"Baby It's You"

I listened to Please Please Me this morning and noticed a couple small features in "Baby It's You," both in the line "Don't leave me all alone."  "All alone" alliterates, and since there's only one initial sound, there's a representation of that singularity.  "Alone" is also sung with a melisma (D E D E, I think), musically giving a sense of degree (for "all").

In the Shirelles' version, the line is simply "Don't leave me alone."

"Sun King"

I listened to Abbey Road this morning and noticed a small feature in "Sun King."  In the lines "Ev'rybody's laughing / Ev'rybody's happy," the four syllables of "Ev'rybody's" are all sung to different pitches (D C B A both times).  Musically, this gives a sense of the entirety of "ev'rybody."

Writing about "Sun King" also gives me the opportunity to note something that I didn't think merited its own post:  near the beginning of take 20 (included on the 50th anniversary edition of the album), John Lennon sings the first few notes of the melody from the Shadows' "Man of Mystery."

The White Album

This is more of a tangential issue, but I'm writing about it anyway.  Two days ago, I read the entry for "album" in Merriam-Webster's dictionary.  The etymology notes that it comes from albus, the Latin word for "white."  The first definition explains that originally an album was "a book with blank pages used for making a collection (as of autographs, stamps, or photographs)."  Although since the sense of "album" later changed to include "one more more recordings (as on tape or disc) produced as a single unit," going by the original etymology, "The White Album" is a redundant moniker.

Beatles for Sale

Yester-day, I learned the solo in "What You're Doing" (I'd forgotten that I learned it before, but I never wrote it down; compared to my old recording, what I have now is more accurate, anyway).  In the first half, I think there's a glissando'd double stop:  A+C# slid down to G+B.  Provided I have the parts figured out correctly, this same figure (played an octave higher) is also in the choruses in "Every Little Thing."

The songs are in different keys ("What You're Doing" is in D major, and "Every Little Thing" is in A major), but using this same figure in both gives some cohesion to Beatles for Sale.

"Another Girl"

I was thinking about "Another Girl" yester-day and discovered a small feature in it.  In the line "Through thick and thin she will always be my friend," "thick and thin" is a merism.

"Mailman, Bring Me No More Blues"

I listened to Buddy Holly's Memorial Collection last month and noticed a small feature in "Mailman, Bring Me No More Blues" that's also present in the Beatles' impromptu performance of the song, included on Anthology 3.

In the titular line, "blues" is sung with a melisma (C# C# B B A), so while it's negated, there's a sense of amount.

The Beatles perform the song in the same key as Holly (A major), but this specific melisma is one note shorter than what Holly sings (C# C# B A B A).

"Yellow Submarine"

I was thinking about "Yellow Submarine" a few days ago (Tuesday, I think), and I realized a small thing about the line "Sky of blue and sea of green."  The pitches to which "Sky of blue" is sung (A# B C#) are higher than those to which "sea of green" is sung (G# A# F#), so even in terms of musical pitch, the sky is above the sea.

Hohner Pianet

Last September, I made a blog devoted to the Hohner Pianet.  A couple months ago, I wrote a post about the specific models of Pianet that the Beatles had and what songs they were used for.

"Octopus's Garden"

I listened to Abbey Road yester-day because it was the anniversary of its release, and I noticed a small feature in "Octopus's Garden."  In the line "We would sing and dance around," "around" is sung with a melisma (B C# E), musically giving a sense of movement.

"Michelle"

I was thinking about "Michelle" this morning, and I realized that the French lines aren't quite the same as the English.  Essentially, the lines "Michelle, my belle / These are words that go together well" are translated into French as "Michelle, ma belle / Sont des mots qui vont très bien ensemble" (although I'm not sure whether it's really "my" or "ma," since they sound similar when sung).

A more literal translation of the French would be:  "Michelle, my belle / Are some words that go very well together."  To match the English exactly, it would be something like:  "Michelle, ma belle / Ce sont mots qui vont bien ensemble."  In English, it's simply "well," but in French, it's "very well" ("très bien").

"You've Got to Hide Your Love Away"

I've written twice before about possible influences on the lyrics of "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," but yester-day I think I found yet an-other.

Years ago, I noted the similarity between "Gather 'round, all you clowns" and "Come gather 'round, people, wherever you roam" from Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'," and more recently, I discovered a resemblance between "Here I stand, head in hand" and "Baby, here I stand before you with my heart in my hand" from Chuck Berry's "Confessin' the Blues."

I listened to Another Side of Bob Dylan yester-day (because it was originally released on 8 August 1964) and noticed the lines "I can't understand / She let go of my hand / And left me here facing the wall" in "I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)."  These bear some resemblance to "Here I stand, head in hand, turn my face to the wall."  While the structure is a bit different, the rhymes are the same:  "(under)stand," "hand," and "wall" (later rhymed with "all" in Dylan's song, "small" in the Beatles').  Both even have "face/facing (to) the wall."

The Beatles Anthology quotes Lennon saying that "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" is from his "Dylan period," so the resemblance between it and "I Don't Believe You" seems to have more merit than its similarity to "Confessin' the Blues," although Lennon could have had both in mind (either consciously or not) while he was writing.

"Please Please Me"

Recently, I listened to a two-CD set of the Everly Brothers.  I noticed that for the first two lines of the verses in "Since You Broke My Heart," the harmony part is only a single pitch.  A few days later, I remembered that "Please Please Me" also has this feature.  When I lookt into the resemblance a bit more this morning, I discovered that there's even more to it:  both songs are in E major, and both single-pitch harmony parts are sung to E notes.

According to the liner notes of the Everly Brothers set, "Since You Broke My Heart" was recorded in 1959.  This is a few years before "Please Please Me," so the chronology allows for such an influence, and the Beatles' live on the BBC cover of "So How Come (No One Loves Me)" illustrates their familiarity with the Everlys.  The liner notes of the Everly Brothers set even mention Paul McCartney specifically:  "there was equally no question that the likes of Paul McCartney had been hugely influenced by their Fifties output."

According to Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (p. 20), "Please Please Me" was originally a Roy Orbison-type song.  Lewisohn quotes George Martin's description of it as "very dreary... very slow [with] bluesy vocals."  Martin "told them that the song could be much better if they increased the tempo and worked out some tight harmonies."  Apparently, whether consciously or not, the Beatles patterned their harmonies for this particular song on the Everlys' in "Since You Broke My Heart."