"Love Me Do"

I was thinking about "Love Me Do" this afternoon and realized a small ambiguity in the repeated line "Love, love me do."  The first "love" could be either an imperative (as the second "love" is) or a vocative.

"You've Got to Hide Your Love Away"

I recently listened to a 3-CD set of Chuck Berry and discovered that the first line of the Beatles' "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" has a strong resemblance to the first line of Berry's "Confessin' the Blues" (written by McShann and Brown).  Excepting one, all of the words in the first half of the line "Here I stand, head in hand, turn my face to the wall" also appear in the line "Baby, here I stand before you with my heart in my hand."

I've written before about how one of the lines in "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" seems to demonstrate Bob Dylan's influence, but the similarity between these two lines and the fact that both are the first line seem to indicate Berry's influence, which is obvious elsewhere in the Beatles' catalogue.

"She Said She Said"

I listened to Revolver earlier this week, and I was thinking about "She Said She Said" yester-day and realized a small thing about it.  In the repeated line "Ev'rything was right," the three syllables of "Ev'rything" are each sung to a different pitch (F Eb D), musically giving a sense of breadth.

"Got to Get You into My Life"

I listened to Revolver this evening and noticed a couple things in "Got to Get You into My Life."

At first, I noticed just that "day" in the line "Say we'll be together ev'ry day" is sung with a melisma (D A B), musically giving a sense of number (for "ev'ry").

When I read through the lyrics again, I discovered some ambiguities.  In "Ooh, did I tell you I need you / Ev'ry single day of my life" at the end of the first/third verse, the time element ("Ev'ry single day") could modify "tell" or "need."  At the end of the second verse, the lines "Ooh, and I want you to hear me / Say we'll be together ev'ry day" could be taken together or separately:  "We'll be together ev'ry day" could be what "me" is saying (in which reading, I think "say" would be a participle) or "Say we'll be together..." could be a stand-alone clause (where "say" is an imperative verb).

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

Yester-day, I was thinking about how the first verse of the Beach Boys' "California Girls" is an example of a rhetorical catalogue, and that - in turn - got me thinking about the bridge of "Back in the U.S.S.R." which is a nod to the Beach Boys both lyrically and musically (I think I read somewhere that Mike Love suggested the pastiche to them while in India).  In "California Girls," there are four types of girls, but there are only two in "Back in the U.S.S.R.":  "the Ukraine girls" and "Moscow girls."  I'm not sure if two really constitutes a catalogue, but I thought I'd mention it at least.

This also gives me the opportunity to note two other allusions in the song.  The title seems inspired by Chuck Berry's "Back in the U.S.A." and the line "That Georgia's always on my my my my my my my my my mind" seems to be a reference to "Georgia on My Mind," probably most famously performed by Ray Charles.  Because Georgia is also a country that was once in the U.S.S.R., there might also be something of a pun there.

"Come Together"

I recently got the 2-CD version of the 50th anniversary edition of Abbey Road.  I listened to it for the first time a few days ago, and I realized that "Come Together" exhibits anaphora.  Throughout the song, there are various lines with the same structure:

He got joo joo eyeball 

He got toe jam football 

He got monkey finger 

He got Ono sideboard 

He got feet down below his knee 

He got early warning 

He got muddy water

(I had to reference The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook for the lyrics, although I'm not sure those are completely accurate either.)

The use of anaphora here emphasizes the amount of things that "old flat top" has.

"Sexy Sadie"

In the line "Just a smile would lighten ev'rything" in "Sexy Sadie," "ev'rything" is sung with a melisma (D B E D E G), musically giving a sense of breadth.

"Don't Pass Me By"

I listened to the 50th anniversary edition of The Beatles (the 3-CD version) over the last two days and noticed a couple things.

In the two "does it mean you don't love me anymore" clauses in "Don't Pass Me By," the "-more" of "anymore" is sung with a melisma (E C), so while it's negated ("not... anymore"), there's a musical sense of continuation.

"Sweet Little Sixteen"

I was going through some old notes this morning and discovered something that I'd noticed about Chuck Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen" over six years ago that also holds true for the live version that the Beatles performed on the BBC.  The list of places (Boston, Philadelphia, Texas, the 'Frisco Bay, St. Louis, and New Orleans) is an example of a rhetorical device called cataloguing.  In its use here, it gives a sense of geographic breadth.

I also noticed a discrepancy between the Beatles' version and Berry's original:  the Beatles have "Philadelphia, PA" instead of Berry's "Pittsburgh, PA."

"Ticket to Ride"

Lately, I've been going through some old notes I made and fleshing them out into coherent commentary.  Last July, I listened to the Carpenters' version of "Ticket to Ride" and noticed that "free" in the line "He would never be free when I was around" is sung with a melisma (F Eb D), musically giving a sense of freedom because the word isn't constrained to a single pitch.  I referenced the Beatles' original this morning and found that this feature is present there too.

As I've mentioned before, "Ticket to Ride" is in between A major and Ab major, so I'm a bit unsure of the specific notes, but - skewing towards A major - I think "free" in the Beatles' "She would never be free when I was around" is sung to the notes E D.  The harmony part also has "free" sung to two pitches, but I couldn't determine what they are.

"In My Life"

A couple weeks ago, I figured out the bass register of the piano solo in "In My Life."  I thought I'd read somewhere that this was George Martin's "Bach-inspired" contribution to the song, but in referencing The Beatles Anthology book (p. 197) and The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (p. 65, the entry for 22 October), I found that it's referred to only generically as "baroque style."

In any case, I discovered a feature that the piano solo has in common with what is probably Bach's most famous piece - the Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565.

Here are the third and fourth measures of the bass register of the piano solo (with - of course - the disclaimer that I might be wrong):

At the end of each of these measures, there's an alternating between notes of a static pitch (D in the third measure, C# in the fourth) and progressively lower notes (first C# B A and then B A G#).  This same sort of figure is in Bach's piece.  Here it is in the pedal part:

[source]

I think a similar figure is also in the treble register of the piano solo (in the first and second beats of these same measures), but since I haven't figured out that half yet, I can't be sure.

"Yesterday"

Last night, I listened to this interview with Paul McCartney in which - among other things - he talks about writing "Yesterday."  I was thinking about the song this afternoon and realized a small thing about the line "There's a shadow hanging over me."  "Shadow" is sung to the pitches C Bb, and "me" is sung to an A, so musically the "shadow" really is "over me."