minor.

So it’s normal for a song in the C major key to use the A minor chord, but…not for very long.

The verse of “You’re So Vain” sticks with an A minor chord, which is the sixth chord of the C major scale. Planting the verse up there makes it feel unstable, menacing, wrong – but the notes all fit the scale, so it isn’t clear why. The lyrics describe the arrogance, the lies, the low-key abuses. The tune feels stuck in a ditch, without the footing to climb out.

Then the chorus lands on C major, and our feet have finally reached the ground. “You’re so vain. You probably think this song is about you.” The picture is clear: this vain person is never going to escape their own self-absorption – but the singer, at last, has found a way out.

The story isn’t about vanity; it’s about gaslighting. The verse uses all the same notes as the chorus, but they’ve been arranged into a maze. Is this song in A minor or C major? Am I happy or sad? Am I angry or selfish? Is this all my fault?

The key doesn’t quite make sense until the chorus. “Oh…*you* were doing this. For your own vanity. You were never concerned about me.”

I worked through this tune immediately after watching Kamala Harris and Joe Biden accept their victory in the presidential election. Both speeches made me cry. At last, my feet felt like they were on solid ground.

Yet much of the country is still mired in that minor-key verse. The threads of the world have been woven into an image of horror and domination. They remain convinced that the abuser who put them there is the only savior who can take them out.

A little vanity can actually be a good thing. It does me no harm to comb my hair and put on clean clothes.

But high standards for oneself that aren’t anchored in humbling reality can quickly become flattering delusions of oneself, and flattering delusions of oneself quickly become aggressive manipulations of other people.

The C major chord is satisfying because it untangles the knot. With the chorus, all the mysterious threads resolve into a clear picture, and the world starts to make sense.

And what is a chorus? It’s literally the part we all sing together.

1/3 of our country remains tangled in the verse. They’re being manipulated; they’re angry, but they don’t really understand why; they don’t know what key the song is really in.

Yes, we’re angry too. But it really is up to us to help them – or at least, *allow* them – to reach the chorus. Their resentment can join ours as we recognize together the true source of our grief.