"Honey Pie"

I was thinking about "Honey Pie" a couple days ago and had a number of small realizations about the line "I'm in love, but I'm lazy."  The first half ("I'm in love") ascends (A B E) as if illustrating this excitement, but the second half ("but I'm lazy") generally descends (B A G E G; "lazy" is sung with a melisma), matching this lack of effort.  That the two halves go in opposite musical directions heightens this sense of contrast.

There's a sort of poetic balance between the two halves (since "love" and "lazy" start with the same letter), and to some degree, this superficial resemblance draws attention to the contrast, too.

In finding the specific pitches for the above, I also discovered that "home" in the following line ("So won't you please come home") is sung to a G, which is the tonic note (the song is in G major), so there's a musical sense of "com[ing] home," especially since it coincides with the tonic chord.

"Revolution 1"

I listened to The Beatles last week and noticed that in the lines "We all wanna change the world" (the second instance) and "You say you'll change the constitution; well, you know" in "Revolution 1," the words "world" and "constitution" are sung with melismas (I think they're B G# F# E and A B A E C# B A, respectively), giving a sense of this "chang[ing]."

Years ago, I noted the corresponding melisma'd "world" in "Revolution" (sung to the notes C# G# F#), but I referenced that version again and found that "constitution" is sung with a melisma there, too (B C# B F# C# D# C# B, I think).

"All My Loving"

I recently listened to a compilation album of Buddy Holly and noticed the phrase "all your lovin'" in "That'll Be the Day" ("Well, you give me all your lovin' and your turtle-dovin' / All your hugs and kisses and your money, too").  Of course, this is very similar to the title phrase in "All My Loving."  In the immediate context, the sentiment in both songs is basically the same, too, just inverted, even structurally:  instead of "You give me all your lovin'," it's "All my lovin' I will send to you."

The Beatles were certainly familiar with "That'll Be the Day" (as the Quarry Men, they recorded a version of it in 1958), so this resemblance seems to be an indication of Holly's influence.

The Beatles (The White Album)

I was thinking about The Beatles (The White Album) recently and had a couple realizations about it.  In the liner notes of the two copies I have (a 2009 remaster and the smaller version of the 50th anniversary edition with just the two discs of the album and the Esher demos), the album's contrast with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is discussed to some degree.  In the 50th anniversary edition liner notes, John Lennon is quoted:  "The double album was a complete reversal from Sgt. Pepper."  Paul McCartney is more specific: "On Sgt. Pepper we had more orchestral stuff than we'd ever used before so it was more of a production.  But this time we didn't really want to go overboard on that and we've tried to play more like a band."  This musical shift seems to have carried over to the album covers, too.  The liner notes in the 2009 remaster explain that "Any expectations of a cover to rival the vivid art work of Sgt. Pepper or Magical Mystery Tour were immediately overturned.  The outside of the sleeve was completely white with the only lettering consisting of 'The Beatles' embossed on the front and also printed on the spine with the catalogue number."

In more ways than one, even the titles indicate the opposing qualities of the two albums.  The most obvious difference is the length:  "The Beatles" (even called a "minimalist title" in the 50th anniversary edition liner notes) is much shorter than "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."  (Note that Lennon and McCartney both abbreviate it to just "Sgt. Pepper" in the quotes above.)  More significantly, though, the eponymous nature of the title "The Beatles" demonstrates an authenticity instead of the artifice involved in pretending to be Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

"Too Much Monkey Business"

Last week, I was thinking about Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business" and discovered a feature in it that's also included in the cover that the Beatles did on the BBC.

The line "Same thing ev'ry day, gettin' up, goin' to school" is sung to a melody something like this:

(I'm pretty sure the Beatles' version is in A major but Berry's original is in F major.)

The melody here just alternates between two pitches, so there's a musical representation of the repetition and predictability of the narrator's routine.

"Chains"

Yester-day, I listened to the first disc of On Air - Live at the BBC, Vol. 2 and noticed a small feature in "Chains."  George Harrison sings the line "But I can't break away from all of these" by himself, but the following "Chains"* is sung by multiple voices.  Because there are more voices here, there's a sense of the abundance of "all of these."

While referencing the version on Please Please Me to verify that this feature is there, too, I also noticed that in the line "Can't run around," "around" is sung with a melisma (D C Bb), giving a sense of either breadth or movement.

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*Logically, it has to be "chains," but I think the Beatles actually sing just the singular "chain."  In his book Here, There, and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles, Geoff Emerick explains that on early tracks such as "Misery" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand," the Beatles sang initial S sounds as SH, partially because "it removed any kind of potential 'de-essing' problems, where if there was too much top end (treble), the sound on vinyl would distort" (p. 60).  I think the S is left off "chains" here for a similar purpose.

"Yellow Submarine"

I've been reading a book of four Shakespeare plays (Four Great Comedies by William Shakespeare, published by Washington Square Press), and in the introduction to The Tempest, part of Prospero's speech in Act Five, Scene One is quoted.  One line in particular caught my attention:  "And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault" (V.i.43).  The same sort of description is also in "Yellow Submarine," just with the order reversed:  "Sky of blue and sea of green."

In the McCartney: A Life in Lyrics podcast about "Let It Be," Paul McCartney and Paul Muldoon comment on Shakespeare's influence:

Muldoon:  For all Paul McCartney knew, the words "let it be" had come from his subconscious or as a message from beyond the grave, but after the song was released, he realized that he may have encountered these words long before he wrote the lyrics, back when he was a schoolboy at the Liverpool Institute for Boys.  There, in the English class of Paul's favorite and most formative teacher, Alan Durband, the students read Shakespeare's Hamlet for the first time.

McCartney:  So in those days, I had to learn speeches off by heart, so I can still do a bit of "To be or not to be" or "That this too too solid flesh,"* and it'd been pointed out to me recently that, um, Hamlet, when he's poisoned, he actually says, "Let it be"... Act Five, Scene Two.  ...  He says, "Let be" the first time, and then the second time, he says, "Had I but time (as this fell sergeant, Death, / Is strict in his arrest) O, I could tell you - / But let it be, Horatio."**

McCartney seems pretty convinced that Shakespeare's "Let it be" influenced his own "Let It Be," but there's really a stronger resemblance between "And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault" and "Sky of blue and sea of green" than there is between the two "Let it be"s.  These lines in The Tempest and "Yellow Submarine" both provide a colorful maritime description, but the contexts in which the two instances of "Let it be" appear are quite different.

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*McCartney also recites this in the movie A Hard Day's Night.  I referenced two different editions of the play (Shakespeare: Four Great Tragedies from Signet Classics and The Folger Library General Reader's Shakespeare: Hamlet), but they don't agree on the line numbers.  It's either I.ii.129 or I.ii.135.  As the Signet Classics book notes, there's also a textual issue here:  "Q2 [The Second Quarto] has sallied, here modernized to sullied, which makes sense and is therefore given; but the Folio reading, solid, which fits better with melt, is quite possibly correct."

**Again, there's a discrepancy of line numbers between my editions, either V.ii.337-339 or V.ii.357-359.  The vocative "Horatio" actually goes with the next clause, "Horatio, I am dead."

"Your Mother Should Know"

I was thinking about "Your Mother Should Know" recently, and I realized that the clauses "Let's all get up" and "Lift up your hearts" are sung to ascending melodies (spanning an octave:  E A C E), musically giving a sense of the meanings (although the second is more metaphorical).

"Till There Was You"

I listened to With the Beatles yester-day and noticed a small feature in "Till There Was You."  In the line "There was love all around," the phrase "all around" is sung to notes of all different pitches (A Bb C), giving a sense of that breadth.

"Doctor Robert"

"Day or night" in the line "Day or night, he'll be there any time at all, Doctor Robert" in "Doctor Robert" is a temporal merism.

To some degree, the structure of the song even evinces the statement "he'll be there any time at all" since the name "Doctor Robert" (or occasionally "Bob Robert") appears multiple times throughout each verse (at the end of both of the first two lines, in the middle of the verse, and at the end), suggesting a sort of ubiquity.

"Eleanor Rigby"

The repeated line "I look at all the lonely people" in "Eleanor Rigby" is sung to a phrase something like:

Admittedly, I'm not super confident about the last two notes in each part.

The phrase "all the lonely people" is sung to pitches spanning more than an octave (A down to G and F# down to E), and this breadth provides a musical sense of that "all."  That there's a second vocal part here (in contrast to the single vocal in the verses) also gives a sense of that multitude.

"Taxman"

I listened to Revolver yester-day and noticed a few small features.  Even before I started listening to the album, I realized that the inclusion of the "one two three four" count-off in "Taxman" has a sort of double meaning in light of the subject of the song:  the musicians are counting the beats, but the taxman is counting money.