Carpenters' "Yesterday Once More"

Karen Carpenter's birthday was last week (2 March), so I listened to the Carpenters' Gold album.  I remembered something I noticed a while ago but hadn't written about yet, so I thought I might as well get around to doing that this week.

At the beginning of "Yesterday Once More," the only instrumentation to accompany Carpenter's voice is piano.  During the first half of the second verse, there's a bit of bass, but it's in a higher register so it's not as noticeable.  After the line "How I wondered where they'd gone" (where "they" refers to the "happy times" from the previous line), the bass drops to a lower register, becoming more prominent, and organ and drums come in.  It's a musical representation of the next line: "But they're back again."

The first verse links the joy of those "happy times" with music:

When I was young, I'd listen to the radio
Waitin' for my favorite songs
When they played, I'd sing along
It made me smile

So when more instruments come in to represent being "back again," it's almost literal.  The music of those "happy times" - which the additional instrumentation represents - has actually come "back again."