The Decemberists' "The Wrong Year"

I've listened to the Decemberists' What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World only three times so far, but I've heard various live versions of some of the songs because I've watched and listened to a lot of the radio station appearances that the Decemberists have been doing.

Last month, I realized something interesting about "The Wrong Year."  After almost every couplet in the verses, there's a prominent part by an-other instrument.  It's usually an electric twelve-string guitar part, but I think the absence of that twelve-string part is significant.

After "Could be that he’s into you / Could be that the obverse is true" there's an accordion part instead of the twelve-string part.  The shift in instrumentation (from twelve-string guitar to accordion) sort of mirrors the "obverse" that the lyric mentions.  Furthermore, the twelve-string is panned right, and the accordion is panned left, so there's a difference in positioning along with the difference in instrumentation.

After the first couplet in the third verse ("Sing me some eidolon / And I’ll sleep all the winter long"), there's just acoustic guitar and drums; there isn't an-other instrumental part from twelve-string guitar or accordion, which - like the lyrical mirroring of "obverse" - seems to represent the wintry hibernation.  Where switching the twelve-string to accordion indicates the opposite, here the lack of any additional instrumental part helps to signify the inactivity of sleep.

[It's not exactly relevant, but while writing this post, I referenced the lyric video, and I noticed that the hyphens in "long-forgotten" are missing.]

Jenny and Johnny's "Scissor Runner"

Two months ago, I inexplicably thought of Jenny and Johnny's "Scissor Runner," specifically a line in the chorus:

No, I won’t change another thing
I cracked the bell I tried to ring
A scissor runner stole my heart

I realized that ringing a bell is an image that also used in Buffalo Springfield's "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing," written by Neil Young.  There's "Who’s puttin’ sponge in the bells I once rung" and "Who’s tryin’ to tune all the bells that he’s rings."

I did a bit of research, but I couldn't find anything that really links the two.  Still, I don't think that bell ringing is that common of an image, and these lines are constructed fairly similarly.  They all end with some form of "ring," and "Scissor Runner" rhymes "thing" with "ring" like one of the instances of the bell image in "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing":

And who’s all hung up on that happiness thing
Who’s tryin’ to tune all the bells that he’s rings
And who’s in the corner and down on the floor
With pencil and paper just countin’ the score?

Granted, rhyming "thing" with "ring" isn't that unique, but I still think there's something to this.  If it isn't a very subtle reference, at least it's an interesting coincidence.

Neil Diamond's "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon"

Two months ago, when I listened to a Neil Diamond compilation album, I noticed a line in "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon" - "Love you so much can’t count all the ways."  I'd never really paid much attention to that line before, but listening to it that time, I realized that it's a reference to one of the sonnets in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

It seems like Neil Diamond wants to outdo Browning; the speaker/singer in his song says that he "can't count all the ways," but Browning's speaker actually does proffer a list of seven ways.

I couldn't find any further points of comparison between Diamond's song and Browning's sonnet, but since Browning's sonnet is so well known and since the phrases match so closely (save for Diamond's negation), I think it's an intentional reference.

Glenn Miller's "Over the Rainbow"

When I listened to a Glenn Miller compilation album back in March, I noticed something interesting about his version of "Over the Rainbow."  Two days ago, I listened to Judy Garland's version from The Wizard of Oz and Glenn Miller's version again to compare them.  Lyrically, the verses in both are the same, but then things start to diverge.  In Garland's version, there are short segments following the verses:

Somewhere over the rainbow, bluebirds fly
Birds fly over the rainbow, why then, oh, why can’t I? 

If happy little bluebirds fly
Beyond the rainbow, why, oh, why can’t I?

Miller's version has only one of these, but the lyrics of the second half of the first line are different:

Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue
Birds fly over the rainbow, why then, oh, why, can’t I?

Instead of "bluebirds fly," Miller's version has "skies are blue."  "Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue" is a line in the song (the third line of the first verse), so it's not a drastic divergence, but - significantly - replacing "bluebirds fly" with "skies are blue" disrupts the rhyme scheme.  "Fly" and "I" rhyme, but "blue" and "I" don't.

The half-substitution of that line might just be a mistake, but the strain it causes by not rhyming still relates to the lyrics nicely.  There's an incompleteness because there isn't a rhyme, and that same lack is in the lamentation "why then, oh, why, can't I?"