The Who's "Long Live Rock"

To-day I listened to the second disc of a compilation album of The Who.  For the third time in about a month, I found an "every" that's sung as three syllables instead of the usual two.  Here, it's in the chorus of "Long Live Rock."  The first line is "Long live rock; I need it every night."  The emphatic three-syllable pronunciation of that "every" intensifies the singer/speaker's need.

The Who's "My Wife"

This morning I listened to the first disc of a compilation album of the Who, and I noticed a small thing about "My Wife" (from Who's Next).  The melody for the end of the line "And I'm oh so tired of runnin'; gonna lay down on the floor" descends ("lay down on the floor" goes from D# to G#), which sort of musically portrays the singer/speaker's laying down to rest.

The Who's "The Seeker"

I'm listening to the Who's The BBC Sessions, and I noticed something in "The Seeker" that should have been obvious but that I'd never really noticed (it's also in the studio version).  In the line "I've been searchin' low and high," there's a rather large interval between the two syllables of "high" (I think it's C# to A).  That interval encapsulates the search not only because of that span of distance (like the "low and high" search) but also because that A seems to be in the higher vocal range.

The Who's "I'm a Boy"

Yester-day, I listened to a compilation album of the Who.  "I'm a Boy" got stuck in my head, and I got thinking about the names of two of the girls mentioned in the song, Felicity and Sally-Joy.  Both of their names indicate the well-being that the speaker/singer doesn't have.  Felicity means happiness, and Sally-Joy's name obviously contains joy.

Also, in transcribing the lyrics (which I've decided to do to all of the songs I write about here, provided I'm commenting on the lyrics), I discovered that the first word of each line of the second verse starts with P:

Put your frock on, Jean-Marie
Pluck your hair, Felicity
Paint your nails, little Sally-Joy
Put this wig on, little boy

(It might technically be the third verse, if "My name is Bill, and I'm a headcase..." is an-other verse, but I think that's a bridge.  I might be wrong; I'm bad at structural terminology.)

I think the words that start with P are too far away for it to be alliteration (at least in a strict sense), but it still indicates how the boy is forced into conforming with the girls.