"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]."

"Every Little Thing"

Yester-day, I realized that, provided I've figured them out correctly, the opening guitar phrases in "Every Little Thing" and Buddy Holly's "You've Got Love" have some similarity.  The guitar in "You've Got Love" plays E+G#, F#+A, G#+B, and A+C#, simply ascending and then descending (with the last pair of notes played a couple times in succession).  The guitar phrase in "Every Little Thing" is a bit more complex, but it too is made up of pairs of thirds that ascend and descend diatonically:  A+C#, B+D, C#+E, and D+F# (not in that order).

While Buddy Holly is an acknowledged influence on the Beatles, I think this similarity is more coincidental than intentional.  Still, I thought I'd note it.

"Back in the U.S.S.R."

This morning, I started copying the lyrics in the CD booklet from The Beatles into Google Documents so that I can access them more easily.  I was surprised to find that a line in "Back in the U.S.S.R." is formatted as "Let me hear your balalaika's ringing out."  I'd always understood it as "Let me hear your balalaikas ringing out," but seeing it typed made me realize that it can be understood three different ways:

"Let me hear your balalaika's ringing out" (where "ringing out" is a gerund and "balalaika" [singular] is a possessive noun)

"Let me hear your balalaikas' ringing out" (where "ringing out" is a gerund and "balalaikas" [plural] is a possessive noun)

"Let me hear your balalaikas ringing out" (where "ringing out" is a participle modifying "balalaikas," which is the direct object of "hear")

"Too Much Monkey Business"

Recently, I found a note I'd made about Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business" that also applies to the Beatles' version (on Live at the BBC).  Lennon doesn't quite get the words right, but in Berry's original, the lines "Army bunk, army chow / Army clothes, army car" exhibit anaphora, and this repetition illustrates the uniformity or standardization of the military.

"So How Come (No One Loves Me)"

I was thinking about "So How Come (No One Loves Me)" this morning, and I realized that the shape of the melody illustrates a contrast.

The first verse of the Beatles' version is:

They say that ev'ryone

Wants someone

So how come no one

Wants me

There's a contrast even just in the words since "ev'ryone," "someone," and "no one" all rhyme with each other and leave "me" by itself, but this is illustrated in the melody too.  "Ev'ryone," "someone," and "no one" are all sung to higher pitches (B A B, B A G, and B A, respectively), but "me" is sung to a comparatively lower pitch (G).  Musically, then, there's a sense of "me" being apart and excluded.

"Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)"

Yester-day, I was thinking about Del Shannon's "Hats off to Larry."  The first line is "Once I had a pretty girl."  I realized that the first line of "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" is very similar:  "I once had a girl."  According to the liner notes of the Del Shannon compilation album I have, "In 1963 Shannon became the first American to record a cover version of a Beatles song.  He appeared with the group, then still unknown in America, at London's Royal Albert Hall in April of that year and was so impressed by them that he told John Lennon he would cover 'From Me to You' to publicise their cause back in the States."  "Hats off to Larry" is from 1961, so it precedes this event, but I don't know if the Beatles had any familiarity with it, so the similarity of these initial lines may be just coincidental.