The Moody Blues' "The Story in Your Eyes"

This morning I listened to the 20th Century Masters compilation album of the Moody Blues.  I noticed an interesting melisma in the last verse of "The Story in Your Eyes."

When the final line is over
And it's certain that the curtain's gonna fall
I can hide inside your sweet, sweet love
Forevermore

The "more" of "Forevermore" has (I think) eight syllables instead of the usual one, so it provides a sense of continuation and eternity that, obviously, the "forevermore" itself means.

The Four Tops' "Walk Away Renee"

This morning I listened to a compilation album of the Four Tops (in the 20th Century Masters series).  Over the last year or so, I've come to like their version of "Walk Away Renee" a bit better than the Left Banke's original, but I noticed something new about it.

The lyrics in the chorus are:

Just walk away, Renee
You won't see me follow you back home
The empty sidewalks on my block are not the same
You're not to blame

In the Four Tops' version, the lead singer doesn't sing that second line ("You won't see me follow you back home").  That omission emphasizes the speaker/singer's absence that the line itself mentions.

Herman's Hermits' "Ooh, She's Done It Again"

Listening to original albums is sometimes weird because half of the songs I've never heard before and the other half I'm quite familiar with.  I hadn't heard Herman's Hermits' "Ooh, She's Done It Again" before, but I found something to say about it.

Two thirds of the way through the last verse, the time signature changes from 4/4 to 3/4, right before the line "Such beauty takes their breath away."  That same line is in the first verse too, but that time signature change emphasizes it here.  Along with the breath taken away, there's a beat taken away from each measure.

Herman's Hermits' "Jezebel"

One of the reasons I wanted to get this CD set of original Herman's Hermits albums is because it has "Jezebel."  I'd heard a live version of theirs a few years ago, so I wanted the studio version.

This is just a minor point, but they include the riff from "Peter Gunn" in the instrumental backing.  I have two other versions of "Jezebel" (by Edith Piaf and Gene Vincent), and neither has that feature, so I'm assuming that it was the Hermits who first put the two together.

Herman's Hermits' "Saturday's Child"

Along with working my way through my existing collection, I'm still listening to a CD a day of the CDs I got for Christmas.  To-day, it's the second disc of a two-disc set of all of Herman's Hermits' U.K. albums, so it has There's a Kind of Hush All over the World and Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter.

There's a Kind of Hush All over the World has "Saturday's Child" on it, which I was sort of surprised to discover is the same song as the "Saturday's Child" on the first Monkees album.  I think I might like Herman's Hermits' version better, but the only specific thing I can point to that I think is better than the Monkees' version is the melisma'd "wild" in "She drives me wild."  Instead of only one syllable, there are five.  It provides a greater sense of the wildness, where in the Monkees' version, that "wild" doesn't have a melisma at all.

The Mountain Goats' "Cubs in Five"

This morning I listened to the Mountain Goats at the 2013 Newport Folk Festival.  I downloaded it via NPR shortly after they put it up.  It's still available, and there's also video for a few of the songs, including "Cubs in Five," which is what I noticed something about.  I should note that this live version is the only version of "Cubs in Five" I've heard.

I'd always taken the tone to be sort of cynically sarcastic.  The lyrics talk about "find[ing] intelligent life up there on the moon," how "The Canterbury Tales will rocket to the top of the best seller list," and how "the Chicago Cubs will beat every team in the league."  These seemingly-impossible things are then capped with "And I will love you again."  I'd always thought it was saying something akin to "I'll love you again when pigs fly," but listening to it this morning, I realized that it could just be extremely optimistic.  In that respect, it's a great song in that it means different things depending on what the listener brings to it.

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.