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.

Johnny Cash's "The Ballad of Ira Hayes"

An-other thing I noticed when I listened to a Johnny Cash album this morning is that in "The Ballad of Ira Hayes," there's a flute that plays "Taps."  The lyrics are about Ira Hayes who was a Native American and a Marine, and I think the inclusion of "Taps" - but on a flute - is meant to musically portray both of those things.  "Taps" is often played at military funerals, and it seems like the flute is meant to evoke Native American flutes (although I think it's actually a western concert flute in the recording).

Johnny Cash's "The Legend of John Henry's Hammer"

This morning, I listened to a compilation album of Johnny Cash.  I noticed the parallelism in some lines in "The Legend of John Henry's Hammer" - "John Henry’s mammy had about a dozen babies / John Henry's pappy broke jail about a dozen times."  Because it's presented in that order - with the "dozen babies" before the "dozen" jail breaks - it sort of implies that the reason John Henry's father "broke jail" was for the sake of his children.  The very beginning of the song, where John Henry's father wakes him up to give him instructions and his hammer, hints at the same thing.

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.

Changes for 2016

I'm bringing this blog out of hibernation because I'll be doing Collection Audit again in 2016 (I've been doing it every other year since 2008).  I'm really glad I started writing posts about things I noticed while listening to my entire collection (even if some of those posts are now rather embarrassing and seem ignorant) because it's started something that I consistently do on my regular music blog.  Throughout 2015, I wrote at least a post a week about something musical.

Hopefully, through writing about music so much, I've gotten better at it, and there are a few things that I'm going to change about this project:

• I'm not going to mention alliteration, parallelism, et cetera unless it's significant.  It's tedious if I point them out just for the sake of pointing them out, but if they add to the lyrics in some way, then I'll be sure to mention it.
• I'm going to make individual posts for individual songs.  When I did this project last year, there were a few times where I had things to say about two songs on an album, and even though what I had to say about one song wasn't related to the other, I put them both in the same post.  It's not such a big deal on the tumblr version (because I didn't include titles there), but on the Blogger version, the titles could be misconstrued as a comparison of the two songs.  Essentially, I'm splitting up my posts so that the titles are easier to understand.

I might not have to do this, but I've come up with a plan of what to do if I don't make it through my entire collection (of which there's a greater possibility every year because I keep getting more music).  I'll still try to get as far as I can, but when the year ends, I'll end the project and then just continue where I left off the next time the project starts again.

Success!

I just listened to the last disc of the Zombies' Zombie Heaven, which is the last thing I have in my collection.  So I've finished this project for this year!

Sam Cooke's "You Send Me" and "Summertime"

For each of the past three days, I listened to a disc of a three-CD compilation of Sam Cooke titled You Send Me.  I found some interesting things in two of the songs.

"You Send Me" has some interesting articulation.  The "in-" in "infatuation" is stressed instead of the "fa," but I think that's just to make the meter of the line work.  In the same part, the "so" in the line "But, ooh, it’s lasted so long" is drawn out to three syllables, to sort of show how long it's lasted.  And when Cooke sings "marry you," the rest of the instrumentation drops out so that he sings the line almost a cappella, which could represent the seriousness or finality of marriage.

I also found some interesting stuff in his version of Gershwin's "Summertime."  Apparently Cooke recorded more than one version; "Summertime" is included on an-other Sam Cooke compilation album I have, but it's a different recording (the You Send Me set also contains a different take of "Win Your Love for Me," which is distinct in that there are no backing vocals and the bass is more prominent in the mix).  In any case, in the version of "Summertime" in the You Send Me set, Cooke takes some of the phrases from the first two verses and combines them in some phrases that he sticks between the second and third verses.  He takes "don't cry" from the end of the first verse and combines it with "they're standin' by" from the end of the second to get:

They’re standin’ by so don’t cry
They’re standin’ by; don’t cry

Not only does it tie the song together by strengthening the connection between those two verses, but it also points out the rhyme scheme used in the song.

"The Red Baron" from You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown

I'm currently listening to the soundtrack to You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown.  I'd never noticed that in the piano part in "The Red Baron," there's a brief quotation of the song "Over There."  The only version of "Over There" I have is by Glenn Miller, but apparently it was written during and for World War I, so it does fit chronologically.

The Byrds' "Thoughts and Words" and "Don't Make Waves"

This morning I listened to the Byrds' Younger than Yesterday.  I found an interesting structural thing in "Thoughts and Words."  There are harmony vocals during the third verse, but the lyrics for those harmony vocals are different from the lyrics for the lead vocals.  The lead vocal line is "One day you came into my mind, and everything looked as though it was all mine," and the harmony vocal is "One day you came into my mind, and everything, it was all mine."  This happens for the other line in that verse too, but I can't make out all of the harmony vocals.

I've written a few posts about this sort of thing already, but I'm still always really excited when I find something like it.  The lead vocals and the harmony vocals are saying different things even though they're saying (singing, technically) almost the exact same words.  Here, the lead vocals say that "everything looked as though it was all mine" (although it should be "everything looked as though it were all mine" since it's in the subjunctive mood).  The lead vocals realize that what it seems like isn't what it is, but the harmony vocals are more taken by whoever came into his mind, saying that "everything, it was all mine."

Also, a very minor point about "Don't Make Waves," which is a bonus track: I found an instance of internal rhyme in the line "Malibu is calling you, her days and nights so warm."