"All Together Now"

An-other thing I noticed when I listened to Yellow Submarine yester-day is that - as in "Yellow Submarine" - the repeated "All together now" in "All Together Now" is sung by a multitude of voices to represent that "all together."

"Yellow Submarine"

Recently I've been reading entries in Mark Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions about songs that ended up on the Yellow Submarine album ("All Together Now" and "It's All Too Much" in particular).  This morning I listened to the album and noticed a handful of things.

In "Yellow Submarine," more voices join in for the choruses.  There's a harmony part, and I'm pretty sure the lead vocal is also supplemented by additional voices (it certainly is when the chorus is repeated at the end).  These additional voices provide a musical example of the "all" in "We all live in a yellow submarine."

"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."

"I'm Down"

The day after I wrote about the descending backing vocals in the chorus "I'm Down" and how they musically represent that "down," I realized that the lead vocals there do the same thing.  "I'm down" is sung to three different musical phrases, but they all descend: G C, D G, and D C.

"Hey Jude"

I got behind in writing about things I noticed when I listened to Past Masters, Volume 2 last month.  Here's a small thing about "Hey Jude."

The melody to which "don't let me down" is sung has a precipitous drop at the end (A C D G), so while it's "don't let me down," there's a musical feature (a falling fifth) to represent that "down."

"The Inner Light"

In the last section of "The Inner Light," the line "Do all without doing" is sung by at least two voices where the other lines are sung by just one voice.  To some degree, these multiple voices give a sense of that "all."

"Day Tripper"

In "Day Tripper," the "so" in the line "It took me so long" is sung with a melisma (I think it's G F# E F# C the first two times and C# D C# the third), emphasizing the word and giving something of a sense of how long.

"I'm Down"

When I listened to Past Masters, Volume 1 yester-day, I noticed a couple things about "I'm Down."

The "every" in the second verse ("Man buys ring; woman throws it away / Same old thing happen every day") is sung with three syllables, giving a sense of number or frequency.

The backing vocals in the chorus ("I'm really down / Down on the ground / I'm really down") are sung to (generally) descending phrases that musically reflect that "down."  There are two parts there, something like:

"I've Got a Feeling"

When I listened to Let It Be yester-day, I noticed a small thing about a section near the end of "I've Got a Feeling."  I'm unsure about my transcription of one of the lines.  The first time (~2:32), it sounds like "Ev'rybody put the fool down," but when it's repeated (~3:06), it sounds more like "Ev'rybody put their foot down."  Anyway, it's something like:

Ev'rybody had a good year
Ev'rybody let their hair down
Ev'rybody pulled their socks up
Ev'rybody put the fool down

The melody goes up or down at the end of these phrases in order to represent musically the "down"s and "up" in the lyrics.  "Hair down" and "fool down" are both sung with descents (B F#), and "socks up" is with with an ascent (A B).

"Oh! Darling"

I listened to Abbey Road this afternoon and noticed a small thing about "Oh! Darling."  The "down" in the line "I'll never let you down" in the last verse is sung with a melisma (A to F#), so while it's negated, there's a musical sense of that "down."

"Sexy Sadie"

When I listened to The Beatles yester-day, I noticed a few small things about the vocal articulation in "Sexy Sadie."

Although it's a singular form, the melisma'd "ev'ryone" in the repeated line "You made a fool of ev'ryone" musically gives a sense of the span of "ev'ry."  (For the record, I think the notes are D B D E D B the first time and E D A G A F# the second.)  Near the end, it's articulated something like: E D D' B A G F# E D.  Here, it spans an octave, which also musically gives a sense of the span of "ev'ry."

The other thing I noticed is that "rules" in the first "You broke the rules" in the second verse is sung in such a way to represent that brokenness musically.  I think it's a melisma (E to D) combined with vibrato.  Whatever the technique, the word is sung in a broken manner to illustrate the lyric.

While picking out specific notes in order to write this post, I also noticed something interesting about the "Sexy Sadie"s that start each verse.  They're sung to the phrase A B G E, which - when the A is doubled (A A B G E) - is the same musical phrase to which "Eleanor Rigby" is sung at the beginning of the first and third verses in "Eleanor Rigby" (although the rhythms might be a bit different).  In both songs, the titular character's name is sung at the beginning of the verse and to almost the same musical phrase.

"Blue Jay Way"

When I listened to Magical Mystery Tour yester-day I noticed a small thing about "Blue Jay Way."  The "long" in the line "Please don't you be very long" is sung with a melisma (B A B, I think).  Since the word is stretched over a number of notes, there's a musical representation of length.  Near the end, when "Don't be long" is repeated over and over, there's the same feature with different melismas (A G F# E and F# E)