This morning I listened to the second disc of the Beatles' Anthology 3, and I noticed a small thing about "Old Brown Shoe." (It's in the single version too, but it's clearer in the version on Anthology 3.) The melody of the vocal part descends at the end of the line "You know you pick me up from worse and try to drag me down," so you get the impression of the "drag[ging] down."
An-other thing I noticed while listening to the Beatles' Anthology 2 is the time change in "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" (it's in the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band version too). After the line "And of course Henry the Horse dances the waltz," the song changes from 4/4 time to 3/4 time - the time signature that waltzes are in.
I just listened to the second disc of the Beatles' Anthology 2. I noticed a small thing about "And Your Bird Can Sing" (and I also checked the final version on Revolver to verify that it's there too). There's a downward vocal melisma on the "down" in the lines "When your prized possessions / Start to weigh you down." Like the melisma on "heavy" that I discovered in "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" earlier this month, this melisma gives a sense of the weight; it's as if the word itself is bent.
I'm listening to the Beatles' Abbey Road. It's not that great of a point, but I noticed that the "heavy"s in "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" have melismas at the end, so it's as if they're bending under the weight that lyric describes.
I just wrote about this in "Penny Lane," but I found an-other instance of an instrument doubling a vocal part in a Beatles song. This time, it's guitar during the second half of the first two verses of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" ("Cellophane flowers of yellow and green…" and "Newspaper taxis appear on the shore…").
Additionally, there's a vocal and guitar glissando on the "away" in "Waiting to take you away," suggesting the distance to which you'll be taken.
Last year, I realized that because of the ping-ponging of influence and rivalry between the Beatles and the Beach Boys, the clarinet that doubles the vocals in part of the Beatles' "When I'm Sixty-Four" was probably inspired by the Beach Boys' "I'm Waiting for the Day," which has a similar effect, although different sources credit different instruments, ranging from viola to oboe to English horn. I just started listening to the Beatles' 1967-1970, and I discovered that the Beatles did the same thing at the end of "Penny Lane" too, although there I think it's a flute or a piccolo.
Because "Penny Lane" was released before "When I'm Sixty-Four," I'd assumed that it was recorded first, but according to Mark Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, "When I'm Sixty-Four" was recorded first (on 6 December 1966) and "Penny Lane" later (on 29 December 1966). Still, because they were recorded so close together, it would make sense that if McCartney took that idea from Brian Wilson for part of "When I'm Sixty-Four," he would have had the same thing in mind when he did it on "Penny Lane" too.
This is probably an-other thing I wouldn't have noticed were I not transcribing the lyrics to Beatles songs. The middle line of the second verse of "Nowhere Man" is "Knows not where he's going to." The "Knows not" is sort of inverted from what would normal be rendered as something like "[He does] not know where he's going to." But that inversion - and the slight mental delay it takes to process it - seems to indicate the confusion and aimlessness of the Nowhere Man himself.
Last year, I re-read The Beatles Anthology, and I made a note of page 158, where John Lennon says that "'You've Got to Hide Your Love Away' is my Dylan period.'" I'd thought I noticed a resemblance between the chords of "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" and Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'," but I never got around to investigating that. Listening to it now though, I discovered a lyrical similarity. "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" has the line "Gather 'round, all you clowns" where Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'" starts with "Come gather 'round, people, wherever you roam" (incidentally, I think Dylan took that line from Woody Guthrie). Unless Lennon hadn't mentioned "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" in his "Dylan period," I would just think that resemblance a similarity (if I would have remarked it at all), but because he did mention it, I think that phrase is a bit of Dylan's influence.
This is pretty obvious, but I'd never noticed some of the elements that emphasize the "down-ness" in the line "Help me if you can, I'm feelin' down" in the Beatles' "Help!" The "down" itself has a melisma where the later syllables are lower than the first, so the word itself is falling down, and after that line, there's a descending phrase in the guitar part.
Because I'm doing a separate project where I'm looking into the Beatles' music, I'm working on my transcriptions of the songs as I listen to them. I'd already completed "I Feel Fine," but in following along in the lyrics, I noticed the backing vocals during the bridges:I'm so glad that she's my little girlThe backing vocals double the "I'm so glad" and "She's so glad," but for the rest of the line, they're just "ooh"s. There's a bit of parallelism between those two sections in the lyrics, but having the backing vocals double those nearly-identical parts helps to further the feeling of completeness that the relationship has and that the lyrics already describe.
She's so glad; she's tellin' all the world
All my lovin' I will send to youMcCartney's singing the lead vocals, and Lennon and Harrison are singing the "ooh"s in the backing vocals. I can't tell their voices apart here, but one sings an E note throughout, and the other sings a descending chromatic phrase: C#, C, B.
All my lovin', darling, I'll be true
It's been a hard day's nightspecifically, the "been workin' like a dog" and "be sleepin' like a log." There's a form of be, a verb (or, rather, verb form since "sleepin'" is actually a participle here), and then a simile.
And I've been workin' like a dog
It's been a hard day's night
I should be sleepin' like a log
Asked the girl what she wanted to beSecond verse:
She said, "Baby, can't you see?"
I told that girl that my prospects were goodThird verse:
And she said, "Baby, it's understood"
I told that girl I could start right awayI don't really have anything else to say about that; I'd just never noticed that structure.
And she said, "Listen, babe, I got something to say"