"Misery"

I listened to the first disc of On Air - Live at the BBC, Volume 2 yester-day and noticed a small thing about "Misery" (which is also present in the studio version).  "More" in the line "I won't see her no more" is sung with a melisma (A C).  Because it's sung to more than one pitch, there's something of a sense of the word's meaning (although it's negated).

"Misery"

In "Misery," the word "drag" in the line "It's gonna be a drag" is sung with a melisma (B C B A B).  The word is somewhat literally "drag[ged]" through a number of pitches, giving a musical representation of the word's meaning (one of the word's meanings, at least).

"Misery"

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

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A couple days ago, I was thinking about the piano part in "Misery" (in referencing the recording, I discovered that there's a rolled F major chord at the beginning, which I hadn't noticed before).  I realized that there are some musical/lyrical connections with the piano parts in the bridges.

After the line "I'll remember all the little things we've done" (it's the same in both iterations of the bridge), there's a diatonic descent in C major from the G above middle C to the G below middle C and then up a whole-step to an A.  (I think it might be doubled an octave higher too.)  That whole phrase seems to represent "all the little things."

The next two lines in the bridge are different in each instance, but the musical representation for each is the same.  First, there's "Can't she see she'll always be the only one / Only one," and second there's "She'll remember, and she'll miss her only one / Lonely one."  After each of those "one"s, there's a single G note as a representation of that singularity.

"Misery"

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

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When I listened to Please Please Me yester-day, I thought the piano part in "Misery" sounded pretty easy to figure out (and it was; it's pretty much just a C major scale, although it doesn't start on C).  So I figured that out, and then I got the chords too.

My guitar tone isn't the best here, and I think there's a slight tempo mistake in the second piano phrase, but it's close enough.