About two weeks ago, I figured out the chords for the Byrds' "You're Still on My Mind" (from Sweetheart of the Rodeo). Even before I figured them out, I thought there was a cyclical nature to them. Figuring them out revealed that it's just a I IV V I pattern, but that has some interesting implications when the lyrics are considered.
The song is in A major, so with that standard I IV V I progression (played twice for each verse), it's A major / D major / E major / A major (although I should mention that an E major underlies the introductory figure). At first, all I noticed was that the song returns to A major (the tonic or "home" chord) for the end of the line "'One more,' I keep sayin', 'and then I'll go home,'" so the music reflects the lyrics there. But then I realized that the cyclical returning is present in other lyrics too. Each verse ends with the line "An empty bottle, a broken heart, and you're still on my mind," and the "you're still on my mind" is sung above an A major chord. In the same way the "you" is "still on my mind," there's a constant returning to that A major.
The opposite sort of thing is present in the second verse. When the speaker/singer notices "the people... dancin' and havin' their fun," he's briefly distracted from his own plight, and the chord progression modulates away from that A major chord to D major. But when he starts "thinkin' about what you have done," the progression returns to A major again. In the third line, in order "To try and forget you," he "turn[s] to the wine," and - again - the chord progression modulates from A major to D major to musically portray that turning, only to return to A major again at the end of the verse because "you're still on my mind."
The I IV V I progression is pretty run-of-the-mill and a bit uninteresting, but because these lyrics connect with it in a clever way, it's elevated above its usual mediocrity.
