Jacques Brel's "L'homme dans la cité"

One of the things I noticed while listening to my French music is the snare drum part in Jacques Brel's "L'homme dans la cité."  It bears more than a little resemblance to that in Ravel's Boléro (or, I suppose, any bolero, but Ravel's is probably the most famous and - like Brel - Ravel was a francophone).

I tried writing out the notation, but I should include the disclaimer that it's entirely possible that I've done it wrong.  I didn't mean to indicate B notes either, but I couldn't format mine like it should be (with only one line).

(click the image to enlarge it)
(notation for Ravel's Boléro found here)

I'm pretty sure that the part in Brel's song is in 4/4 time where Ravel's is in 3/4.  Still, the rhythms are similar.  The part in Brel's song has some more variation than Ravel's though.

Edith Piaf's "Heureuse"

I've been listening to a lot of French music lately.  Yester-day, I listened to a disc of an Edith Piaf compilation album.

I've been trying to get better at my French (listening to French music seems to help), and while I still can't understand everything, I'm getting better at picking out phrases here and there.  In "Heureuse," I found an interesting one:  "Heureuse demain / De tout et de rien" ("Happy tomorrow / With everything and with nothing").

There's the line-ending rhyme between "demain" and "rien," but there's an-other poetic feature here:  alliteration among "demain," "de tout," and "de rien."  Each word/phrase is two syllables starting with "de," but "de tout" and "de rien" are prepositional phrases where "demain" is an adverb.

Alliteration is a pretty common feature in song lyrics, but I found this more interesting just because it's in French.

She & Him's "Never Wanted Your Love"

I don't remember when I first noticed this, but She & Him's "Never Wanted Your Love" from Volume Three seems to take some influence from Smokey Robinson & the Miracles' "You've Really Got a Hold on Me."

In "Never Wanted Your Love," there's a recurring section where the lines "I never wanted your love / But I needed it all" are repeated a few times.  It bears more than a little resemblance to Robinson's "I don’t like you, but I love you" or even "I don’t want you, but I need you," which employs the same verbs (albeit with a slightly different negation and in a different tense).

I'm more confident in venturing this influence than I would some others because She & Him covered "You're Really Got a Hold on Me" (with a slightly different title: "You Really Gotta Hold on Me") on their first album Volume One.  Whether the lyrical resemblance between "You've Really Got a Hold on Me" and "Never Wanted Your Love" was intentional or not, "You Really Gotta Hold on Me" proves that She & Him are familiar with Robinson's song.

"Dinah"

About a month ago, I listened to a two-disc compilation album of Bill Haley & His Comets.  One of the songs was "Dinah," written by Harry Akst, Samuel Lewis, and Joe Young.  I have a few other versions of it and was slightly familiar with it, but listening to Haley's version, I noticed - for the first time - the play on words with "Dinah might."  It sounds the same as "dynamite."

I listened to a few of the other versions I have (the versions I have with words, not the instrumental versions), and I kept finding other interesting things about the song.

The next version I listened to was by Charlie & His Orchestra.  It's from a set of World War II-era music, specifically the CD of the German propaganda pieces.  It's also the first version of "Dinah" that I ever heard.  In their version, they actually emphasize that "Dinah might"/"dynamite" feature.  After going through the verses normally, there's the propaganda section, which mentions Churchill's fear of naval attacks:  "Every night / Why does he / Shake with fright / Because some dynamite / Might sink us all in a day" (the Germans were singing as if they were the British, hence that "us").  It was fascinating to see that Germans in the 1940s noticed - and made use of - the same sonic feature that I did.

After that, I listened to Bing Crosby's version (which I later learned also features the Mills Brothers).  While listening to his version, I noticed that there's a line break during the word "into."  Instead of "How I love to sit and gaze into the eyes of Dinah Lee," it's "How I love to sit and gaze in / To the eyes of Dinah Lee."  Later I realized that the line break's occurring within a word indicates how enchanting her eyes are:  it's as if the speaker/singer can't pay attention to the structure anymore.

Listening to Crosby's version also got me thinking about "my Dinah might / Change her mind about me."  The "Dinah might"/"dynamite" suggests that Dinah's "chang[ing] her mind" would be as devastating to the speaker/singer as a literal explosion.

Yester-day, I learned (I think correctly) the chords to Crosby's version.  During that bridge, there are descending chromatic phrases within the chords.  It's D minor, F augmented, F major, in which is the chromatic phrase D, C#, C.  Then there's D minor, F augmented, C major, with the same chromatic phrase.  Traditionally, descending chromatic lines are indicative of despair, and that's the case here too, since the bridge is the only section that's sad or fearful.  The verses are about Dinah's peerlessness:

Dinah, is there anyone finer
In the state of Carolina
If there is and you know her, show her to me

her enchanting beauty:

Dinah, got those Dixie eyes blazin’
How I love to sit and gaze in
To the eyes of Dinah Lee

and the speaker/singer's dedication to her:

Oh, Dinah, should you wander to China
I would hop an ocean liner
Just to be with Dinah Lee