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What is the functional explanation of the chord progression in the Doja Cat song Paint the Town Red?
I think it's in G minor and is an alternating Gm7 Am7 progression.
Where does the Am7 come from?
G minor would have an Adim, right?
Is it actually a ii iii from F major?
Edit: There's a blog post here discussing this very topic.
This progression is sampled from a Dionne Warwick’s “Walk On By” written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David in the early 1960’s.
It is not uncommon to use a ii chord with a natural 5th in pop music in a minor key. “Moondance” by Van Morrison is another well known example (Am-Bm on the verses). It can be justified with the melodic minor scale like @Aaron mentioned or it can also be justified by thinking of it as G Dorian.
The bottom line is there is not nearly as much concern for harmonic function in pop music as there is in more traditional styles.
Here we go again! Songs do not have to only possess chords that are diatonic!! Who spreads this misinformation?!
Playing an F chord after shows that the key would indeed be F major, not that that is ever reached - but it sounds like home more than any other.
So, yes, it's ii and iii of key F, possibly attributable to being in G Dorian. Which of course, is made up from the parent key F major.
Just dug out a version, written in key C, but that ends on the aforementioned F! It's by Bacharach and David, so will be a 'good song' anyway! Just taking that line doesn't really help find a key - far more of the chord sequence would be needed, and it's not available in the version quoted.
Although the key of G minor has Eb (so, yes, Adim or Amin7b5), in practice, G minor can also include E natural and F#. F# is the leading tone, so often inserted into minor to create stronger cadences, and E is then used to smooth the path from D to F# — D-E-F# being considered "smoother" than D-Eb-F#. The resulting scale is referred to as "melodic minor" (ascending only, descending one reverts to F natural and Eb, which is discussed elsewhere on this site).
