Chuck Berry's "School Days"

A couple weeks ago, Chuck Berry's "School Days" was in my head when I woke up.  Actually, it was just a single line:  "Drop the coin right into the slot."  And I noticed something about it:  both times it occurs in the song, the melody of the line descends, so it's something of a musical representation of the lyric itself:  the coin dropping into the slot.  I'm pretty sure the phrase is G' D Bb G (omitting repeated notes), so it outlines a G minor chord.

Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart's I Wonder What She's Doing Tonite?

I recently remembered a musical similarity on Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart's I Wonder What She's Doing Tonite? album that I'd alternately been unable to place and forgotten about.  I finally placed the other tune and verified its similarity, but in listening to the album again (after not having heard it for about a year), I found something else to write about too.

"Love Every Day"

The "ev'rywhere" in the line "You can feel it ev'rywhere" in the middle section is pronounced with an extra syllable.  The "-where" is sung to the notes D# and G#, and that interval (a fourth) musically represents that "ev'rywhere."

"Leaving Again"

The melody of the first line in each verse has a very strong similarity to the first phrase of the tune "Woodworth," used for the hymn "Just As I Am, without One Plea."  In various hymnals I have, "Woodworth" is in D major and Eb major, but since "Leaving Again" is in F major, I transposed the notation:

There are a few differences in rhythm, but all of the pitches are the same.  According to my hymnals, "Woodworth" was written by William B. Bradbury, who lived from 1816 to 1868, so - obviously - "Woodworth" is older than "Leaving Again."  It doesn't seem likely that this similarity is just a coincidence, but I'm not sure whether it was intentional or not.  Aside from this first phrase, the tunes don't resemble each other, so it seems that - consciously or not - Boyce and Hart thought of "Woodworth," used this first phrase (with slightly altered rhythms), but then wrote their own melody for the rest of the song.

"Population"

This wasn't new to me, but since I haven't written about this before, I figured I should include it in this post:

Near the end of the song, there are the lines "Well, you may go to college / You may go to school."  These lines also appear in "Baby, Let's Play House."  I have only Elvis Presley's version, but the lines are exactly the same there: "Well, you may go to college / You may go to school."

"Baby, Let's Play House" is the same song from which the Beatles took the lines "I'd rather see you dead, little girl / Than to be with another man" for "Run for Your Life" on Rubber Soul, so Boyce and Hart's referencing "Baby, Let's Play House" might also be something of a Beatles reference.

Peter, Paul, and Mary's "Where Have All the Flowers Gone"

Last week, I had a post about Noel Paul Stookey's "Wedding Song (There Is Love)," and in listening to a Peter, Paul, and Mary compilation album in order to transcribe that, I noticed something about their "Where Have All the Flowers Gone."

In every verse except for the last, there's at least one line that's sung by only one voice.  In every verse, the sixth line (usually with the "Gone to graveyards, ev'ry one" structure) is sung by only a single voice, and in a few, the recurring "Where have all the... gone" lines are sung by only a single voice too.  This shifting between three voices and one voice helps to musically represent the absence that the lyrics allude to.

In some - but not all - of the lines with the "Young girls have picked them, every one" structure, the "every" in "every one" is sung with three syllables rather than two.  This pronunciation emphasizes the complete absence.

That sort of syllabic extension is also present in "passing" and "ago" in the recurring lines "Long time passing" and "Long time ago."  Both are sung to three syllables instead of two, which further represents the length of time.

Noel Paul Stookey's "Wedding Song (There Is Love)"

Near the end of last year, I discovered two Biblical references in Noel Paul Stookey's "Wedding Song (There Is Love)."  I'm finally getting around to writing about them.

In the first and last verse, there's the line "For whenever two or more of you are gathered in His name, there is love."  It's not exactly the same, but it bears a strong resemblance to Matthew 18:20, where Jesus says, "'For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.'"

At the beginning of the second verse, there are the lines "Well, a man shall leave his mother, and a woman leave her home / They shall travel on to where the two should be as one."  There's a bit of poetic license taken here, but otherwise, it's Matthew 19:4-5:  "He [Jesus] answered, 'Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'?"  There's a parallel account in Mark 10, but I think it's more likely that Matthew was the source for both references (especially since they're from consecutive chapters), rather than one from Matthew and one from Mark.

Fred Astaire's "Cheek to Cheek"

Last week, I happened to think of Fred Astaire's "Cheek to Cheek," and I noticed something about the melody for the line "When we're out together dancing cheek to cheek."  The "cheek to cheek" part is sung to the notes C B C, and there are two musical elements there that indicate the proximity that's mentioned in the line itself.  First, both "cheek"s are sung to C notes.  In the musical phrase they're separated by a note, but those two notes have the same pitch.  It's as if they (like the cheeks in the line) are occupying the same space.  Second, C and B (the two pitches to which that phrase are sung) are next to each other.  Without going into quarter tones, notes can't get any closer, so it's as if the notes C and B are themselves "cheek to cheek."

The Decemberists' "The Island"

Because it was St. Patrick's Day a few days ago, I listened to a 2-CD set titled 40 Irish Songs Everyone Ought to Know.  One of them was "Whiskey in the Jar," which reminded me of something I noticed last summer (when I listened to Thin Lizzy's version of "Whiskey in the Jar") and needed to get around to writing about.

Because it's a folk song, there are different versions of the lyrics, but in "Whiskey in the Jar," there are lines where the speaker/singer draws a pistol and then a sword.  In versions I have, this is rendered as "I first produced my pistol / And then produced my rapier" (Thin Lizzy), "I first produced me pistol / And then I drew me saber" (The Original Irish Boys) and "First produced me pistol / I then produced me rapier" (The Countdown Singers).

In "The Landlord's Daughter" section of the Decemberists' "The Island" (on The Crane Wife), there are similar lines:  "Produced my pistol / Then my saber."  I haven't really lookt into the narrative of the songs to see if there are any similarities there, but the resemblance of the lines is indisputable.

A couple years ago, I wrote a post about some similarities between the folk song "Molly Malone" and the Decemberists' "Eli, the Barrow Boy."  I think this is an-other instance of Colin Meloy's interest in folk music making its way into his writing.

Badfinger's "Storm in a Teacup"

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about a Shakespeare reference in Badfinger's "Storm in a Teacup."  A couple days ago, I learned the chords, so I figured it'd be good to post those.  It's actually pretty simple:

Introduction:
|: G major | D major :|

Verses:
|: E minor | B minor :|
C major | D major

Choruses:
|: G major | D major :|

Tag:
G major | F major | Eb major | G major

Del Shannon's "So Long Baby"

I've been listening to my two-CD set of Del Shannon a lot lately, and I noticed a couple of little things about the vocal melody in "So Long Baby."

The end of the line "Step by step you put me down" descends, and "down" has a melisma (Bb Ab F), so there's a musical representation (in two ways, actually) of the putting down.

The "hearts" in the line "We tried to break each other's hearts" also has a melisma (Eb F Eb), so the word itself is broken into syllables, mirroring the broken hearts in the lyric.

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."

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.