Cat Power's "Real Life"

Yester-day I listened to Cat Power's Sun.  I noticed a clever bit of wordplay in "Real Life," specifically:

I met a preacher, he want to be sinister

Sinister is only a letter different from minister, which is an-other word for preacher.
I think there's also something to be said about that similarity between sinister and minister (differing only by one letter) and how a preacher's wanting to be sinister sort of makes him ineligible of being a minister (or at least a good one).  It's as if that one quality is the thing that invalidates him and changes the M to an S.  I'm not quite sure if that's a valid point in the context of the rest of the song though.

The Cyrkle's "Red Rubber Ball"

I'm currently listening to some compilation albums, one of which includes the Cyrkle's "Red Rubber Ball."  I'd never noticed the appropriateness of the key change.  It comes right before:

The story's in the past with nothing to recall
I've got my life to live, and I don't need you at all
The roller coaster ride we took is nearly at an end
I bought my ticket with my tears, that's all I'm gonna spend

The first part of the song describes the nature of the (apparently failed) relationship, but the verse after the key change has a decidedly different outlook.  It's moving past the sentiment in those earlier verses, which is reflected in the new key.

Arcade Fire's "Rococo"

I just listened to Arcade Fire's The Suburbs.  I'd never noticed that there's harpsichord in "Rococo" (or at least I hadn't paid much attention to it), but it's fitting.  I don't know much about it, but Rococo was an artistic period in the 18th century, sort of a smaller branch of the Baroque, if I understand correctly from my skimming of the Wikipedia article.  And the harpsichord was "widely used" in Baroque music.

Glenn Miller's "Chattanooga Choo Choo"

Yester-day, I listened to a five-CD set of Glenn Miller titled Still in the Mood.  It includes "Chattanooga Choo Choo," but listening to it this time, I noticed something weird.

It's in these lines:

Dinner in the diner, nothing could be finer
Than to have your ham and eggs in Carolina

They're talking about the food available on the train, but it seems to imply that the passengers eat ham and eggs (which I'm fairly certain are breakfast foods) for dinner.

It might just be two separate meal times that are squished together because of the phrasing, but - in that case - I think a word or two could have been changed or added to prevent any misunderstanding.

Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young's "Find the Cost of Freedom"

Yester-day, I listened to Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young's So Far.  I noticed two things about songs on it, although neither of them is a very large point.

First I noticed that the melody in "Find the Cost of Freedom" goes along with the lyrics:

Find the cost of freedom
Buried in the ground
Mother Earth will swallow you
Lay your body down

The melodies corresponding to "buried in the ground" and "lay your body down" go down.

An even smaller point: I'd never noticed that there's tambourine in "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes."

Loudon Wainwright III's "New Street People"

I'm currently listening to Loudon Wainwright III's Social Studies.  I found a reference to Shakespeare's Hamlet in "New Street People."  Wainwright's line is "a thousand toxic, natural shocks," which adds only one word (toxic) to a sentence from Hamlet's famous "to be or not to be" soliloquy:  "To die--to sleep-- / No more; and by a sleep to say we end / The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks / That flesh is heir to" (III.i.68-71).

However, I'm not exactly sure what Wainwright is trying to say with that Hamlet quote.

Bing Crosby's "Love Is Just around the Corner"

I'm listening to a compilation album of songs from the 1930s.  One of them is Bing Crosby's "Love Is Just around the Corner," written by Lewis E. Gensler and Leo Robin.  It includes the lines:

Venus de Milo was noted for her charms
Strictly between us, you are cuter than Venus
And what's more you've got arms.

Back in July, I found a reference to Venus de Milo in Ray Charles' "Ain't That Fine" (which, as far as I can tell, was written by Betty Hall, Dorsey Burnette, and H. Robert), and I said that "Grecian art doesn’t seem to be a very common topic in popular music."  Having found this, it looks as if I was wrong.  So now I'm not so sure that, as I posited in that post from July, Ray Charles' "Ain't That Fine" is connected to Chuck Berry's "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man," which also mentions Venus de Milo.

The Tremeloes' "Shake Hands (and Come out Crying)"

Yester-day and the day before, I listened to the two discs of an anthology of the Tremeloes titled Silence Is Golden: Anthology.  I noticed that the riff in "Shake Hands (and Come out Crying)" is really similar to that in the Byrds' "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better."  And then I remembered that the riff in that Byrds' song came out of the Searchers' "Needles and Pins."  Between the three, I think there's a difference of only one or two notes.  They're all in the same key too - A major.

Not much is said about "Shake Hands (and Come out Crying)" in the liner notes to this anthology.  Really, the only relevant detail I can find is that it's from 1967 - a few years after "Needles and Pins" and "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better."  So while it's possible that the riff in "Shake Hands (and Come out Crying)" was taken from either "Needles and Pins" or "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better," I'm not sure if it was.  It's also possible that it's just a coincidence, but it's too similar for me to think that it's likely.

If it was taken from "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better," it'd be an interesting instance of inspiration hopping across the Atlantic - first the Byrds' taking that riff from the Searchers' "Needles and Pins" (an American band taking inspiration from a British band), and then the Tremeloes taking it from the Byrds (a British band re-claiming that inspiration from an American band).  But - again - I don't know where the Tremeloes got the riff.

The Beatles' "When I'm Sixty-Four"

Yester-day, I listened to the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.  For the first time, I realized how much the instrumentation does for "When I'm Sixty-Four."  I had to look up exactly what instruments I was hearing though.  According to Mark Lewisohn's The Official Story of the Abbey Road Years 1962-1970, there are two clarinets and a bass clarinet.  I feel that those in particular help give the song it's old time-y feel.

In the time between that realization and looking up the specific instrumentation, I also realized that "When I'm Sixty-Four" has a connection to "P.S. I Love You" in that they both feature epistolary writing.  "P.S. I Love You" starts out with "As I write this letter" and continues that theme through the lines "I'll be coming home again to you, love" (indicating the separation) and - of course - "P.S. I love you."  "When I'm Sixty-Four" also uses that letter-writing language with the line "Yours sincerely, wasting away."

What I'm unsure of is whether that letter section of "When I'm Sixty-Four" pre-dates or post-dates "P.S. I Love You."  Obviously "When I'm Sixty-Four" was released after "P.S. I Love You," but as Lewisohn's book notes, "["When I'm Sixty-Four"] was not a new song, the Beatles having performed a variation of it back in their pre-fame Cavern Club days whenever the amplifiers broke down."  As Lewisohn mentions, that "pre-fame" version of "When I'm Sixty-Four" was probably different from the version that's on Sgt. Pepper, especially considering the Beatles' rapid evolution.  So I don't know whether the letter section of "When I'm Sixty-Four" was written for the Sgt. Pepper version and was a throw back to that in "P.S. I Love You" (similar to how "All You Need Is Love" would reference "She Loves You" later in the year) or whether "When I'm Sixty-Four" was always that way and the letter elements in "P.S. I Love You" were something like a later try and an expanded version.  And, of course, it could just be a coincidence that the two songs - both written mostly by Paul McCartney - use the same lyrical device.

In any case, I still think it's an interesting connection that ties the Beatles' more experimental period of recording to their earlier days.

Jerry Keller's "Here Comes Summer"

After discovering the reference to Stephen Foster's "My Old Kentucky Home" in Jerry Keller's "Here Comes Summer" (I have versions of it by Cliff Richard and by the Dave Clark Five), I got thinking about an-other part of the song - the line "I'll meet the gang at Joe's café."  (This line doesn't appear in the DC5's version, however.)  I'd previously wondered whether this was a reference to Leiber and Stoller's "Smokey Joe's Café" (I have versions of it by the Coasters [although it's credited to the Robins], by Buddy Holly, and by Loudon Wainwright III), but because of how common a name Joe is, I wasn't sure if this was an actual reference or whether it was just a coincidence.

But now, knowing that Jerry Keller included some words and part of the melody of Foster's "My Old Kentucky Home," it seems more likely that he would also include a nod to a more contemporary song.