The Zombies' "I Don't Want to Know"

Yester-day I listened to the Zombies' The Decca Stereo Anthology and noticed a few things.  The first was in "I Don't Want to Know."  There are the lines "I believe what I want / No matter what you do," and I'd always understood the "do" there as representing an action.  "I believe what I want / No matter what action you perform."  But listening to it yester-day, I realized that it could be a sort of abbreviation standing in for the same verb, so "I believe what I want / No matter what you believe."

The singer/speaker's steadfastness in his belief remains the same, but - depending on how that second line is parsed - he's resisting different things.

Belle & Sebastian's "I'm a Cuckoo"

This morning I also listened to Belle & Sebastian's Dear Catastrophe Waitress and noticed a small thing in "I'm a Cuckoo."  After the lines "I'd like to see you / But really I should stay away / And let you settle down," the backing vocals repeat the "let you settle down."  The third time, it's reduced to just "down," and there's a glissando so that as the word goes on, the pitch drops, like the meaning of the word itself.

The White Stripes' "A Boy's Best Friend"

This morning I listened to the White Stripes' De Stijl and noticed some lines in "A Boy's Best Friend":

My only friends speak no words to me
But they look at me, and they don't forget
That a boy's best friend
Is his mother or whatever has become his pet

Part of that ("A boy's best friend / Is his mother") seems to be a reference to a line in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho:  "A boy's best friend is his mother."

Jim Croce's "Walkin' Back to Georgia"

I just listened (for the first time) to the first disc of Jim Croce's The 50th Anniversary Collection.  I noticed something about "Walkin' Back to Georgia," which I've heard only once before when I listened to the You Don't Mess Around with Jim album last June (I haven't gotten around to listening to it again yet).  It's not that big of a point, but the "down" in "And if she's still around I'm gonna settle down with that hard-lovin' Georgia girl" has a sort of vocal glissando so that it goes down in pitch as it's sung.  The way it's sung reflects its meaning.

Okkervil River's "No Easy Way Down"

Last night I listened to Okkervil River's Daytrotter Session.  This is a minor point (and pretty obvious, although I hadn't noticed it before), but there's a melisma'd "down" in "No Easy Way Down" where the second note is lower than the first (I think it's an E to a D), helping to portray the "down-ness."

I did some research and discovered that "No Easy Way Down" is a Goffin/King song, but I don't think Okkervil River recorded it for an album (or, if they did, I can't find what album it's on).

The Moody Blues' Days of Future Passed

This morning I listened to the Moody Blues' Days of Future Passed.  I'd noticed before that some of the orchestral sections quote some musical phrases from the songs that feature just the Moody Blues, but when I listened to the album this morning, I discovered that those orchestral sections also feature some phrases from the vocal parts.

At the very beginning of "Lunch Break: Peak Hour," a brass instrument plays the melody to which "Dawn is a feeling" is sung in "Dawn: Dawn Is a Feeling."

At about 4:28 in "The Afternoon: Forever Afternoon (Tuesday?)/Time To Get Away" the strings play the melody to which "Tuesday afternoon" is sung earlier in the track, and at about 4:48, a woodwind (I think an oboe) plays the melody to which "I'm just beginning to see" is sung earlier in the track.

There might be some other instances of this, where the orchestral sections play phrases that are in the vocal melodies of other phrases, but these were the ones I noticed.

Fly These Wings' "Dark Eyes"

This morning I listened to Fly These Wings' "Dark Eyes."  [Fly These Wings is a band my cousin was in, so I'm not sure how wide an audience this post will have.]  I noticed that it seems to have been inspired by Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," which - fortuitously - I just happened to have read this morning (I doubt I would have noticed the similarities otherwise).

The last verse shows Frost's influence the most clearly:

The woods are lovely, oh, so scary, dark and deep
But we've got promises, yeah, I've got promises to keep
The woods are scary, oh, so lovely, dark and deep
But I've got promises, yeah, I've got promises to keep

The first two lines of the last stanza of Frost's poem are:

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep

Once I found that very obvious similarity, I found a few other phrases in the lyrics that betray Frost's influence.  In "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," the narrator's horse "gives his harness bells a shake / To ask if there is some mistake."  "Mistake" is also a line-ending word (although not a rhyming one) in "Dark Eyes" - "Yeah, it makes me wonder, makes me wonder if there’s some mistake."

There are also a few lines in "Dark Eyes" that allude to the final repeated line in "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."  "While we've got many folks we have to meet before you sleep" and "But we've got many miles before we win the human race" expand Frost's "And miles to go before I sleep, / And miles to go before I sleep."

The Kinks' "A Rock 'N' Roll Fantasy"

Yester-day I listened to Come Dancing with the Kinks: The Best of the Kinks 1977-1986 and noticed the line "The King is dead; rock is done" in "A Rock 'N' Roll Fantasy."  I thought that this probably referred to Elvis (since he died in 1977, and the album is subtitled 1977-1986), but I wanted to do some research before writing about it.

According to the Wikipedia page, "A Rock 'N' Roll Fantasy" is from 1978.  An equally-dubious site is referenced claiming that the line is indeed about Elvis.  Normally, I wouldn't put that much faith in the accuracy of such sites, but it does confirm what I'd already been thinking.

Bach: Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen, BWV 51

Yester-day I listened to Bach's Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen, BWV 51.  This is just a small point, but I noticed that almost all of the "jauchzet"s in the first movement have melismas.  "Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen" translates to "Exult God in all lands," so those melismas on "jauchzet" ("exult") provide a sense of the ebullience in that praising.

George Harrison's "Just for Today"

Here's an-other thing I noticed a few days ago but didn't get around to looking into and writing about until now.  When I listened to George Harrison's "Just for Today" from his Cloud Nine album, I noticed some ascending and descending parts that seem to emphasize some aspects of the lyrics.  There are only two verses; they're just repeated.  After the line "Not deal with all life's problems" in the first verse and "Not be my own life's problem" in the second, there's a descending phrase (C, B, A, in octaves, I think).  The descent seems to imply the weight of those problems.

The last line in each verse recalls the first line.  So the "Just for today" that ends the first verse recalls the opening "Just for today I could try to live through this day only," and the "Just for one night" in the second verse recalls its opening with "If just for one night I could feel not sad and lonely."  Those more optimistic views are recalled at the end of the verse with the condensed "Just for today" and "Just for one night," but that optimism is also hinted at by an ascending phrase after those lyrics.  I think it's a chromatic phrase from E to G (E, F, F#, G).