Three Dog Night's "Joy to the World"

A couple weeks ago, I happened to think of Three Dog Night's "Joy to the World" (from the album Naturally), specifically the line "And he always had some mighty fine wine," and I realized that it uses some poetic devices.

Initially I noticed just the assonance among "mighty," "fine," and "wine."  They all have long I sounds.  When I typed this out just to make a note of it, I also realized that there's internal rhyme with "fine" and "wine."  Along with just making the lyrics sound euphonious, the elevated language gives an-other indication of the high quality of the wine it's describing.

The Moody Blues' "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood"

Last month, I got a CD re-issue of the Moody Blues' Days of Future Passed.  I already had the album itself (I have an older CD re-issue and even an original vinyl copy from 1967); I got this particular edition mostly for the bonus tracks, one of which is a version of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" performed live on the BBC.  Shortly after I listened to this edition of the album for the first time, I learned the guitar phrase and chords for the Animals' version of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" (which I've been familiar with for years).  Shortly after I learned those parts, I tried playing the guitar phrase from the Animals' version on flute (which is how it's played in the Moodies' version).  In doing so, I discovered that the Moodies' version (in A minor) is a whole step lower than the Animals' version (in B minor).

At first, I thought the key was changed just to make the guitar phrase from the Animals' version easier to play on flute*.  In the Animals' version, it's:

On guitar, that C# to D transition isn't anything special, but it's a bit difficult on flute.  The fingerings for C# and D don't have any keys in common.  Here's part of the fingering chart from the back of my flute book:

Lowering the phrase a whole step makes it a lot easier to play on flute.  Here's the notation:

(I should note that in a few instances of this phrase, Ray Thomas adds some trills, but I didn't include those in my notation.)

Here are the relevant fingerings:

All of the fingerings here have at least two keys in common.

Initially, I thought that facilitating that part on flute was the reason the Moody Blues lowered the key from the Animals' version, but as I continued to think about the song, I realized that there might have been an-other reason.  B minor has two sharps, but A minor doesn't have any accidentals.  It might be a bit arcane, but that lack of accidentals is a musical representation of the purity mentioned in the line "I'm just a soul whose intentions are good."  (There are some accidentals in the song [for example, there's a D# in the bass part during the verses and - although I think it might be more implied than outright strummed - there's an E major chord, which contains a G#], but there aren't any accidentals "built-in" as it were in A minor.)  That extra-musical meaning might just be a coincidence and moving the song to A minor was just for a practical purpose, but it's still a valid exegesis.

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*Because the liner notes specifically mention the Animals' version and because the two versions of the song have roughly the same structure, I'm assuming that the Moodies based their version off the Animals' version.  There are some significant differences in the lyrics though.

Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers' "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?"

I've been procrastinating on this post for a long time, so I thought I'd finally get around to it.

A couple years ago, I happened to think of Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers' "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?" and I realized that a lot of the musical phrases descend, as if to illustrate that "fall[ing] in love."

A lot of the rhythms are too complex for my novice notation skills, but the first "Why do fools fall in love" (after the initial "ooh wah"s) is:

The "Why do they fall" in the chorus is sung to the descending phrase A# G# F# E#, and while the initial note of the "in love" that completes the line starts from a higher pitch than that E#, that short phrase descends too.  The "love" is sung with an extra syllable, and the second note is lower than the first, continuing the descent so that "in love" is sung to G# G# F#.

Some other lines in the chorus descend too.  The "Fall from up above" in the lines "Why does the rain / Fall from up above" is sung to the phrase A# G# G# F# F#, and the "fall in love" in the line "Why do fools fall in love" is sung to the phrase A# G# F#.

The Shadows' "Saturday Dance"

A couple weeks ago, I listened to a 3-CD set of the Shadows, and I noticed something about "Saturday Dance" (I think I'd noticed this before but forgotten about it; I certainly haven't written about it in any case).

One of the verses has the lines "Go upstairs and put your glad rags on / And join me, hon, and we'll have some fun."  At first, I recognized just the phrase "glad rags," but when I verified the source, I discovered that there's a substantial similarity between these two lines and the first two lines of the first verse of Bill Haley & His Comets' "(We're Gonna) Rock Around the Clock":  "Get your glad rags on; join me, hon / We'll have some fun when the clock strikes one."  Aside from a few minor differences, these two pairs of lines have the same three clauses:  "Get/put your glad rags on," "Join me, hon," and "We'll have some fun."

These lines are so similar that I don't think it's just coincidental.  I'd find it hard to believe that these lines in "Saturday Dance" weren't intended to quote "(We're Gonna) Rock Around the Clock."

I did some research and discovered that "(We're Gonna) Rock Around the Clock" was written by Jimmy De Knight and Max C Freedman and came out in 1954.  The publication data of my 3-CD Shadows set credit "Saturday Dance" to "Chester/Marvin" (I'm assuming "Marvin" is the Shadows' Hank Marvin) and note that it was recorded in 1959.  There are five years between the two songs, so chronologically, it's entirely possible that "Saturday Dance" quotes "(We're Gonna) Rock Around the Clock."

The bass part for "Saturday Dance" sounded pretty easy, so I figured it out and notated it.  I should note that my notation starts at the same time the bass part starts.  At the very beginning of the song there are a few measures comprised solely of guitar, but I didn't include those.  And, as always, there's the disclaimer that I might have something wrong:

The Association's "Requiem for the Masses"

A couple weeks ago, I got a box set of the Association's first five albums.  Even before I listened to them, I started thinking about "Requiem for the Masses" (which - of the thirteen songs on the compilation The Association's Greatest Hits! - is my favorite song by them).  Between thinking about it and then listening to The Association's Greatest Hits! again, I found three things to write about.

The first two things I noticed are in this section:

Mama, mama, forget your pies
Have faith they won't get cold
And turn your eyes to the blood-shot sky
Your flag is flying full
At half mast
For the matadors
Who turned their backs
To please the crowd
And all fell before the bull

After "Your flag is flying full," the lines have half as many syllables, corresponding to the moiety of the flag flying "At half mast" in the next line.  The first four lines have between six and nine syllables, but then the syllable count drops to anywhere between three and five before the final line of seven syllables (although "And" has a melisma when this section is repeated, making that line eight syllables).

I also found some connections between the melody and the lyrics of that last line.  If my counting is right, the "all" lasts for a whole measure, indicating the multitude of matadors who fell.  The phrase "all fell before" descends (E D# C# B), musically illustrating their falling.  "The bull" is sung to C# notes, so even musically, it's higher than the matadors, who "fell before the bull" to a B note.

The last thing I noticed is an implication of the contrast between

Red was the color of his blood flowing thin
Pallid white was the color of his lifeless skin
Blue was the color of the morning sky

and

Black and white were the figures that recorded him
Black and white was the newsprint he was mentioned in
Black and white was the question that so bothered him

Obviously the major difference between these two is that the first has various colors where the second has only "black and white," but what I realized is that this contrast illustrates the change in the matador.  Although he's dying in the first section, he is still alive, and the variety of colors represents the potentiality of his life.  In the second section, where he's dead, the repeated "black and white" illustrates the immutability of death.  The matador has no more agency, so where before there were changing colors, now there's only the repeated "black and white."

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This is the second post I've written about "Requiem for the Masses."  Here's one I wrote three years ago.