A Hard Day's Night

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

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While listening to A Hard Day's Night yester-day, I worked on transcribing the songs.  I finished a few, but I'll probably have to listen to the album a few more times to complete them all.  In any case, while doing that, I noticed that both "I Should Have Known Better" and "When I Get Home" have "whoa oh I" in them.  It's a phrase that starts "When I Get Home," and it begins the second verse in "I Should Have Known Better":

Whoa oh, I never realized what a kiss could be
This could only happen to me
Can't you see, can't you see

At first, I thought that this was just a really minor lyrical phrase that connects those two songs, but then I got wondering about the musical phrase that accompanies it.

The "whoa oh, I" in "I Should Have Known Better" alternates between E and F# before falling to a D.  The "whoa" and "oh" each have an E and a F# (the "oh" has a melisma so it's two syllables), and the "I" falls on a D.

The "whoa oh I" in "When I Get Home" has most of this same phrasing (although I think it's an octave higher).  As in "I Should Have Known Better," the "whoa" has an E and an F#.  The "oh" is only one syllable here, but it's still an E.  The "I" is higher though; here, it's an A.

[Disclaimer that I could very well be wrong in those notes.]

So that short phrase helps to tie those songs together lyrically and musically.