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.

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.