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).
