"She Loves You"

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Back in August when I listened to Anthology 1, I finally understood a line in "She Loves You" that I'd previously been unable to comprehend.  It's the third line in the third verse:  "Pride can hurt you too."

At the time, I realized that because of the too/two homophone, this line could be either "Pride can hurt you too" (probably the more obvious meaning) or "Pride can hurt you two," as in "Pride can hurt the two people in this relationship."

To-day I happened to re-read my reminder to myself to get around to writing about this, and I realized that there's more to that line than I originally thought.  There is that too/two homophone, but the key to which meaning is meant lays in the "Pride" earlier in the line.  A prideful person would be more likely to perceive the "you" as the singular you where a less prideful person would understand it as the plural you.  A prideful person would think of their self alone where a less prideful person would think about other people and the relationship between them.

Between the ambiguous you and too/two, it's a really clever line that could be interpreted in different ways.

"All I've Got to Do"

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As part of my listening schedule, I just listened to With the Beatles.  A few lines of one of the stanzas in "All I've Got to Do" sounded familiar:

And when I, I wanna kiss you, yeah
All I gotta do
Is whisper in your ear
The words you long to hear
And I'll be kissin' you

There are some incredibly similar lines in "Do You Want to Know a Secret":

Let me whisper in your ear
Say the words you long to hear

Apparently "Do You Want to Know a Secret" was primarily composed by John Lennon and "All I've Got to Do" solely by Lennon, so that similarity makes sense.

"I'll Be Back"

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After listening to A Hard Day's Night on Thursday, I figured out (at least an approximation) of the bass part for "I'll Be Back."  I might have some of the rhythms wrong, and I might even be missing some notes, but it's at least pretty close.  One thing I discovered while learning it is that McCartney includes an extra note at the beginning of the first verse.  In all the other verses, there's just a descending line starting with an A note, but in that first verse, he drops down to an E before going back to the A and then doing that descent.  The part before that just alternates between A and E, so I think he just got stuck doing that and missed his cue.

I referenced The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook for the chords, although I didn't play them exactly the way the book has them listed.  I think it sort of combines the other parts to get chords.  So if the rhythm guitar plays a B minor chord over which the lead guitar plays an A note, the book just combines those two things and says, "Play a B minor 7th."

I tried to figure out the lead guitar part for this a few weeks ago and didn't get anywhere, but then I got the whole thing this afternoon before I recorded this.

"Baby It's You"

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I just wrote a post about some songs by the Shirelles (mostly about implications of melismas), and since the Beatles covered some of their songs, I felt it'd be worth noting here that they do the same thing as the Shirelles in "Baby It's You."

The "apart" in the line "It's not the way you kiss that tears me apart" is broken up into syllables, so the way that it's sung reflects what the word means.

"Lovely Rita"

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I recently listened to the Tremeloes' cover of Buddy Holly's "Peggy Sue," and for some reason, I then got thinking about "Lovely Rita."  I'm not sure if it's an indication of Holly's influence on the Beatles or just common poetic devices, but there seems to be a resemblance between "Pretty Peggy Sue" (a line from two of the verses in Holly's song) and "Rita, meter maid."  The syllable count for each phrase - even the division among the words - is the same (two syllables, two syllables, one syllable), and there's alliteration between two consecutive words ("Pretty Peggy" and "meter maid").

Regardless of that possible influence, I found a few other interesting things in the lyrics of "Lovely Rita."

The final line in the third verse exhibits two strains of alliteration:

In a cap, she looked much old
And the bag across her shoulder
Made her look a little like a milit'ry man

There are a lot of words that begin with M or L, so the collection of words appears (and - more importantly - sounds) uniform, like Rita's appearance.

There’s also assonance in the last line of the second verse:

Standing by a parking meter
When I caught a glimpse of Rita
Filling in the ticket in a little white book

Again, there's a sort of uniformity, but - if I have my phonetics correct - the I in white isn't the same as the other Is.  It's a long vowel where the others are short.  So the vowels sounds in that line provide a sort of audible representation of Rita's filling in the book.  The previous Is go with each other, but she hasn't gotten to that last one yet.  It's as if it has yet to be filled in.