"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.

"So How Come (No One Loves Me)"

Last month, I was thinking about "So How Come (No One Loves Me)" and discovered a small feature that's present in each verse.  In each line with "someone" ("Wants someone," "Needs someone," "Loves someone"), "someone" is sung with a melisma and with each syllable sung to a different pitch (B A G).  Musically, this gives a sense of the breadth of possibility of "someone."

I referenced the Everly Brothers' version and discovered that it too has this feature.  (The Beatles transposed their version down a whole-step though.  The "someone"s in the Everlys' version are sung to the pitches C# B A.)

"So How Come (No One Loves Me)"

I recently listened to a two-disc set of the Everly Brothers that includes "So How Come (No One Loves Me)."  Yester-day I was thinking about the song and realized something about it that also holds true for the version that the Beatles did live on the BBC.

Each verse is basically:

They say that ev'ryone
Needs someone
So how come no one
Needs me

with later iterations replacing "needs" with "wants" and then with "loves."  (Compared to the Everlys' version, the Beatles flip the order of the first two verses.  The Everlys sing "needs" and then "wants"; the Beatles sing "wants" and then "needs.")

There really isn't a rhyme scheme here; it's just "-one" rhymed with itself, which illustrates the speaker/singer's loneliness and solitude.  It's just "one," "one," "one."