"It's Only Love"

I listened to Help! yester-day and noticed a small feature in "It's Only Love."  In the first instance of the line "But it's so hard lovin' you," "hard" is sung with a melisma (D C), musically giving a sense of degree (for "so").

"Dizzy Miss Lizzy"

Yester-day, I listened to Live at the Hollywood Bowl and noticed some significant melismas in "Dizzy Miss Lizzy."  In order to write this post, though, I referenced the studio recording.

In the lines "The way you rock and roll" and "When you do the stroll," "roll" and "stroll" are both sung with melismas (I think they're E D C# and E C# A, respectively), musically giving a sense of movement.

In the line "Love me 'fore I grow too old," "old" is sung with a melisma (B A), giving a sense of degree (for "too"), and similarly, in the line "Ooh, girl, you look so fine," "fine" is sung with a melisma (E C# A, I think), giving a sense of degree (for "so").

"I'll Cry Instead"

I listened to A Hard Day's Night yester-day and noticed an interesting feature in "I'll Cry Instead."  The first line of the first verse ("I've got ev'ry reason on earth to be mad") has twelve syllables ("earth" is sung with two), and the first line of the third and fourth verses ("And when I do, you better hide all the girls") has eleven syllables, but the first line of the second verse ("I've got a chip on my shoulder that's bigger than my feet") has fourteen.  To some degree, this larger number of syllables mirrors the "bigger" size of that "chip on my shoulder."

"Don't Bother Me"

I listened to With the Beatles yester-day and noticed a small feature in "Don't Bother Me" that I think I've commented about before with other songs.  In the line "It's just not right when ev'ry night I'm all alone," the phrase "all alone" alliterates, and since the two words start with the same sound, there's a sense of the singularity of being alone.

"I Am the Walrus"

I'm sure this has been noted before, but I thought I'd write a post about it, if only for my own reference.  I've been reading Shakespeare's King Lear for the first time, and last week, I got to the parts in Act IV, Scene VI that are included near the end of "I Am the Walrus."

At ~2:25, fragments of this exchange (lines 223-224) can be heard:

Gloucester:  Now, good sir, what are you?

Edgar:  A most poor man, made tame to fortune's blows

At ~3:56, a good chunk of Oswald's dialogue (lines 249-254) is audible:

Villain, take my purse;

If ever thou wilt thrive, bury my body,

And give the letters which thou find'st about me

To Edmund Earl of Gloucester; seek him out

Upon the English party.  O, untimely death!

And at ~4:22, there's an-other exchange between Edgar and Gloucester (lines 256-259):

Edgar:  I know thee well.  A serviceable villain,

As duteous to the vices of thy mistress

As badness would desire.

Gloucester:  What, is he dead?

Edgar:  Sit you down, father; rest you.

I'm not sure I have the line numbers exactly right.  I've noticed that sometimes they vary between editions, anyway.

According to Mark Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, this audio was taken from a BBC radio broadcast and mixed live into the song on 29 September 1967 (p. 128).

"There's a Place"

Yester-day, I figured out the chords for "There's a Place" and noticed some interesting ones in the bridge.  The song is in E major, but the chord progression for the bridge is:

|: C# minor | F# major

E major | G# major :| C# minor

(This is basically what The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook lists, too.)

The F# major and G# major are a bit out of place, since both contain accidentals (the A# in F# major and the B# in G# major).  Normally in E major, the chords built on F# and G# are minors, but I think it's significant that these two chords are major.

The lyrics for this section are:

In my mind, there's no sorrow

Don't you know that it's so

There'll be no sad tomorrow

Don't you know that it's so

Minor chords are often perceived as sad, but since "there's no sorrow" and "there'll be no sad tomorrow," these normally minor chords are transformed here into major chords.

"I Feel Fine"

A couple days ago, I figured out the solo in "I Feel Fine."  The next day (yester-day), I was thinking about the song again and noticed an interesting feature.  In the lines "I'm so glad that she's my little girl / She's so glad; she's tellin' all the world," the first halves ("I'm so glad" and "She's so glad") are sung by multiple voices.  Because there are more voices, there's a sense of the degree of those "so"s.

"Lend Me Your Comb"

Yester-day, I was thinking about Carl Perkins' "Lend Me Your Comb," and I realized something that's also true of the Beatles' BBC version.  In the lines "Just wait till I / Straighten my tie," the semantic sense is spread across the line break, and this particular structure actually forces the listener to "wait" until the words in the second line complete the meaning.

"Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey"

This morning, I transcribed the lyrics of "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey" from the booklet from The Beatles.  I noticed something that may be obvious, but I'll note it anyway:  the lines "Your inside is out and your outside is in / Your outside is in and your inside is out" have a chiastic structure, and this sort of inversion (within each line and between the two lines) illustrates the reversal that the lyrics seem to mention.  Basically, the structure mirrors the meaning.

"In Spite of All the Danger"

Inexplicably, a post I wrote about "In Spite of All the Danger" on tumblr back in 2014 got some likes recently.  I'd completely forgotten about the point I made in the post, and I felt I should write an updated version of the post here.

I'd been listening to a two-disc compilation album of Gene Vincent and noticed that a phrase in the backing vocals in "Wear My Ring" seems to be the model (whether consciously or not) for a phrase in the backing vocals in "In Spite of All the Danger."

In "Wear My Ring" (in A major), the phrase appears at the end of the bridge (first at ~1:03):

In "In Spite of All the Danger" (in E major), the phrase appears about halfway through the verse (first at ~0:14):

There are no words in either, just "ah"s.

While the two songs are in different keys, the pitches in these two phrases are exactly the same and in the same order, and while the rhythms are a bit different, the two phrases fall in similar places within the measures.

The liner notes in the Anthology 1 album mention Vincent's influence ("the Beatles usually performed this ["Ain't She Sweet"] in the more mellow style of Gene Vincent and his Blue Caps' influential 1956 version"), and in the Anthology book, the Beatles mention meeting him in Germany (page 69).  I remember reading somewhere that "In Spite of All the Danger" bears some similarity to Elvis Presley's "Trying to Get to You" (and it does), but this backing vocal phrase seems to indicate Vincent's influence on the Beatles, too.

"Blackbird"

Last year, I watched this short video about "Blackbird" from a Dutch television station.

In it, McCartney explains that the guitar part was inspired by a Bach piece.  The notation of this piece is shown, but it's not actually identified.  Recently, I remembered this video and tracked down the Bach piece; it's the Bourrée from the Suite in E minor, BWV 996.

"Yer Blues"

I'm still slowly copying the lyrics in the liner notes booklet from The Beatles into my Google Documents for easier reference.  Recently, I copied the lyrics for "Yer Blues."  At about 1:37, Lennon sings, "Just like Dylan's Mr. Jones."  I hadn't understood the line until reading it in the liner notes, and now that I know what it is, I think it's a reference to Bob Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man," in which every verse ends with some variation of the lines "Something is happening here, and you don't know what it is / Do you, Mr. Jones?"

"Not a Second Time"

I was thinking about "Not a Second Time" this morning and realized something:  in the line "And now you've changed your mind," "mind" is sung with a melisma (D B), musically giving a sense of that "chang[ing]."