She & Him's "I'm Gonna Make It Better"

This morning I listened to She & Him's Volume Two, and I noticed a small thing about "I'm Gonna Make It Better."  I can't seem to figure out the precise notes, but the "down on you" in the line "Yes, it all comes crashin' down on you" is sung to a descending phrase, evidently to portray that crashing.

The Beach Boys' "Amusement Parks U.S.A."

This morning I listened to a compilation album of the Coasters.  A spoken line at the beginning of "Little Egypt" caught my attention:  "Just one thin dime, one tenth of a dollar."  I had to reference the recording to get the exact phrase, but word-for-word, this is almost the same exhortation that's in the Beach Boys' "Amusement Parks U.S.A." on the Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) album.  There, it's "One thin dime, just one tenth of a dollar."

Last time I did Collection Audit, I postulated that that phrase in "Amusement Parks U.S.A." came from the song "Broadway," specifically the line "One thin dime won't even shine your shoes."  This song by the Coasters seems much more likely to be the actual origin though.  While I don't know if the Beach Boys were familiar with this song, both it and "Amusement Parks U.S.A." have a carnival-esque atmosphere.

VeggieTales: Veggie Tunes

Two days ago, I listened to an album of the VeggieTales titled VeggieTales: Veggie Tunes.  I noticed a couple things.

"King Darius Suite"

This starts with a quotation of Mozart's Serenade No. 13 in G major, K. 525 (albeit in Eb major), commonly referred to as Eine kleine Nachtmusik (literally, a little night music).  Since "King Darius Suite" is about King Darius' dream (there are two in the Bible: in Daniel 2 and Daniel 4) and dreams usually occur at night, that quotation helps to set that nighttime context.

"We are the Grapes of Wrath"

I think I was dimly aware that this is a reference to John Steinbeck's book The Grapes of Wrath, and apparently Steinbeck's title alludes to Revelation 14:17-20 (so, it's an allusion upon an allusion).  Listening to it this time, however, I noticed this stanza:

I'm ma; I'm pa; this is our brood
We're grumpy, and we know it
That's Tom and Rosie; they're both rude
And not afraid to show it

The names here are the same names from Steinbeck's book!  I've read The Grapes of Wrath only once (and that was almost three years ago now), but - if I remember correctly - the parents are referred to only as "Ma" and "Pa."  The main character is Tom Joad, and his sister is named Rose of Sharon (although it's rendered as "Rosasharn" when it appears in dialogue).

Peter & Gordon's "Jokers"

An-other thing I noticed when I listened to a Peter & Gordon compilation album yester-day was some wordplay in "Jokers."  In the last verse, there are the lines "we know / That once they leave the pack / The jokers can't come back."  "Pack" has a dual meaning here.  There's pack in the sense of a group of people, but there's also pack in the sense of a pack of playing cards, which jokers are a part of.  The playing card sense seems to be the primary one here because a later line is "their place will be taken by the jack."

Peter & Gordon's "My First Day Alone"

Yester-day I listened to a compilation album of Peter & Gordon, and I noticed something about the harmonies in "My First Day Alone."  For much of the song, both Peter & Gordon are singing, but during the line "no one's to blame but me," one of them (I'm pretty sure it's Peter) drops out so that the other (Gordon) sings "but me" alone.  Because there's a single voice for that "but me," the exclusivity of the blame is represented musically.

The Who's "Long Live Rock"

To-day I listened to the second disc of a compilation album of The Who.  For the third time in about a month, I found an "every" that's sung as three syllables instead of the usual two.  Here, it's in the chorus of "Long Live Rock."  The first line is "Long live rock; I need it every night."  The emphatic three-syllable pronunciation of that "every" intensifies the singer/speaker's need.

The New Pornographers' Twin Cinema

Also this morning I listened to the New Pornographers' Twin Cinema, and I noticed a couple small things in a few tracks.

"Twin Cinema"

The line "They've shown this on both screens" is sung twice in succession and has a harmony each time, and both of those features represent the double in "Twin Cinema."

"Use It"

There's the phrase "the cup of human kindness," which is an allusion to Shakespeare's Macbeth.  In Act I, Scene 5, Lady Macbeth fears that Macbeth "is too full o' th' milk of human kindness" (I.v.16).

"Streets of Fire"

The "every" in the line "Let's sully every stage" is pronounced with three syllables rather than the usual two, which emphasizes the exhaustive nature of every.

The Who's "My Wife"

This morning I listened to the first disc of a compilation album of the Who, and I noticed a small thing about "My Wife" (from Who's Next).  The melody for the end of the line "And I'm oh so tired of runnin'; gonna lay down on the floor" descends ("lay down on the floor" goes from D# to G#), which sort of musically portrays the singer/speaker's laying down to rest.

The Apples in Stereo's "C.P.U."

This morning I listened to the Apples in Stereo's Travellers in Space and Time, and I realized something about "C.P.U."  I'm pretty sure it uses the non-Pythagorean musical scale (which Robert Schneider talks about here), and because that's used alongside more standard musical intervals, there are some dissonances.  Those dissonances seem to musically represent the feeling that's in the first two lines: "You know what it's like when you're out of range of your satellite / You know you feel blue when you're out of sync with your CPU."  There's an off-kilter feeling that's common to both.

The Buckinghams' "Have You Noticed You're Alive"

This morning I listened to two albums by the Buckinghams released on one disc: Time & Charges and Portraits.  I noticed a small grammatical thing in "Have You Noticed You're Alive" from Portraits.  One of the lines is "You feel your troubles deep."  "Deep" could be either a flat adverb (a shortened form of deeply so that it rhymes with "sleep" from an earlier line) or an adjective modifying "troubles" with the word order inverted ("troubles deep" instead of "deep troubles").  The meaning isn't changed too much between these two parsings, but one emphasizes the depth of the troubles where the other emphasizes the degree to which they're felt.