Please Please Me

Backdated, archival post

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I listened to Please Please Me as part of my new(-ish) listening schedule, and I have a few things to say about it:

"Please Please Me"

In the bridge, there's the line "But you know there's always rain in my heart," which I'm pretty sure is a subtle Buddy Holly reference, specifically to "Raining in My Heart," where Holly uses the same image.  (This is one of the things I noticed while listening to Anthology 1 exactly a month ago.)

"Do You Want to Know a Secret"

I've been suspicious about this for awhile, but I'm now pretty sure that in the last verse, in between the "Do you promise not to tell" and the backing "Doo dah doo," someone (I'm not sure who) sticks in an "I" (or possibly an "ah," but "I" makes more sense).  So, the whole line becomes: "Do you promise not to tell (I do dah doo)."  The lead vocals ask a question that the backing vocals answer.

"A Taste of Honey"

I'm not sure if this is specific to the Beatles' version (I have three versions of "A Taste of Honey," but theirs is the only version I have with vocals), but there are two great elements in some lines in the second verse:

There lingers still though we're far apart
That taste of honey

It's inverted so that the verb ("lingers") precedes the subject ("taste"), which mirrors the actual lingering: the effect (the verb) remains although the actor (the subject) is gone.  Also, the verb and the subject are separated by a line break, which mirrors the "though we're far apart."