Badfinger's "Storm in a Teacup"

This afternoon, I listened to Badfinger's Magic Christian Music, and I noticed something about "Storm in a Teacup," which is included as a bonus track on the CD re-issue I have.

The first verse is:

Well, you just slammed the door in my face
Well, that ain't any disgrace
It's a natural thing to do
Because true love never runs smooth

That last line ("true love never runs smooth") is a near quote of a line from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.  In the first act, Lysander says, "The course of true love never did run smooth" (I.i.134).

Peter & Gordon's "A World without Love"

Last week, I figured out the bass part for Peter & Gordon's "A World without Love."  I actually notated it as I learned it, which I think made it easier to learn.  I didn't have to hold as much in my head that way.

I'm a bit unsure of the rhythm during the bridges ("So I wait, and in a while..."), but I'm pretty confident about the pitches.

The Vipers Skiffle Group's "If I Had a Hammer"

A couple weeks ago, I listened to a two-disc compilation album of the Vipers Skiffle Group, and I noticed something about the line "All over this land" that ends each verse of "If I Had a Hammer."  I'm pretty sure it's:

"All" is sung to those first four notes.  There's a melisma (C C' A G), and the first two notes span an octave.  Those two features are a musical representation of the breadth that's in the lyric itself.  The singer/speaker "would ring out love" at all of those pitches in that octave.

The Mamas & the Papas' "Straight Shooter"

Two weeks ago, I learned the guitar parts for the Mamas & the Papas' "Straight Shooter" (from their debut album If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears).  Shortly afterwards, I realized a few things about the song (the bridge, specifically).

The beginning of the first line of the bridge ("I've been searching all...") just alternates between the notes D and C.  Musically, this going from one note to an-other is something of a representation of searching (especially since the "all" is drawn out to more syllables than it normal has when simply spoken).  It almost demonstrates searching high and low, except the two notes are only a whole step apart.

The "night" that completes that line is sung to the phrase D C A.  There are three syllables instead of one, which helps to further that exhaustive sense of "all night" that's in the lyric itself.

The other thing I noticed is that - corresponding to the "won't" in the line "Or I won't come 'round your door" - there's a modulation to a C major chord.  The song is in A major, a key in which the C has a sharp; normally a chord would be formed on C#, not C.  However, that foreign tonality and the lyric "I won't come 'round your door" have a common idea of being elsewhere.

Badfinger's "Take It All"

A couple months ago, I happened to think of Badfinger's "Take It All," and I realized something about how the melody mirrors the lyrics.  I didn't think this was enough to write about on its own, though, so I listened to the Straight Up album every week in December, and I found a few other things to write about.

The first line of each verse has some variation on the sun shining down: "the sun has shone on me," "the sun could shine on you," and "the sun will shine on you."  The melody for "shone on me" and both instances of "shine on you" descends (E D B), as if to represent the sun's rays' shining down.  For the "shine on you" in the third verse, there's a harmony part (G F# D) that has the same feature.

Aside from a few lines in the third verse, the bridges of the song ("Don't you know there's a stronger thing / Keeping us together...") are the only sections that have a harmony vocal.  The two voices there could represent either the "stronger thing" (two voices instead of just one) or the "together."

Also in the bridge, there's a rather large interval between the two syllables of "high" in the line "let the feeling take you high."  It starts on a B and goes up to a G (an interval of a sixth), representing that (metaphorical) height.  The harmony vocal does the same thing (I think it's a D to a B).