"Taxman"

I listened to the first disc of Anthology 2 yester-day and noticed a small feature in "Taxman" that's also present in the Revolver version (as the liner notes explain, the Anthology version is "not dissimilar to the master").  The second "walk" in the line "If you take a walk, walk" is sung with a melisma (I think it's F# G).  Not only does this give a sense of movement but because it's a conjunct interval, there's even a musical sense of taking a step.

"No Reply"

In the lines "If I were you I'd realize that I / Love you more than any other guy" in "No Reply," "guy" is sung with a melisma (F E in Lennon's part; A G in McCartney's), giving a sense of the breadth of "any."

"You Know What to Do"

In the line "I watched you walkin' by, and you looked all alone" in "You Know What to Do," there's alliteration in "all alone."  Because there's only one initial sound, there's a representation of that singularity.  "Alone" is also sung with a melisma (C# C# B), giving a sense of degree.

"Day" in the line "Understand I'll stay with you ev'ry day" is sung with a melisma (C# B), giving a sense of frequency.  There's a similar feature with "way" (also sung with a C# B melisma) in the following line:  "Make you love me more in every way," but here "every" is sung with three syllables, which also gives a sense of amount.

"I Wanna Be Your Man"

This morning, I listened to the second disc of Anthology 1 and noticed a few things.  There's something of a lyrical ambiguity in "I Wanna Be Your Man."  "Baby" in the line "Love you like no other, baby" is probably meant as a vocative because this is how it functions in other lines ("I wanna be your lover, baby" and "Tell me that you love me, baby"), but it could also be understood as the comparative element (with "other" functioning as a true adjective rather than as a substantive):  "Love you like no other baby."

"Day Tripper" and "Lady Madonna"

Two days ago, I remembered something that I noticed about a year ago:  the guitar figures in "Day Tripper" and "Lady Madonna" have a certain similarity, not so much in terms of rhythm, but in the intervals.  It might be easier to illustrate this with tabs than with notation.

The guitar phrase in "Day Tripper" starts like:

D|---------2-0---4---0-2-|

A|-------2-----2---2-----|

E|-0-3-4-----------------|

And that in "Lady Madonna":

G|-----------------2-|

D|---------0-0-2~4---|

A|-0-0-3-4-----------|

Both figures start with the tonic note, followed by the minor third and then the major third.  In the tabs above, this appears as |-0-3-4-|.

"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.