It sounds like Solange and Saadiq are really treating the F-sharp major scale as a mode, not as a diatonic scale spelling out functional harmony. Play along on the aQWERTYon and see for yourself. Is it really F-sharp, or actually C-sharp? Or B? It’s totally ambiguous. Every note in the song comes from the F-sharp major scale, but the bass and strings roam around unpredictably, making it impossible to tell where the tonic is. The harmony is both simple and mysterious.

But she got attached to the vibe of the toy harp, and quite rightly decided to keep it. She had her synth player put down a temporary track with a toy instrument from Toys R Us, intending to eventually replace it with the real thing. She talks about drawing inspiration from Alice Coltrane, which might be where she got the idea to add harp. Solange wanted some chord changes, but Saadiq couldn’t find the stems, so she was stuck with the track as a unit. The track started as an instrumental by Raphael Saadiq, just drums, strings and bass. Solange helpfully explains her songwriting process on the invaluable Song Exploder podcast. It manages the rare feat of being both extremely catchy and extremely weird.

“Cranes In The Sky” is her biggest hit so far. Solange Knowles is Beyoncé’s artsier younger sister.

Cranes in the sky download