The Beatles' "Devil in Her Heart"

Earlier to-day I listened to the Beatles' With the Beatles, and I noticed something about "Devil in Her Heart" that should have been glaringly obvious.  The "apart" in the recurring line "She's gonna tear your heart apart" is sung with a melisma (I think it's A A B G A, but I'm not sure).  Breaking up "apart" into multiple syllables and various pitches both emphasizes and demonstrates the "tear[ing]."

The Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"

Yester-day I listened to the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and I noticed an interesting thing about the bass part in "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds."  During the "Newspaper taxis appear on the shore..." section, the bass part is almost entirely quarter notes (and a pair of eighth notes), so the single half note (second measure of the second line) sticks out:

(click the image for a larger view)
(A few comments on this notation.  First, I did it myself, so there's the standard disclaimer that I might have something wrong.  Second, "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" is partially in 3 / 4 and partially in 4 / 4, and at the end of this section, there's a transition from 3 / 4 time to 4 / 4 time, so it might be that the last measure should be in 4 / 4 instead of 3 / 4.)

That half note corresponds to "take" in the line "Waiting to take you away," so musically there's a pause to reflect the taxis' standing by.

The Beatles' Revolver

Apparently, 5 August was the 50th anniversary of the release of the Beatles' Revolver, so I skipped ahead in my listening (I'm currently in the midst of the albums that start with N) to listen to it on its release date.  I hadn't listened to it for over two years, and I found a lot of things to write about.

"I'm Only Sleeping"

The phrase "float upstream" is sung to an ascending phrase (Bb, Db, Gb), so there's a musical/lyrical mirroring there.  This might seem like a small point, but I'll get back to it.

"Love You To"

The first two verses end with a melisma'd "me" (the lines are "You don't get time to hang a sign on me" and "But what you've got means such a lot to me").  I'm not sure if this was intentional on George Harrison's part, but it recalls the melisma'd and line-ending "me" in "What You're Doing" from Beatles for Sale ("And should you need a love that's true / It's me").

"Here, There, and Everywhere"

The line "Running my hands through her hair" sounded familiar to me, and it wasn't too long before I placed it.  There's an identical line near the end of Colin Blunstone's "She Loves the Way They Love Her" (on One Year).  Both Blunstone and his former Zombies band mate Rod Argent (who wrote "She Loves the Way They Love Her") have listed the Beatles as an influence, and between that and both songs' rhyming "hair" with "there" ("There / Running my hands through her hair" in "Here, There, and Everywhere" and "Running my hands through her hair / And knowing she'll always be there" in "She Loves the Way They Love Her"), I think this is more than just a coincidence.  At best, it might be an instance of subconscious influence.

"And Your Bird Can Sing"

I was either only dimly aware of this or had forgotten, but it was very obvious to me as I listened to "And Your Bird Can Sing" this time that the line "You say you've seen seven wonders" is a reference to the Seven Wonders of the World.

"For No One"

I don't know how to play "For No One" (yet), so this isn't as precise as it could be, but I don't think the song resolves at the end.  There isn't a sense of completion, which (somewhat literally) underscores the disconnected feeling in lines such as "You stay home / She goes out" and "And in her eyes, you see nothing."

"I Want to Tell You"

I was working on transcribing this song as I listened to it, so the pleonasm in the line "All those words they seem to slip away" was especially evident.  Instead of the more fluid and more grammatically correct "All those words seem to slip away," there's a redundant "they" in the line.  The song itself is about problems in communicating, so that pleonastic "they" actually emphasizes that sentiment.

"Tomorrow Never Knows"

The phrase "float downstream" is sung to a descending phrase (E, C, G), so there's a musical/lyrical mirroring there.  Furthermore, there's a parallelism between the descending "float downstream" here and the ascending "float upstream" in "I'm Only Sleeping."  So while it's a rather simple feature, it's used to a greater effect because there's that parallelism.

The Kinks' "Where Have All the Good Times Gone"

I'm currently listening to a compilation album of the Kinks (and transcribing some of them), and I noticed something about "Where Have All the Good Times Gone."  The first line in the last verse is "Well, yesterday was such an easy game for you to play."  I'm pretty sure this is a reference to the Beatles' "Yesterday" and its lines "Yesterday / Love was such an easy game to play."

The chronology works out.  The index of release dates in Mark Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions lists the release date of the Help! album (with "Yesterday") as 6 August 1965, and the liner notes to the deluxe edition of The Kink Kontroversy list the release date of the "Till the End of the Day" b/w "Where Have All the Good Times Gone" single as 19 November 1965.

The Zombies' "Play It for Real"

I'm listening to the Zombies' Breathe Out, Breathe In.  I remember reading something (I think it was around the time the album came out) that compared the piano riff in "Play It for Real" to that in the Beatles' "Hey Bulldog."  I'd sort of dismissed this as, "Yeah, they sort of sound alike," thinking that the big similarity was just that they were both piano riffs.  Listening to it this time, that similarity was very obvious tonally (probably because I learnt how to play the riff from "Hey Bulldog" back in November and haven't listened to Breathe Out, Breathe In since last May).

Because I already knew the riff from "Hey Bulldog," I learnt the riff from "Play It for Real" in order to compare them, and I was surprised by how similar they are musically.  The riff in "Hey Bulldog" is in B minor where the riff in "Play It for Real" is in A major, but - as far as scale degrees - the riffs are exactly the same (up to a point at least; the riff in "Play It for Real" is longer and more developed than that in "Hey Bulldog").  I tried notating them, but they're beyond my notational skills, so I'll just have to describe them.

Both riffs start with two tonic notes (B B in "Hey Bulldog;" A A in "Play It for Real").  Then there's the third note of the scale (a D in B minor [a minor third] for "Hey Bulldog;" a C# in A major [a major third] for "Play It for Real") before going back to the tonic.  That third starts a skipping between sequentially higher notes and the tonic, and that skipping figure is capped with an ascending half-step from augmented fourth to a perfect fifth.  So - in full - it's B B D B E B E# F# in "Hey Bulldog," and - as far as it matches "Hey Bulldog" - A A C# A D D# E in "Play It for Real."

The rhythms start to differ near the end of that first phrase, but tonally, they're very similar.  The only differences are the key each is in and that one has a minor third where the other has a major third.

Rod Argent (the Zombies' keyboard player) has talked about the Beatles' influence in some interviews, so I think this is a likely instance of influence even if it was a conscious influence.

The Beatles' "Don't Pass Me By"

I'm listening to The Beatles' eponymous album, and the bass part for "Don't Pass Me By" caught my ear.  It's more elaborate than just the root and the fifth of whatever chord it's played beneath, but the root and the fifth are the most prominent notes.  It provides an alternating figure that seems to portray the footsteps that are mentioned in the first verse:

I listen for your footsteps comin' up the drive
Listen for your footsteps, but they don't arrive

I also noticed that there's a bit of a pause within the last line of the first two verses, so there's a separation between " I don't hear it" and "does it mean you don't love me anymore?" and between "I don't see you" and "does it mean you don't love me anymore?"  That pause emphasizes the not hearing and not seeing that are in the lyrics themselves.

The Beatles' "Ticket to Ride"

I'm listening to the Beatles' The Beatles 1 and working on my transcriptions of their songs for my Beatle-specific project.  I noticed something about the chorus of "Ticket to Ride."  Two of the four lines are "She oughta think twice; she oughta do right by me."  It's very similar to the last line of each verse (and also the title) of Bob Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright," except that where Dylan says not to think twice, the Beatles say "she oughta think twice."  The "think twice" and "(al)right" are the two similar elements.

Apparently, "Ticket to Ride" is more of a John Lennon song than a Paul McCartney song, and since he mentioned that "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" from Help! (the same album that "Ticket to Ride" appears on) is from his "Dylan period," it seems a bit more likely that "Ticket to Ride" had some of that Dylan influence too.

The Beatles' "Old Brown Shoe"

This morning I listened to the second disc of the Beatles' Anthology 3, and I noticed a small thing about "Old Brown Shoe."  (It's in the single version too, but it's clearer in the version on Anthology 3.)  The melody of the vocal part descends at the end of the line "You know you pick me up from worse and try to drag me down," so you get the impression of the "drag[ging] down."

The Beatles' "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!"

An-other thing I noticed while listening to the Beatles' Anthology 2 is the time change in "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" (it's in the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band version too).  After the line "And of course Henry the Horse dances the waltz," the song changes from 4/4 time to 3/4 time - the time signature that waltzes are in.

The Beatles' "And Your Bird Can Sing"

I just listened to the second disc of the Beatles' Anthology 2.  I noticed a small thing about "And Your Bird Can Sing" (and I also checked the final version on Revolver to verify that it's there too).  There's a downward vocal melisma on the "down" in the lines "When your prized possessions / Start to weigh you down."  Like the melisma on "heavy" that I discovered in "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" earlier this month, this melisma gives a sense of the weight; it's as if the word itself is bent.

Electric Light Orchestra's "Livin' Thing"

I'm halfway through a compilation album of Electric Light Orchestra (All over the World: The Best of Electric Light Orchestra).  After a post I wrote here two years ago (after listening to this same album), I started a project where I look into ELO's music in some depth (I haven't gotten that far yet), so I've been transcribing these too.

I noticed the line "Takin' a dive 'cause you can help but slide, floating downstream" in "Livin' Thing," and I think it's a small lyrical reference to the Beatles.  The "floating downstream" part is very similar to the first line of "Tomorrow Never Knows" - "Turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream."  In my project, I've found more than a few references to the Beatles, so I'm more confident that this is a reference rather than just a coincidental resemblance.

The Beatles' "I Want You (She's So Heavy)"

I'm listening to the Beatles' Abbey Road.  It's not that great of a point, but I noticed that the "heavy"s in "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" have melismas at the end, so it's as if they're bending under the weight that lyric describes.

The Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"

I just wrote about this in "Penny Lane," but I found an-other instance of an instrument doubling a vocal part in a Beatles song.  This time, it's guitar during the second half of the first two verses of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" ("Cellophane flowers of yellow and green..." and "Newspaper taxis appear on the shore...").

Additionally, there's a vocal and guitar glissando on the "away" in "Waiting to take you away," suggesting the distance to which you'll be taken.

The Beatles' "Penny Lane"

Last year, I realized that because of the ping-ponging of influence and rivalry between the Beatles and the Beach Boys, the clarinet that doubles the vocals in part of the Beatles' "When I'm Sixty-Four" was probably inspired by the Beach Boys' "I'm Waiting for the Day," which has a similar effect, although different sources credit different instruments, ranging from viola to oboe to English horn.  I just started listening to the Beatles' 1967-1970, and I discovered that the Beatles did the same thing at the end of "Penny Lane" too, although there I think it's a flute or a piccolo.

Because "Penny Lane" was released before "When I'm Sixty-Four," I'd assumed that it was recorded first, but according to Mark Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, "When I'm Sixty-Four" was recorded first (on 6 December 1966) and "Penny Lane" later (on 29 December 1966).  Still, because they were recorded so close together, it would make sense that if McCartney took that idea from Brian Wilson for part of "When I'm Sixty-Four," he would have had the same thing in mind when he did it on "Penny Lane" too.

The Beatles' "Nowhere Man"

This is probably an-other thing I wouldn't have noticed were I not transcribing the lyrics to Beatles songs.  The middle line of the second verse of "Nowhere Man" is "Knows not where he's going to."  The "Knows not" is sort of inverted from what would normal be rendered as something like "[He does] not know where he's going to."  But that inversion - and the slight mental delay it takes to process it - seems to indicate the confusion and aimlessness of the Nowhere Man himself.

The Beatles' "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away"

Last year, I re-read The Beatles Anthology, and I made a note of page 158, where John Lennon says that "'You've Got to Hide Your Love Away' is my Dylan period.'"  I'd thought I noticed a resemblance between the chords of "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" and Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'," but I never got around to investigating that.  Listening to it now though, I discovered a lyrical similarity.  "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" has the line "Gather ‘round, all you clowns" where Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'" starts with "Come gather 'round, people, wherever you roam" (incidentally, I think Dylan took that line from Woody Guthrie).  Unless Lennon hadn't mentioned "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" in his "Dylan period," I would just think that resemblance a similarity (if I would have remarked it at all), but because he did mention it, I think that phrase is a bit of Dylan's influence.

The Beatles' "Help!"

This is pretty obvious, but I'd never noticed some of the elements that emphasize the "down-ness" in the line "Help me if you can, I'm feelin' down" in the Beatles' "Help!"  The "down" itself has a melisma where the later syllables are lower than the first, so the word itself is falling down, and after that line, there's a descending phrase in the guitar part.

The Beatles' "I Feel Fine"

Because I'm doing a separate project where I'm looking into the Beatles' music, I'm working on my transcriptions of the songs as I listen to them.  I'd already completed "I Feel Fine," but in following along in the lyrics, I noticed the backing vocals during the bridges:

I'm so glad that she's my little girl
She's so glad; she's tellin' all the world

The backing vocals double the "I'm so glad" and "She's so glad," but for the rest of the line, they're just "ooh"s.  There's a bit of parallelism between those two sections in the lyrics, but having the backing vocals double those nearly-identical parts helps to further the feeling of completeness that the relationship has and that the lyrics already describe.

The Apples in Stereo's "Strawberryfire"

The first album I started listening to this year is a compilation album of the Apples in Stereo titled #1 Hits Explosion.   I think “Strawberryfire” (originally from Her Wallpaper Reverie) takes a few elements from the Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever.”  Obviously, both have “strawberry” in the titles (and in the lyrics), but they also share a musical element.  I’m not entirely sure how to describe it, but I think it’s some type of backwards percussion that generations a swooshing sound.  In “Strawberryfire,” it’s pretty noticeable after the second chorus (”Took a trip on a stereo song...”), at about 2:40.  I skipped around a bit in “Strawberry Fields Forever” to find the same effect, and - while there might be an earlier instance - it’s quite noticeable during “I mean it must be high or low” at about 1:27.

Originally, I was just going to write about how “Took a trip on a stereo song” is an appropriate lyric for a band with “stereo” in its name, but then I found that percussion thing, which I think is more interesting.

The Beatles' "Sea of Monsters"

I just listened to the Beatles' Yellow Submarine.  The second half of this is the soundtrack to the Yellow Submarine movie, which I've never seen, and I think this is only the second time I've listened to it, but I still found something to say about it.

At about 2:22 in the track "Sea of Monsters," there's a fairly lengthy quotation of the opening of the second movement of Bach's third orchestral suite (BWV 1068).  It lasts until about 2:36.  Judging by the recording I have of the third orchestral suite (by the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields directed by Neville Marriner), the quotation is pretty accurate too.  The only major differences I can find are that the accompaniment in "Sea of Monsters" is pizzicato where in the original it's done with the bow and that there are a few extra notes in the descending melody in "Sea of Monsters" before the quotation ends.

Because I haven't seen the movie, I don't know how or if that Bach quotation relates to it, but now I'm curious.