Truck Driver's Gear Change/Playing With

Basic Trope: A song ends by changing the key, usually sometime in the last chorus.

• Straight: A pop song modulates up half a step before its last chorus.
• Exaggerated: A pop song modulates up half a step before its last chorus. And then does it again. And again. And again, until it goes through the whole circle of keys chromatically, back to where it started. (That, by the way, wouldn't be "Up To 11", but "Up To 12".)
• Downplayed: The song modulates up one-tenth of a step, barely discernible.
• Justified: The songwriter adds in the key change because it emphasises an important event in the lyrics.
• Inverted: The song changes key some time earlier, and then changes back in the middle of the last chorus.
  • The song modulates downward before the last chorus.
• Subverted: The chorus starts with an instrumental break in a different key, then changes back when the vocals come in...
• Double Subverted: ...then it changes again in the middle of the chorus.
• Parodied: An extreme metal band adds a conspicuous key change to the last chorus of an extremely atonal song.
• Zig Zagged: Some albums by one pop artist are full of key changes, others have none to speak of.
• Averted: The whole song uses the same key signature.
• Enforced: A producer pressures a band to write more songs with this trope, in order to be more commercially successful.
• Lampshaded: The lyrics reference the key change when it happens.
• Defied: The lyrics reference the lack of key changes.
• Discussed: A song has a verse about why the trope is overused.
• Conversed: A songwriter and the singer he's working with talk about the merits of the trope.

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